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In spite of the heat a fire popped and flickered in the fireplace.
'Six hours, twelve minutes,' the pages of the book spilled onto her lap. 'That's actually about par.'
Referring to how long it took her to complete the book she had been reading earlier, she smiled gently to Tuesday and closed the dusty tome.
She was in the shabby but comfortable library lined with threadbare rugs and lit by candles and firelight. Andelka realized that the temple must be larger on the inside than it was on the outside; it was also a lot cooler-the atmosphere was that of a nice, chilly fall evening. Books overflowed the bookcases and stood in wobbly stacks in the corners and even on the mantelpiece. The furniture was distinguished but mismatched, and in places it was severely battered. In between the bookcases the walls were hung with the usual inexplicable artifacts that accumulate in ancient 'clubs'. Ancient masks, dreary landscape paintings of the planet's past, retired ceremonial daggers, glass cases full of maps and old flasks and the deteriorating corpses of exotic moths that had presumable been captured at great effort and expense. Andelka felt overheated and under-dressed but mostly just relieved to be inside.
There were a few other people in the library. Tuesday was scanning one of the bookshelves and acting like he hadn't noticed them yet. He seemed to be trying to make a serious argument about Force theory, but nobody was listening.
The pas six hours went by beneath a grey watercolour wash of quasi-military vigilance. The squabbling Acolytes she had heard earlier disbanded quickly, and she felt no desirable need to seek them out and demand what all the noise was about. She sank back further into the large chair, idly twirling her fingers through Tuesday's fur.
'Shut up, already. No one is listening about your theory. It's stupid, it's lax. It's probably already been written down somewhere so there's really no point.'
She yawned. 'That was brash?' Tuesday sighed, which sounded like a musty, wormy sack of leather filled with air being squeezed.
Andelka yawned. She had wondered where they had run off to, the people in the hall, or where ever they were. Voices carried like dust on the wind in this place.
We've been in here for the past six hours. You've done nothing but sit here and read and I'm getting quite tired of it. Studying. You should be studying The Force, how to channel it, how to become stronger. Aren't I supposed to be the voice of reason? Yet here you are, and if my observations are correct you're being nothing but unreasonable.
'--both what they half create, and what perceive; well pleased to recognize in nature and the language of the sense, the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being.' Andelka stopped, pondering what Tuesday had said. She placed the small book down. 'Were you saying something?'
Andelka inspected her hands as if they were the most amazing things in the universe. 'Could kill, with these,' she said quietly. 'Or paint.' She chuckled absentmindedly.
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