gyouten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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overjoyed_logs2016-12-12 09:38 pm
gyouten) wrote in overjoyed_logs2016-12-12 09:38 pm
Entry tags:
Having Fun Isn’t Hard When You’ve Got a Library Card
Who: Ginshu & Lavi
Where: Leith, Scarback Monastery
When: ~2 months ago
Summary: Two nerds hang out in the library
Restrictions/Warnings: None
Shafts of early morning sun pierce small windows, but the interior of the monastery library remains dim. Many of the scriptures stored here are written in fading inks on fragile paper, both of which would be degraded by light. Properly stored, paper or parchment can outlast most digital records, and they have a physical weight that mere data lacks. (Naturally, the temple maintains extensive digital archives as well, but they're stored discreetly out of sight where they won't spoil the sense of ancient majesty.) The faint, drifting sound of Scarback aunts and uncles reciting daily meditations accentuates rather than overwhelms the library's contemplative quiet. This is a temple too - not to the Mother Tree, not to blood or salvation or ritual, but to human knowledge, some of it so old that the meanings have been lost.
It's also the best place in the entire Scarback Monastery for napping. As might be expected of a cult dedicated to the mortification of the flesh, the monastery's accommodations are austere and idly lounging about is generally discouraged. So on days when Ginshu feels unwell (which is, frankly, the majority of them) he tends to spend his time reading. In the year he's spent at this particular monastery, he's become something of an unofficial member of the library staff. Transporting "religious educational materials" to Westerly is good cover for his real activities on the other moon.
So when footsteps disturb the library's silent halls, Ginshu recognizes the sound immediately: sturdy boots instead of the sandals or bare feet favored by most monks. He excitedly greets his fellow scholar before the other even enters the reading room.
"Lavi!"
Where: Leith, Scarback Monastery
When: ~2 months ago
Summary: Two nerds hang out in the library
Restrictions/Warnings: None
Shafts of early morning sun pierce small windows, but the interior of the monastery library remains dim. Many of the scriptures stored here are written in fading inks on fragile paper, both of which would be degraded by light. Properly stored, paper or parchment can outlast most digital records, and they have a physical weight that mere data lacks. (Naturally, the temple maintains extensive digital archives as well, but they're stored discreetly out of sight where they won't spoil the sense of ancient majesty.) The faint, drifting sound of Scarback aunts and uncles reciting daily meditations accentuates rather than overwhelms the library's contemplative quiet. This is a temple too - not to the Mother Tree, not to blood or salvation or ritual, but to human knowledge, some of it so old that the meanings have been lost.
It's also the best place in the entire Scarback Monastery for napping. As might be expected of a cult dedicated to the mortification of the flesh, the monastery's accommodations are austere and idly lounging about is generally discouraged. So on days when Ginshu feels unwell (which is, frankly, the majority of them) he tends to spend his time reading. In the year he's spent at this particular monastery, he's become something of an unofficial member of the library staff. Transporting "religious educational materials" to Westerly is good cover for his real activities on the other moon.
So when footsteps disturb the library's silent halls, Ginshu recognizes the sound immediately: sturdy boots instead of the sandals or bare feet favored by most monks. He excitedly greets his fellow scholar before the other even enters the reading room.
"Lavi!"
no subject
He's never heard Lavi speak with such a cold, detached voice, but it fits with what little he knows of bookmen. Their histories are complete, precise and objective, free from bias or moral justification. Unlike other works, which seek to influence the present by manipulating the past, bookman records are as steady and immutable as the flow of time itself. The only thing missing from their painstaking chronicles... is the name of the author. The author's name, personality and past aren't even worthy of a byline.
Whether flirting with acolytes or laughing about the naughty books in the library's restricted section, Lavi seemed like an ordinary, carefree young man... not unlike the person Ginshu himself had been many years ago. He'd even had the same flame-red hair back then. Ginshu had found it easy to empathize with someone else who'd been forced to bury his true self in the confines of duty and obligation... but what if the carefree young man had been the mask all along?
Ginshu lightly pats the book in his lap. "'History is all'... but that's not really true, is it? Take the author of this book, for instance. Historians have written at length about his career as a warrior, but it's only from his own words that we see him as clumsy poet who tried to make meaning at a time when his struggles must have seemed meaningless. Even the best records fail to capture every side of a person, or every side of a story."
no subject
Not to Lavi, not to the Bookmen, not to history. Their personal motivations are interesting, certainly, but addressing the cause is not the goal of his work--it's not what ultimately matters. What must be preserved is the effect. That data, quantifiable and perfect when recorded by the right set of hands, allows future generations to build a pattern.
The cause, the individual, the singular person and purpose.. those are things that are byproducts of the pattern, but not its true function.
Not, Lavi thinks, that humans ever learn. He could lay out a thousand tomes on the mistakes they've made since the dawn of time and point to the impact of each and they'd still clumsily lead themselves into another war, another fire.
This, however, is not a truth he's willing to share with Ginshu. Mindful of letting his persona slip, he eases back into it with a slow smile, shaking his head softly at the other man. "Perhaps that's true, but that's outside the scope of my work, Uncle," he murmurs quietly, almost reverently, "And it's really depressing when you put it that way."
Attention seemingly returned to his own book, Lavi turns another page, humming lightly under his breath, "We may never build a perfect record, but chicks dig guys with imperfections, so it all works out."