Natural Assets

By Irony Illuminator

Chapter 1: Annalisa Cook: Protection of Recipes Department

She sneezed suddenly, disturbing the top layer of dust on the particular volume of ‘cooking recipes’ she’d been going over. She ran a pale and lithe hand over her otherwise meticulously kept bun of raven-colored hair, pursing a set of thin but almost bloody red lips as she readjusted the thin set of wire-frame glasses to once more cover her strikingly bright yellow-tinted eyes.

Cookbooks…

Fascinating things. Not the first thing you would expect to find a librarian inspecting at her desk, especially not with such apparent concentration. But who could help being interested when reading about Magpie pie? Good grief, were there even any magpies around anymore? Who could afford to eat them?

Despite the incredibility of some of the recipes, the cookbooks proved interesting. Actually, she found that incredibility added to the appeal. Didn’t everybody want a little more excitement, a little more fantasy in their lives?

This definitely qualified as fantasy.

Magpie pie indeed.

It was just weird enough to be believable.

A pin dropped.

Several heads lifted, but then, there were only a few heads in this area of the library anyway. The noise only slightly troubled the people sitting in old chairs and in front of dusty mahogany tables. In about two seconds, the noses returned to their former positions of burial inside the heavy, thick, worn books that were native to this library.

Ah yes, the library. It was a dim, dusty, gloomy place that smelled of mothballs and, well, books, of course. Musty books that had seen many more moons than those who turned their pages.

Some people might have thought that books so old were not worth reading. After all, what possible relevance could they have to modern life, what appeal could they hold for the voracious reader? In short, what could be so interesting about a bunch of dirty, century-old books?

Yes, they were centuries old, and dirty also, but their worth was beyond measure. At least, if you knew how to discover their worth properly. Few people could, honestly.

She had seen some of them pass right over it and never think twice. She had seen still others who stopped on it and thought about it for a little while, but couldn’t fully comprehend the magnitude of what they were reading. They failed to comprehend, all in all.

And then there were the others.

The others…

These others were the ones who knew. They knew about the library. They knew about the books, and they knew what was in the books, but more importantly…they knew about her. They knew what she was doing there and they knew what she would continue doing there. She was the proverbial thorn in their side, and they wanted her gone.

Suffice it to say, she had no intention of leaving.

Her duty was to protect this library, these books, and what it was that was inside them. She knew what was inside them, of course. She would simply die first before allowing the information to pass her aforementioned bloody red lips. Her duty was to the books. Indirectly, her duty was to the world. It sounded so horribly cliché, but then, a lot of things in the world were cliché. This was just one of those necessarily cliché things.

To say that the fate of the world depended on her protection of these books was a bit of an understatement.

Another fact she would rather die than share with anyone.

Yes, her name was Annalisa and she was protecting the world. It sounded positively ridiculous, especially in her own mind.

She lifted her eyes ever so slightly and peered over the tips of her glasses, eyeing the occupants of the room, but not looking as though she were.

That woman in the corner was one of them. Annalisa had felt the woman’s metallic gaze upon the latter’s entrance. A spy from them, from the others. Another one. They were always sending spies. It wasn’t as though they could find anything out. They’d been trying for months and months. They desperately needed a new tactic. Annalisa could sense the spies and so far she hadn’t let anything slip.

What was there for her to let slip, honestly?

Annalisa pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, fingers brushing the edge of the frame, next to the hinge.

There was another one. The child who’d just walked in with her father glanced casually over at Annalisa in mid-giggle. Annalisa gave a polite yet faintly grim smile to the little girl and lowered her eyes to the page of the books in front of her after pushing her glasses up her nose again.

I know you’re here, she thought. Hide and seek is no longer an option. It never was an option. I see you.

“Excuse me? I want to check this book out.”

Annalisa lifted her gaze from her cookbook to the young man standing in front of her desk, who was wearing a friendly grin.

First thought: he’s hitting on me.

Second thought: he’s one of them.

Third thought: how come I didn’t feel him as he came in?

Annalisa gave him a smile similar to the one she’d given the little girl and accepted the book he held out to her. She gave it a cursory glance as she scanned it into the computer.

It was from the modern art section, which happened to be a story above her and all the way on the other side of the building. And here he was, accompanied by his friendly smile, telling her he wanted to check out this book.

Hadn’t she just been thinking about new tactics a minute ago? This was new, but it certainly wasn’t professional. Did they really think they could get her with this amateur?

“Nice glasses,” he remarked, smile persisting. On second thought, (or was it fourth thought?) he was actually fairly convincing. Anyone who didn’t know better might think that he was the average college student checking out an average book on modern art.

Fortunately, Annalisa knew better.

She reached up and touched her glasses briefly, as though to remind herself which ones she was wearing. The smile she gave him this time was warmer, but only by a fraction.

“Thank you. Do you have a card?” She waited while he dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was worn and his signature was faded. Phil Edwards. She memorized the name immediately and ran it through the computer as well. “You’ll probably have to get a new card soon,” she told him. “This one might get too old for the computer to read.”

He shrugged, making a noncommittal sound, and leaned closer to her, close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek, but not close enough for anyone to pay undue attention.

“Nice lips,” he whispered huskily.

Annalisa lifted her eyes to his and he held her gaze. Good heavens, what was he trying to do?

Was he trying to seduce her?

What ridiculousness was this?

“Have a nice day,” she said with a thin smile, handing him back his book over her desk. He watched her for a minute as though trying to analyze her reaction and then shrugged again, taking his book and walking away. He glanced back over his shoulder as he went and smirked at her.

Ah, so that was why she hadn’t sensed him.

No metallic gaze. This one was a natural asset, and in this case natural referred to non-manufactured.

Clever of them to send a natural one, but their new tactics still left a lot to be desired.

Please, Annalisa thought, rolling her eyes. Seduction? On her? Not likely. Perhaps she had overestimated them. Did they even really know who she was?

The rest of the day proved uneventful in the absence of the seductive male spy. Annalisa was unimpressed by this new tactic, and just as flatly determined to keep her secrets to herself.

As the afternoon wore away, rolling onward in the direction of evening, the rest of Annalisa’s spying ‘friends’ approached her desk with a randomly selected book that they wanted to check out. The woman made a casual comment about the general appeal of cookbooks and how efficient and useful they were, all the while wearing a smile that seemed too wide to be natural. She was pushing it, and Annalisa responded to the implicational comments and remarks with a shrug of the shoulders or a preoccupied sound. The woman took her book and walked away finally, having exhausted all possible means of discreet investigation.

The woman passed by the father and his little girl, pausing momentarily. She gave the little girl a kind smile, as though thinking that the little girl was so adorable.

That’s what anyone else would think, but Annalisa knew the exchange of glances for what it was: a signal.

The woman walked out of the room and out of the building, letting the enormous door close behind her with a muffled thud.

The little girl watched the woman go with what Annalisa saw as a condescending expression on her innocent face. Tugging on her father’s hand, the little girl crossed the room to Annalisa’s desk, the top of which was even with the girl’s chin.

The father set his book down and dug around in his wallet for his library card. The little girl glanced up at him and then looked at Annalisa, eyes glittering.

“You’ll have to forgive him. He’s not quite sure what to do with him self. He’s not used to having a daughter. He’s been mumbling to himself all day, but he couldn’t remember where it was that he was supposed to be at 3-o-clock, so we came here instead.” The girl stared at Annalisa, her wide blue eyes unblinking, projecting her thoughts into Annalisa’s mind. “I did a temporary mind-wipe on him this morning when he went out onto the back patio with his coffee. He’s probably still wondering if he’s finished it yet.” She smirked. “It’s such fun to toy with their minds like this. You should try it some time.”

Unfazed by this display of malice, Annalisa handed the book back to the girl’s father, who took it and his card, trying to stuff the latter back into his wallet without dropping his book. The little girl shook her head almost imperceptibly and Annalisa could almost feel the disgust emanating from the child.

“They’re so clumsy, aren’t they?” came the child’s thoughts in Annalisa’s mind. “Oh, wait. I’m sorry! I forgot that you were one of them!” The tone became colder than the Artic itself. “Just you keep that fact in mind, Annalisa, daughter of Treblehorn. You are one of them, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t change that fact. Eventually, my seemingly fair nemesis. Eventually we’ll break through your walls, and when we do…” Her smile was sweet and innocent. She stretched her small hand over the desktop and reached for the cookbooks Annalisa had been studying.

“Pretty!” The voice a child…so sweet, so naïve, so trusting, so blameless…

“You’ll wish you have never been born.” The final thought whispered through Annalisa’s mind as the little girl tugged impatiently on her father’s hand, wanting to leave. An enormous, ancient library was not the most amusing place for a little girl.

“Have a nice day,” Annalisa said with the eternally polite smile fixed on her face. Only the little girl could possible have seen the cool disdain in that smile. After all, the disdain was meant only for the child herself.

Annalisa lifted a hand nonchalantly to adjust her glasses right before the little girl turned away, leading the confused, middle-aged male away from Annalisa’s desk and out of the library. Good. At least she had gotten a close-up of the little girl.

Yes, there was a variety of different tactics that they tried on her. This one was the obvious use of intimidation. On one with a weaker will than Annalisa, it often proved to be most effective, but as stated, she was not that type. This kind of thing didn’t have the great of an effect on her. In fact, it didn’t affect her.

Not much did.

A/N – Hello wonderful readers. This is my first posted story so please be kind and review with an honest opinion. Not much to say about this first chapter other than: Enjoy!