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When one needs information, where is the best place to go? His few friends wouldn't have the answer and they were busy. No, Kurt needed to get this on his own and the best place to go when one needs information is the library, yes? So, after consulting the phone book, Kurt roof-hopped and teleported his way towards 5th and 42nd street to the iconic New York Public Library. It's hot out, yet he's trying to remain inconspicuous with a light-colored Panama hat pulled low to try and shade his face and his hands in the pockets of his jeans. However, it doesn't quite hide the dark blue, scarified skin of his arms or his bare feet. There is a brief pause outside at the statue of the lions before he climbs the stairs and enters the vast building.
It takes a moment for him to find a map and figure out where the Information desk is, but he makes his way there and pauses, clearing his throat to catch the librarian's attention. The poor girl barely stifles a scream upon seeing him standing there.
This may not have been the best idea in retrospect.
Putting on his most charming grin, Kurt then asks in his accented English, "Good day. I was wondering if you could help me find a book on Svartelfs?"
*
The iconic appearance of the library makes it a happening spot for photographers too. They like to capture the huge recumbent lions outside the neoclassical facade of the Schwarzman Building. Inevitable attempts to chase off crowds from the low flagstone steps tend to fail. Like pigeons, artists come back to roost. One such shoot sanctioned by the staff involves a dark-haired woman among a posse of long-limbed pretty things in clothes that cost more than they make in a month collectively. Well, except the eldest of them.
Sadly the beauty inside is lost on those who make a living on the beauty outside. The girls immediately light up cigarettes or start lounging around, taking shelter wherever there is shade. They complain about the heat. Not so much Elizabeth, who strips off the autumn weight coat and hands it to a flunkie. Then go the necklace, bracelet, the shoes worth the rent of a Fifth Avenue apartment. A one bedroom, but. She steps into her own shoes and heads up the stairs, an airy instruction in her wake. "Tell them I'm reading over break. They know where to find me."
Her arrival about the time the information desk clerk tries not to scream adds to the trouble. It's a bizarre contradiction: clerk, celebrity model, blue devil in a great hat. Someone asking about svartalfes, someone about to ask the location of the loo or, maybe, magazines. (Gotta see herself, right?)
*
And this was sort of just what Kurt did -not- want. While he enjoys attention, negative attention is a little different. Nevertheless, he keeps his smile and waits patiently to see if the librarian will be able to help or if she's going to call security or…oh, look! There's someone else! He turns his smile to her and asks, "Do you know where I could find the card catalogue? I am looking for information on 'Svartelfs' and I do not know where to start."
As if he's not blue with sharp teeth, yellow eyes, and a tail. Because if he doesn't call attention to it, others won't be as inclined to notice, right? It's a nice thought…
*
Look, not only someone else. Someone in black from shoulders to pointy toes, devil red soles of her French high heels not withstanding. Someone who oozes glamour and has scored her fair share of attention, at least enough that a twenty-ish librarian of a female persuasion might notice. Elizabeth Braddock, not subtle. She hooks her thumb through the belt loop of her leather pants, and drops casually into a contrapposto pose used by essentially every last classical marble statue ever. Or the David. Hip forward, stance shifted between her softened knees, she looks at ease. "Oh, pardon me." Without a doubt she is English through and through, the silky delivery in an Oxfordian accent assuring that. "Have I breached another of those unspoken rules? Ladies first?" A puzzled look goes to the librarian, and she gives her tousled hair a little shake. Violet highlights emerge under the burning fluorescent lights. Very, very plummy to go with that plummy voice and look. "He was here first. I will wait in queue, it's quite fine."
No one and nothing, including nightly air raids, interrupts the British sensibility to line up. It just doesn't. The threat level here is not quite so urgent to dare queue jump.
Kurt addressing her takes her a back only a very little. To cover, she glances around for a very large wooden cabinet full of tiny long shelves. "A card index ought to be against a wall. You want to find a reference for locations on… something German?" Her jaw shifts side to side for a moment. "You'll have an advantage on me, chap, on what that is."
If he has capacity to read a lie, that might be flying a dark flag right thereabouts.
*
Maybe it's an oportunity for the librarian to decide if she's going to do her job, faint, or call security, but Kurt actually gestures with a three-fingered hand for the glamorous woman to take his place in line. "Maybe she will help you before she decides if she would like to help me," is offered with a chuckle. He's not blind to the woman, but those of that caliber and demeanor tend to brush him off if they're not running the other way. The leather pants do get a curious tilt to the head as the woman doesn't -look- like a biker, but he's not one to talk about appearance.
"British?" is asked then, "I have friends from there. I will not ask you if you know them because I know that it is a big country." There's another grin before he shakes his head, "Not German. -That-, I would know. I think it is maybe Skandanavien…uh…" he looks to the Librarian, but she doesn't seem to be of much help still.
*
Leather pants, too slim cut to be a biker, have a stylish quality that screams fashionable in a polite, oiled voice that beckons to bring over some good armagnac. Glory plays it cool, toying with the handkerchief wrapped around her wrist as a bracelet. "Oh, don't bother up, girl." A shrug of her sweater clad shoulder brushes off the gaping look. "No one wants you to have a fit there behind your desk. Tsk, if this is what passes for service, the western world really is well and doomed." A cheeky smile only shows up when she turns away, showing her back to the librarian and facing towards what she can assume is a card index. Among the largest in the country unless someone had mercy to split it up by fiction, non-fiction, conspiracy theory, and make-believe.
A little crook of her fingers over her hips makes even the Englishwoman's walk more like a strut, at some levels. She is not the kind to recede totally into the background. "Proudly British when it matters, and English when it doesn't. Ours is a rather little island, I confess. Some days it feels like the city is just as big as London to Glasgow." Somewhere has to be a master index, a way to decipher the decimal notations. She goes hunting for a binder or some like. "Big jumble of sounds, you might be on the right path. Svart, Svart, Svart. Is that right?"
*
"This city?" Kurt asks as he follows the black-clad woman. "I suppose. I think London felt bigger," so he's spent some time there. He also looks around, smiling at the patrons who are glaring or shrinking away — now isn't the time to lament the fact that he seems to scar so many people. He's just a man trying to get some information the only way he knows how. "Ja, but maybe it is spelled differently? If it is like 'Schwartz' auf Deutsche, then it means 'Black'." He then looks at himself for a moment before giving a shrug. It is less likely now, but he's still curious.
"Danke schoen for helping me. I am sorry if I took you away from your question for the Biblio…the woman at the desk."
*
Elizabeth gives a once over on the index, and then she flips through several pages of an index for the index. She might be immune by this point to funny looks at her shoulders whenever she stops, or peering faces trying to determine who she is. Goes with the territory — seek fame, fame gives no friends. "Schwartz as black. All right, that's one word. Black. And the other? Alfen? Elven?" Now wait for the light bulb to go off, a switch flipped at the dash of a finger. "Elves? The little people, like that author… oh, not Lewis, his friend. Tolkien! The professor, he wrote about them." Kurt can probably hear the connections being made in her brain as she stops and flips through the guide of different subjects. Her finger skims down the sturdy typewritten page like so may before. "Are you trying to find fairy stories then?"
Maybe the chance introduction is truly kind then. Englishwoman knows English authors and English legends, and English legend practically overflows with faerie courts and fairy tales, the inheritors of Celtic, Germanic, and continental tales that do not survive much elsewhere outside the cold, wet rim of Europe. "Oh, pish posh. I was going to be cross dealing with yet another girl too busy to help. Look over, I'm fairly sure she's filing her nails or reading a cheap romance novel."
*
"Ja, elf. But…it is a group…a land of them. I…" when she mentions Tolkein and his books, Kurt tilts his head. "Maybe? But…this man said he had been to a place where they were. So I do not know if it is a story or a place, or…he called himself 'Thor'. I think I read that in a story too." But it might be a popular name? There are many Germanic names from classic literature that are used for baby names, so why wouldn't that happen elsewhere? He's met Alices and Dorothys and those are names from literature! "I think it is a place." He looks over at the card catalogue once they reach it and he grins, "Danke. I can do it from here if you would like," although he's happy for a friendly interaction.
When he's told to glance over at the girl he does, his grin fading some into a look of concern, "She still looks very upset."
*
The smile worn by the woman is picture perfect. A perfect picture to hide whatever might be going on behind those pretty blue eyes. "A book will transport you away. There are elves in his fiction books. Let me start there." She slides down towards the fiction shelf and runs down the row for T, eventually locating the many, many index cards for To. Tomas, Tompson, all the derivatives. Too far. Fluttering back over a row, she finally marks the right area. "Here, you come look in this one. T-O-L-K, that will be how you spell it. Tolkien. I think the book was Lord of the Rings. They have stories of elves who lived in the forest in great kingdoms, and one was likened to the night or the twilight, something like that. I will check over here for the mythology and folktales section." She stops to consider Kurt, and then the others who are not coming near them. It could be for any number of reasons. "If that's okay. I'm sorry, someone has barked commands at me all day. I rather sound like a school marm, and you do not deserve that. Can I apologize for it?" She holds out her hand in that very, very American way of shaking. This is clearly not something she does much if ever. The look is rusty. "Don't worry about the librarian right now. I'll send in Marie or Peggy, and they will have her right as rain soon."
*
Nightcrawler blinks at the dark-haired woman, "I have read Tolkein," is offered with yet another smile. "Thank you. They were very good…and I liked the elves, but I think I liked Aragorn the best." Since he was the main swordsman. It's a thing. "I do not remember the ones that were compared to 'Night'. Were they in a different book?"
The offer of apology gets a look of surprise as does the hand held out for a shake. It takes him a moment but he does pull his own hands out from the pockets of his jeans and offers a three-fingered one to her five. "Apology is accepted. Who are Marie and Peggy?"
*
"Perhaps the second or third book? We had them all bound up differently so I don't really recall which cover stopped or began where. It was a number of years ago." Elizabeth doesn't have the grace to blush but she smiles all the same. She also gives a shake of her hand, firm and assertive, before the next task of hunting down the decimal marking for myth. "Models. Girls for the covers they'll create in the next few months."
A few promising cards are peered through. She goes slower over the long shelf full of indexed pieces, trying to determine which is which. "Bother, where is this? There must be something for elves or European fairy stories. I don't even know what the Americans would call it."
*
There's a little frown when she mentions the books, "I read them in English…now I have to go back and read them, I guess! But those weren't real. This man, this 'Thor', said he had been there. The chances of me being one of them is very little, but it is always good to learn, ja?" Kurt is back to grinning as he peers around her arm to look at the cards. "I can look too if you want. Two will be faster. Uhm. I am the wrong person to ask about what Americans call things…"
*
If only she had an education in something other than standing around to look pretty. Too bad for Kurt he has someone very different. She bends over the long tray and then surrenders her place at the counter. "No help for it. We have to go see the stacks themselves for these. I have a few ideas. Let's write a few numbers down and measure how much these work. I'll get you a pencil." A basket of supplies is in arm's reach, full of scratch paper and small pencils. These are brought over for him. "I will see if there is anything under elves? I can't think of what else to use after faerie tales, folk tales. We can start off that."
*
Nightcrawler's education is whatever he wanted it to be…it certainly wasn't formal. He takes the offered pencil and card and writes down some numbers. "Maybe Skandinavien? Maybe there are stories from there? Or maps! Maps would be good…" although he's been around most of Europe and he doesn't remember a place by that name. Maybe it's a town although surely they would have heard about a town populated by blue-skinned, yellow-eyed people.
It's a stretch.
*
The informal education will satisfy with the formal traipse she had across school. Elizabeth scribbles down a few numbers and letters. "Scandinavian. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have good stories. Ah, here's one: 'A Children's Treasury of Viking Tales.'" Oh she of faith. She clicks her tongue against her palate, clearly thinking to herself. A town of blue people is probably beyond her knowledge. "I wonder… hmm. A map?"
*
Nightcrawler shrugs, "It was a place this Thor visited, so there would be a map, ja?" Although he's not too sure anymore. "Would it be in a book of stories if it was a real place? Maybe we should get a…Atlas. Do you know what that is?" Some words aren't used often in English so he doesn't know if they're at all similar. "I can take the numbers if you need to go. I thank you for the help and I do not want to keep you from your work." Or…her clubbing? He's still not too sure why she's dressed as she is in the middle of the day at a Library.
*
"An atlas might be a place to start." Elizabeth might sound more than a little uncertain about that, and she rubs her upper arm. . "I do not know what place you are looking for, but it could be in the atlas. At least in the back of it. So how about we go upstairs and I might as well figure out what you've got. Lunch won't be any more interesting." If he wants to shoo her, Kurt won't find her to be a difficult person to get moving, but neither is she terribly prone to wandering off under the circumstances.
*
Kurt seems more than happy for the company, actually especially the company of a pretty young woman. It's been rare enough here that he's not going to push her away unless it looks like she's in danger. "Svartalfheim?" He shrugs at the mention of the place, "Maybe the man was teasing. He would not be the first." There's a sad little smile before he takes his notecard and pencil, "Upstairs then, ja? To get all of the books," on their list, at least.
*
Elizabeth has disconnected.