The Hitchhiker was kneeling beside Rika, who was laying down on the cold concrete, blackened by the soot, and performing CPR at best he could, pressing heavily into the chest of the small girl. — Breathe, damn it! — he screamed.
But Rika did not. Her skin was far whiter than it usually is, not the color of porcelain, but more like a pure white paper, shiny in the light the of flames consuming the shelves around them. Her bright red hair lost all of it’s glow and turned to black, almost infrared, and even though there were no wounds left on her anywhere at all, her clothes were charred and the synthetic fiber in them melted, ran and solidified again, spreading thin spidery threads all over. A piece of bone from her finger lay next to the book she was reading, that miraclously survived the flames, laying open on the part where the pages were torn out.
From far below, the murder of crows was approaching. A multitude of hats, big and small, of every fashion and style known to man, but all of them black, swirling in a whirlpool of felt, cloth, armor panels, flapping at the flames and trying to put them out. White smoke of fire extinguishers filled the spiral, and the Hitchhiker started coughing, but he still pressed down, going through slow, routine motions, almost an unmoving dark statue in the sea of black and white, as the swarm of hats passed the platform and moved on upwards, accompanied by the hissing of extinguishers and whooshes of swooping felt, racing after the fire that was slowly creeping up and up.
A lonely, half-burned single page, blown freely by the winds and smoke, landed in the middle of the book on the platform and with a thin white flash grew into place, as if it was always there.
Deep down below, Dorothy was melancholically pulling up the cracked floor tiles with her bare hands and sliding new ones into place. They locked in with a sucking sound, as if the grey nothing underneath was trying to suck the very air out of the place, but Dorothy, not needing the air anywhere near as much, was not worried about that.
Nearby, Daisaku was banging his head on the back of the black couch, almost crying.
— Will you stop that? — Dorothy said blankly, turning around to stare at the boy. — It’s not like it’s the end of the world.
— But it is. — Daisaku slumped back into the couch. — It’s the end of hundreds of worlds. Thousands.
— Manuscripts don’t burn. — Dorothy said resolutely, sitting up on the floor and looking at Daisaku with her hard to decipher camera eyes.
— That’s what Rika would say. — Daisaku noted.
— That’s what she said, once. — Dorothy nodded. — And that is the truth. Eventually, everything will come back. The Library is as old as humanity, it stood through worse. Not even Rika can burn all of it down. The only thing she can really ever burn into nothing is herself. In the end, the Library can only grow. Forever. It’s the crossroads where people come when they have nowhere to go, and from where they eventually leave once their train comes.
Daisaku stared back at Dorothy, almost looking like he’s about to find someone to whack the android girl over the head with, but thought better of it, and stretched out on the couch, pulling the blanket Rika left around over his head.
Dorothy stood up to lean over the boy, whispering into somewhere where his ear would be beneath the blanket, — And one day we all will not be here, one way or another, but you will.
