Constance wakes with her head on her desk and paper plastered to her face. She might have slept half the day away were it not for her morning bell (an easy when dawn: subject.shake spell she had Rosaline affect years ago) twinkling brightly beside her head. With a groan, she pushes up, detaches an inky page from her cheek, and rubs the sleep from her eyes.

Her thoughts are slow to recollect themselves, but as her eyes rove over her post-midnight writing, she jolts to her feet. Two days left now until they vent the library. There isn't any time to waste.

She snags a good handwriting sample, opens Rosaline's tome, and pens down a quick copying spell for her proposal. The fairy peeks the top of her head out of the pages, squints at the dawn, and then disappears back beneath the paper.

"Oh, not now, Rosaline!" (Fae don't sleep, as far as anyone knows, but they seem to have some affinity for the twilit and nighttime hours anyway.) Constance nabs a vial of crushed mica and sprinkles some of the shimmering substance on the tome's pages in bribe. "Please, we're in a hurry today."

The contrary fairy's head pokes back out of the page. An itty finger emerges as well and pokes a mote of mica. Her eyes alight, and she spins out of the pages, collecting all the sparkle-dust into a nimbus around her. She twirls in aerial ballet, but Constance is too busy finger-combing her hair to pay too much attention to the display.

"My spell, please?" she asks as she snags a shoe onto her foot.

Rosaline sticks out her tongue but settles onto the page and dances over the letters. By the time Constance has found her keys (on the floor for unknown reasons) and yanked her other slipper on, Rosaline has finished copying all twenty-pages of Constance's proposal. She flicks through it quickly. The script she chose (a lovely sample of her step-mother's handwriting) is tidy and elegant. The first page appears to be correct; the last page is present as well, so presumably nothing got skipped in between.

She punches three holes with her father's hand tool, threads a loop of leather through, and takes off with it and Rosaline's tome.

When she arrives, the Fairy Logic building has yet to be unlocked, which means Dr. Carulus is (understandably and unfortunately) still at home. Her foot taps, and she debates whether to look up his address in the main office, wait for his arrival, or go home and change into a new outfit (like a normal person). She rubs the bridge of her nose.

After a few minutes dithering, she's about to return and (attempt to) make herself more presentable when steps tap on the cobblestone behind her. She turns.

"Dr. Carulus!"

His keys jangle as he gets closer. "Constance! You're here early. Are you alright?"

"Yes. I'm fantastically glad you're early as well."

"Hm. Couldn't sleep." He does look fairly bleary-eyed. He waves at the library in explanation, just a stone's throw away (well, for most people; Constance can't hit a brick wall from ten paces). Today, it glows in blue and green lights, like the aurora borealis. It is deceptively beautiful.

His keys turn in the lock. "After you, dear."

They bustle through the shiny silver entry (built when the university was much richer) and into his office. She waits politely, heels bouncing, as he lays his briefcase on his desk, takes off his coat, and settles into his seat. "What's on your mind?" he finally asks, yawning.

She strides two steps closer to lay her paper down on his desk. "I came up with a mid-cost, low-cost, and no-cost solution to the library problem. The brunt of the paper discusses the no-cost option since I imagine that's the amount of budget we have to deal with, but I didn't want to exclude more elegant possibilities. I need you to review it. Excuse any typographical errors; I haven't had a chance to read over it yet."

He looks down at the stack of papers, back up at her, then down at the stack again. "Did you sleep at all last night?"

Constance tucks a strand of her fairy-nest hair behind her ear. "A bit. If we move fast, Dr. Carulus, we can implement this before Venting Day."

He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and squints at the paper. Then he sighs and sits back in his chair. "I'm sorry. It's barely six in the morning. Why don't we get breakfast—and coffee—and you can give me the highlights?"

And so it's over eggs, black coffee (for Dr. Carulus), and blackberry cordial (for Constance) that she relays her plan:

1. Collect a large amount of non-locked books. (Constance is willing to donate her personal library, which should be enough to have an effect but not enough to completely fix everything. A good starting point if no other resources are available.)

2. Decorate said books with enough trinkets / embellishment to be compelling fairy tomes. Bind / glue in the standard keyword page. (Constance has some experience in this, but a practiced fairy-trapper would be a welcome addition to the team)

3. If budget permits, collect some warded suits to protect from wild magic. (May not be foolproof, but better than nothing. If nothing else, some success has been reported with turning clothes inside out. That is free.)

4. As budget permits, collect crushed mica (the FL department has a fair amount on hand) and other known fairy-courting gifts (Constance has a small collection from her father she would be willing to use)

5. Form a small fairy-trapping team (2 - 6 people). FL professors should suffice.

6. Open locked books one at at time to converse with the fae; placate them; offer to set them free into modern fairy tomes (they may be transported into trees later if they prefer)

Dr. Carulus spews a bit of coffee when she gets to Step 6. "Just open up the locked tomes and have a chat?"

"To offer them what they want." She hands him a napkin, and he dabs at his suit. "It's basic fairy trapping, sir. They're malevolent because we've been malevolent toward them. If we treat them well, they're likely to be much more amicable."

"Or they're likely to turn you into a newt."

"Warding suits would help with that," she says, tapping her proposal. "And you would only open one tome per room, so you're only ever dealing with one fairy at a time. If something goes wrong, you close the book."

"They are locked..." he muses, rubbing his chin. "So that might work."

"Two trappers per room," she says, gathering steam. "That way if something happens to one, the second can mitigate the situation—drag the first out if nothing else."

"Have you trapped before?"

"My father did. My brother and I often played second."

He flips through the pages, eyes flicking. "It's kind of brilliant, actually."

She flushes, voice dropping. "I just don't want anyone to get hurt."

"That's the problem, isn't it." He taps the proposal against his hand, head shaking. "It's the best idea I've seen in a long time—it really is. Plenty of risk in it, yes, but better than burying our heads in the sand."

"That... is a problem?"

He sighs. "The problem, dear, is that it's not fireproof. And where there is risk, there is dithering." He sets the thing down. "It'll take me at least a year to get it approved."

"What?" Constance's face fell.

"And even then, which professors would I convince to go into the library?" A self-deprecating smile sours his face. "I can't even say I would be up to it. I never got into fairy-trapping for a reason."

"But we have an obligation..." she stutters, voice almost gone.

Dr. Carulus pats her hand. "We don't have an obligation, dear. The dean does, and when this all blows up, it'll be his head it comes down on. We've done our best."

She snatches her hand back. "I don't care whose head it comes down on, sir. I care about the truth. A true compass always points north. Always." Another one of her father's sayings, and she doesn't know if it means anything to anyone but her, but it is stuck in the core of her, just like he is. Her voice shakes, but the words pour out of her. "I can't point northwest or northeast or even north-by-northeast. Just north."

His brow draws, and his eyes rove her face. Finally, he sighs and picks up her proposal. "It is a good idea, Constance. I'll do what I can—pass this around, advocate for it, expedite it as much as possible. But my hands really are tied, dear."

"They are if you say they are," she blurts. She blushes as his brows rise, mentally berating Marek and her sleep-addled brain.

"I'm sorry, but what exactly do you expect me to do?"

She draws a breath, first double, then triple checking the insane thought taking root in her mind. But no matter what axes of doubt she tries to chop it down with, it only grows bigger, stronger, more painfully obvious. Her hands curl beneath the table, but she squares her shoulders and looks Dr. Carulus in the eye. "Send me."

His eyes widen. "Without the proposal being accepted? You could lose your job; not to mention the risks—"

"You said yourself the risks are worth taking! What's the point of working at an establishment of knowledge where all we deal in is lies? The library is dangerous; no one is doing anything about it. We can't ignore that anymore, and if we ignore it until Venting Day—" Her throat betrays her, choking off her words.

"I know," Dr. Carulus says gently. "I know."

"Then give me permission to go. Bureaucratically, I don't care who takes the fall. If it goes wrong, blame me. But I need your blessing."

"Why ask my permission if you don't care who takes the blame?" He squints, as if she's a spell he can't quite read. "And why care about permission if you feel so strongly?"

"Because it's not my place." She wishes he could understand. She wishes she could download the lifetime of rules of order and politeness and respect that her father instilled into her. "You're my manager, sir, and an honest man. I wouldn't disrespect you by circumventing your will. If you don't want me to go to the library"—she swallows—"then I won't. If you think it's a bad idea, then I won't. But if it's a good idea, and you just need someone willing, I am willing. I am willing, if you will send me."

"Well. Huh." Dr. Carulus wipes his hands off, sips at his coffee, nods to thoughts she can't hear, all while she sits in her seat, doing every calming exercise she knows of not to squirm. He downs the last of his cup and sets it, empty, on the table. "It just so happens that I don't mind circumventing my boss. Come on." He pushes up from the table to offer her a hand. "But we're going to have to keep this real quiet."