Upon Vestia: Chapter Sixteen

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"All those aliens, always hyping up how great they are, and it always turns out to be a lie," James said sagely. "I'm not like that though, I mean I've been known to punch minotaurs. I'd be a proper villain, I wouldn't lose."
He watched as the guy went back into the train, "Ooooh nooooo. They so should not have done that. It is ON!"

Esk glanced at Tala. "What are you doing?"
She couldn't read right?
He examined the fried board and the power supply itself.

"I am attempting to understand the appeal of such passtimes," Tala said, sniffing a book. "The art on the outsides of them is most pleasing. The insides are unsatisfactory." She was looking at a book with a rather terrible picture of a group of people looking in horror up at a giant beast.

Dawn walked back to the library with Ethan and the replacement board happily. She smiled at Tala as she came in but headed for the computer to help work on it.

"maybe you should try that section." Esk indicated the children's books.

Tala headed for the children's section to look at the picture books. "These are much more satisfactory!" She declared.

Ethan winced. He wasn't entirely comfortable with having an illiterate minotaur in his precious library. He tried to focus in the computer repairs.

Dawn chuckled and looked at the computer to put the board in so they could see if it would work with it.

Esk gave Dawn space, moving away so there was no unintentional touching. Even though he was fully covered up, habit made him recoil from any contact.
"power supply looks fine and it's just that board, looks like a faulty connection."

Ethan was torn between watching the computer work, and watching Tala.

Tala wiggled her ears at the book she was looking at. "This automobile has a face!" She declared delightedly.

Dawn nodded, chuckling at Tala's delight in the children's books as she placed the new board in and went to turn the computer on to make sure it was working before they would replace the cover "That's what I thought too."

Esk looked at Tala, then back at Dawn and nodded. "If it blows up, we can all blame you."

Tala peered at the pages, thoroughly amused by the antics of the car with a face.

Ethan cringed and went over to see what was going to happen with his computer. Don't think of her accidentally tearing the pages, don't think of it, don't think of it.

Esk looked at Ethan and smirked at his fear filled face. "Maybe the toddler board books?" He suggested.
He waited to see if the computer would load up again.

Whoo, the computer booted up and seemed to be working, though it would need the programs downloaded once more. Dawn chuckled and moved to put the cover back on "It's working"

Ethan shook his head. "Heny has most of those." Stupid babies hogging all the books, ugh.
He smiled his odd smile as the computer booted up. "Thanks guys," he said. Those words still sounded weird to say.

Esk just shrugged. He hadn't really done much.
"Good luck getting rid of her." He nodded to Tala. She was way too happy about that book.

Dawn chuckled lightly then picked up the bad board to look at it curiously again "This was just waiting to be used to short out like this, it was bad construction. You will have to download the specific files for the library again, you lost all that was stored on this thing." She said before tossing it in the trash to get recycled later. She started picking up the tools to put them away.

Ethan sighed. "Fun. Good thing I made a backup a couple days ago." And with photographic memory, he could restore the more recent stuff easily enough. He looked at Esk, "Maybe you should read to Tala," he said, straight-faced.

"yeah that's not happening" he replied flatly.

Ethan looked amused. He hadn't expected any other answer. "Worth asking," he said.

Tala was apparently bored of her book by now, anyway. She put it back--in the wrong place, Ethan noted in frustration--and headed for the science textbooks.

Ethan went to go try to restore backups. This was nerve wracking.

Esk looked amused. "He's gonna snap soon." He whispered to Dawn. It amused him how protective of his domain Ethan was, just like how protective Asher and Kay were of theirs.

Dawn chuckled softly and headed to intercept Tala

Ethan shot a glare at Esk, but continued working to restore the backups. When he had to type in his password, he hit the keys harder than necessary, using the upper limit of force that wouldn't actually break the keyboard.

Tala looked at Dawn, ears twitching forward in greeting. "You have come to investigate these odd books with me?" She asked.

Esk leaned against a shelf casually and watched all this.

Dawn chuckled softly "I haven't looked at these textbooks yet, but I bet it's stuff I already know to some degree" She said, pulling a random one off the shelf to look at. "Yep, these are the textbooks for schooling, the science classes." She showed it to Tala them put it back where she got it from.

Tala picked up a big volume off a high shelf and opened it. She sniffed it. "It smells cheaper than the other books," she said, "I know some of these words," she added, opening it.

Ethan stared fixedly at his computer monitor, shoulders tense.

"Cheaper?" Esk watched the girls with faint bemusement on his face. He bet those words were 'the' and 'a'.

That wording confused Dawn too, she moved to look at the book to see what it was