The Glass Library abruptly settled into place.
Neither of them usually felt its movements as such, even Alphonse, who had something like a direct line into its consciousness; one moment it would be in one place, and the next, another. But whatever magic was happening in the world outside had upset it badly and sent it sprinting across space, then out of it again, in a way that made Roderick dizzy. For what he was pretty sure had been at least a week there'd been a distant sense of movement, impossible to parse through the vine-obscured windows, what Roderick imagined it would feel like to stay belowdecks on a ship in a storm. Now that movement...stopped.
Alphonse looked up from the circulation desk and said, "Jawan. At least it's seen fit to give us a real door this time."
"Why, Alphonse!" Their friendship was strong enough, but no force in the world or out of it could make Alphonse tolerate Roderick calling him Al to his face. "Is that optimism I hear?"
"Don't encourage me. If I didn't have such a bad attitude there would be no one to balance you out." Alphonse unfolded himself from behind the desk and went over to the door, rearing back on his hind legs to peer out the lemon slice of a window near its upper edge, as if he'd forgotten none of the Library's windows ever showed anything real.
