The library was very grand. Two stories tall, built with some of the oldest brick in the village, and then repaired a few times with some of the newest brick. It had enormous windows, well designed lighting, and outside those windows was a long pathway ducking under a few trees between it and one of ponds.

He sure didn’t do all of his work here, but this is where Father Iroh’s work was stored. Admittedly, it was less work of his than in his earlier years with the church. Life as an Abbot was more than just an offshoot of the kind of Priesthood that Father Peter Wayland held. Although, in the hierarchical sense, they stood toe to toe, just… different toes.

Father Iroh was found with his back against the bronze bust of Father Wan - the first Abbot to build the library, and the one that it was (retroactively) named after. He was a quiet man, but a loved one; not only did he encourage the teaching of literacy among his constituents, but after being banished from his own home, he was the first Abbot to adopt a squire to work beside him. Father Iroh looked up to Father Wan, although he oft admitted to himself that adopting squires just seemed like a proper thing to do, and not necessarily something worthy of praise. He worked for the church, for the Abbey, and for Martin the Warrior - best practices should be assumed, not praised.

Father Iroh knew what to keep what to himself.

“How was lunch?” Father Iroh, although rumored to have eyes in the back of his head, nearly recognized the gate and step of the only forest-folk that ever walked into a library.

“It was great,” Antwerp was used to being noticed, no matter how lightly he stepped into the library, “it was really great.”

“That is good! Did you see your friends there? How did their parents feel about being out so late?”

Antwerp was nibbling on the bun he had snuck out of the dining hall, “Well, Rou had it fine, but Ella…”

“Yeah, I heard. Serves you all right, though. See? I am nice to you, I just also expect you to come to work on time.”

“Hrm,” he scratched around his neck, “I thought this was all volunteer work.”

“It is,” Iroh said, catching onto where his apprentice was going, “but if you volunteer for something… you still have to do it. If you don’t want to help me, that is fine, Reverend Unwin can find you something else to do. Volunteering for something is a promise, and if you want out of it, just—”

He was blushing now, “No, no, no! No, definitely not, I was just… asking. Something came up during lunch, I was merely curious about the semantics of it all.”

Father Iroh finally looked up from his book, “Semantics?” he asked, laying down a tattered, aged copy of Conspiracy to Murder: The Fortrose Genocide.

“Uh, yeah, I am using it right, right?”

He fiddled his fingers around, “Uh, yeah: the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form. I just don’t think I ever taught you that word.”

“You know, Father, I read books too. I don’t mean to speak out of place or anything; I know how much you love this place, and that place specifically,” Antwerp motioned to the seat under the bust of Father Wan, “but this place is not as busy as it may seem in your head. Cleaning this place up does not take as much time as I pretend.”

“Well, if it means you will read more, I won’t bug anyone about giving you more work to do.”

“I promise,” Antwerp almost meant, “what are you reading, anyways? Anything I should be keeping up with?”

Father Iroh grabbed his book, showing the title to Antwerp, “wait, what genocide? How old is this thing?”

“Son,” Father Iroh started, “this book is even old for me. Fortrose was a city that no one remembers anymore, and it housed a species of beast that no one remembers: birds, of all shapes and sizes.”

“Wait, they were real?”

“So it seems, you heard about them before?”

“Not enough to take them seriously,” Antwerp replied, “it would not have worked. Flying, I mean, no kind of feather could lift up the bone mass alone.

“They apparently had hollow bones,” Father Iroh said.

“Hollow?”

“Ridiculous, I know.”

Father Iroh hopped out of his seat, picked up the pillow he was sitting on and motioned the stain on it to Antwerp, “I will get this washed, but next time you sit in my seat, don’t spill any wine on it.”

Antwerp quickly got back to work, running towards the back of the the library in a much not needed effort that no one would see him blushing. When embarrassed, Antwerp often forgot how rare it was that anyone was ever going to notice.

Working in the view of a pair of eloquently design, expertly placed, and rigorously cleaned windows did not give Antwerp as much the sense of time as one would assume. Even when the curtains were closed (which they rarely ever were), the sun would shine in between the draperies, and leave more than a few of the brightest, sharpest lines on either side of the staircase that always seemed to find dust that Antwerp did not.

No, it was not his workspace that caught the small shrew out of sorts, nor were it his relatively early hours (he was that passionate a worker). No matter what the work was, no matter if it was dusting the spines of epic tomes, or the sorting of novels, novellas and whatever other fiction the church thought fit to print, Antwerp was in it. He was not a perfect specimen of any sort, nor was he ever enough of a fool to think he ever was, but for what he lacked in anything else, he made up in a passion and enthusiasm for his work that was inspired by nothing short of the most appreciative heart in the known world. Not even that, it stood to reason that Antwerp’s heart trumped those in the theoretically existing unknown world, as well.

And for this, Father Iroh adored him.

The roar of a thousand claps of thunder boomed around him and Antwerp was back on his feet quicker than a wildcat thrown off of the docks downtown. He dove for the nearest corner and curled into a tightest huddle than Father Iroh has ever seen.

“I said it was dinner.” He smirked.

“What, what was that?!” his heart was still pounding, and his ears were still ringing.

“I, I said it was dinner,” although smaller, Iroh’s smirk was still fairly consistent.

Antwerp crawled onto his feet, one paw bracing himself against his thighs, and the other still clutching his chest, “No, that noise!” he was still searching around the ceiling, the windows, anything that could fit any sort of a cloud.

“Son, it was a book. It was, it was just a book. I… I knocked over a book, I did not expect this kind of reaction.”

After feeling the air around him, Antwerp slowly stood up and, still facing the window, and his paw still at his chest, took a few deep breaths and tried his best to calm back down. His head twitched a little. He found another deep breath.

Antwerp slowly turned on his heels, stepped forward and stared right into Father Iroh’s eyes, “you area very funny man, Father Iroh. Now, where were we?”

Father Iroh had literal generations on the young boy, but he took his cue to pick up the book slowly and quickly, and carefully, put it back where it belonged.

Passion and enthusiasm, when converted into work ethic, first had to go through an very intricate smelting process. Although the process was relatively simple, and if not that, then very well automated, it did not do well when interrupted. When Antwerp found himself in these zones, or whenever someone else caught him in it, his mind was actually running the smelting operations at full efficiency. Unfortunately, a fully efficient passion and enthusiasm smelting facility meant that the transportation docks were not as covered as they should be, so interruptions were likely to end up in a bit of a mess.

That reaction was one of his messes. And all things considered, he was doing a pretty good job controlling it.

“Right, yes,” Father Iroh was trying his best to consider this smelting process, “dinner time. Yip-yip.”

Antwerp did not usually eat with the upper-echelon of the church, but he did on Friday and Saturday. The given excuse, through a somewhat timid Father Iroh, is that he needed enough time. Were he to be honest, Antwerp was never that comfortable with Reverend Unwin and his like, but Father Iroh insisted upon his attendance, as it would familiarize himself with the staff and the hierarchy, as there was not much else he was built to grow up doing except work for the church or the Abbey.

Sometimes, though, Reverend Unwin would bring with him his daughter Ella. This was not one of those times.

As the two walked through those grand pillars, both were surprised to see more than a small handful of guests sitting at the table before them. Neither of these two guests, these ominous forest-folk, wore as simple a garb as Father Iroh’s tunic, or the Reverend’s long-sleeve, ankle-length, black cassock, (as per his stance in the church, his was the only with a red piping on the edges and cuffs of the material.) The two guests were in their own white, ankle-length dress, but each with heavier coats with purple trim, and their own hooked staff, each wrapping around ornate designs in more expensive materials than the other. Even the good Reverend thought they were too gauche to carry around the city.

“De Clare,” Father Iroh nodded and motioned to the taller of the two, “de Montfort, pleasure to make your… rather,” he paused a bit to swallow something rather unfortunate, “surprising acquaintance,” he nodded to the shorter of the two and took a seat as comfortably away from the two as to not outright betraying his general revulsion towards the two archbishops.

“I see you are missing your, rather cute, I must add, crosier,” asked de Clare, the one of th two ferrets that ever said anything in public.

“Ah, you noticed?” Father Iroh chuckled, “I prefer to lend my hand to my people, rather than busy it with something with which to herd them, or to look down at they from. Something, I see that dr Montfort has no issue with.”

De Montfort was the shorter of the two by more than just a few inches.

“Iroh, be nice to our guests,” Reverend Unwin was also missing his crosier, something he would have pulled out from under his bed if his guests were not so impromptu. Surely, Iroh thought to himself, he had gotten his share of flak from the two earlier.

They pretended to never notice Antwerp at the table, their church never took kindly to Father Wan during his abbacy, and took even less so to those who took up his causes. Although they never voiced much motive behind their disdain, Iroh theorized that it had something do with the fact that abbots were completely outside of their jurisdiction, and could not get away with ordering him to do mundane tasks like he did his contemporaries Reverend Unwin, and Father Peter Wayland. Because technically, the Abbey and those in it’s service did not work for the church, while the bishop and the priest did.

“So, to what do we owe the pleasure?” Father Iroh asked as a lower monk was pouring him some wine, and serving him his dinner.

“Nothing you need to worry about, Father, we are merely… well, de Montfort and I are just here for a seasonal check up, see how… everyone is doing. So don’t worry, we are only here to see those that work for a living, you have nothing to worry about.”

Father Iroh grinned around a frustrated gulp of as much alcohol as he could force down his gullet at once, “Oh? Sorry, you seem to have misunderstood,” he cleared his throat, “I asked what you would be doing, not what your contingent of underpaid workers are doing. If they ever manage to finish unpacking all of that chattel you seem to need with you during every visit, they are more than welcome to stay in my Abbey for a short stint, get them some decent food, maybe some… that is, sorry, I don’t mean to assume anything but… do you let them actually rest at all? I don’t know, it’s been a while since you cursed my shores.”

De Clare defined the word sneer that evening.

“Iroh, stop. De Clare, well, y-you know, just… yeah, you should know Iroh enough to not expect him to have anything to say. De Monfort - nothing, really?”

De Montfort did not speak much.

The rest of the meal was consumed in silence, save for a few grunts, coughs, and yawns. In th Abbey they ate slowly, and they ate late, but the tension between the sides of the table did not help speed anything up any bit. Antwerp was starting to think those rules about his attendance were not completely without merit.

It took more time than usual for the arid, near-tangible awkwardness that hung between to the two render itself into a near literal dew on the ornately designed dinners before them.

“So, Iroh,” said de Monfort, the usually quiet one of the two, “gotten much further looking those sticks you found?” in indistiguishablely timid shock shot between the purple cloaked gentlement cutting through the fog between everyone, shaking de Clare, too, out of his blank, targetted stare.

“Not that there was ever much to look into, “he interrupeted himself,

The fur on the back of Father Iroh’s mousey neck shot immediately erect, “that is what you keep saying; keep insisting, but you do not know this place like I do. I know what lives here, what grows here; both when and why. This—”

“We lived here too, you know,” corrected de Clare, folding down the rimmed hood of his cloak to get a better look into Iroh’s eyes.

“You didn’t live here, you were raised here. You didn’t live here,” Iroh repeated, the claws on his fingers pinching tighter into the pads of his palms, “you lived in that church of yours - of mine. The most you’ve done outside of those walls was teach a few kids how to tie knots, and it was not long until you delegated that onto someone else. You don’t live here,” third, for good measure, “you live—”

“Enough, Iroh, we get it,” however rarely practiced it was, de Monfort had a commanding voice, one that traveled further than most of his race, and he used it to break a long-time record of only speaking in front of Iroh once a day, if even that, “did you find what you were looking for?”

“I…” the Father’s posture let go of itself a bit, “I am getting somewhere. Less sure of what I am seeing, but moer sure of what I am looking for.”

The shots between de Clare and Iroh had dissipated whatever awkward fog there was between the two, and now they were just two opposing storms making verbal battle with each other, neither staying in the dominant lead for long.

“Meaning?” de Clare almost dared to look interested.

Father Iroh yawned, slamming one fist atop the other in attempt to get his juiced flowing again, “Well, I know they are not from here, and I know that they tend to show up about when our kids—”

“Correlation does not imply causation,” the wordier of the two mice announced.

With his face in his redened paws Iroh answered,”I am well aware of that, but correlation does imply correlation, and that is worth looking into. I am still digging into the history books to see if anyone has, or had, reported anything of the sort.”

“Meaning?”

“That if trees were meant to grow that kind of leaf, if it even is a leaf, then we would know what they were by now. That if they had ever appeared before in our history, someone would have made note of it. And if they suddenly stopped growing like that, someone else would have noted it.”

The two archbishops hid a smile under their kerchiefs, pushing their plates and utensils away as sign that they were done.

Iroh continued: “a hollow leaf with hair on it is too interesting for no one to have made note of it before.”

“Of course, Father."

Next Chapter: Part 1, Chapter 13