Divine Research | To the Card Catalog!

Cian was no stranger to troublesome research- he had assisted with it multiple times over in his line of work. All sorts of students complaining about something not being able to be found on this new-fangled computer of theirs, or that trying to find books on the subject was "impossible" due to not finding them on a basic skim of the library shelves. Honestly, it should be basic logic that the more specific a piece of information is, the more hidden away it is. He typically wasn't one to judge the younger generation too harshly, but perhaps their budding reliance on this simplistic bit of tech was why they found such things so difficult.

Thankfully Vanessa was not quite as distracted as his students were. The only problem she seemed to be having was focusing far too much on specifics. She was looking for books that actively had Cybele's name in the title. Those methods had only lead her to romance books, ones that were so well written that it took her a good while to realize what she was reading, causing her to grumble and return to the shelves- and then return with another fictional novel with Cybele's name in there somewhere.

Moore knew that there wouldn't just be a book sitting around in the library titled 'Everything you need to know about the Goddess Cybelle.' at least, not in this library. Maybe if they had a library all that way out of town there'd be something similar, but nothing that would do any good for them. He was certain that both of them knew everything that a children's religion book could teach. Point being that he would have to focus more on the vague topics that related to the goddess more than the goddess herself, and Mr.Moore knew just where to start looking.

"Cian?" Vanessa asked, snapping Moore out of his own thoughts. "You've been staring at the table for at least five minutes, do you need to take a break? I'm sure I can handle this myself-" The other moo didn't let her finish. "Oh, no need Vanessa! I was simply thinking is all, despite how dire our situations may seem, I do think that I have something in mind that might be helpful." Vanessa opened her mouth to speak, but Moore was already continuing his train of thought. "No need to worry, I'll be back in a tick."

Vanessa couldn't ask anything else before Cian had lifted himself up from the desk and walked off somewhere else in the library. She sighed, returning to her book and grumbling about five more pages in- realizing that she had been fooled again by the dramatic prose and the spring's eve focus of yet another romance book. The anger was enough to completely distract her from where her research buddy could possibly be going.

The card catalog was dusty, far more than the pheromoo was expecting, sneezing as soon as he opened one of the little drawers. He decided to himself he would focus on the sections labeled with 200s and 500s- making up the topics of religion and natural sciences respectively. He swiftly started collecting cards of books that had promising titles, though 'promising' was a very loose term in this situation. A book vaguely mentioning the pantheon as a whole? That worked! A book that had some sort of connection to nature? That was good too! Safe to say that Moore was keen on making sure he covered as many of his bases as physically possible.

Unfortunately, some of the most promising titles had small tabs at the top of their card. A book by the name of "Gardens and Plants of Religions" had a black tab on their card. Missing. Another book titled "Of Spring and Magic" had a yellow tab. Currently Damaged; being Repaired. All of them unfortunate, but neither as heartbreaking to Moore as the last, an older book, simply titled "Druidic Worship" had a red tab. Damaged beyond repair.

In fact, anything that might have had Cybele as anything more than a footnote seemed to be gone from the shelves in some way or another. Moore couldn't help but be a bit enraged at the thought, but he couldn't let himself get carried away by his emotions about books and the importance of preserving knowledge.

Instead, he returned from the card catalog and went through the library, picking up as many books as he could that might assist with his research. He sat himself down at the table once more, somehow being careful enough to put the stack of books down without an audible thump.

"Alright, here's everything that I found promising in the catalog. I don't imagine that it'll have much all in one place, so we'll have to make sure to take notes on what we find and where." Cian started, rummaging through his bag before pulling out two small notebooks, placing one next to himself and sliding the other to Vanessa. "Fuck, man. Do you really expect us to skim through all these books?"

"Language, Vanessa." Cian tutted, procuring a set of pens for the two pheromoos. "And, yes. The plan is to skim through until we find something specifically about topics related to Cybele. If we find those, we focus on those areas and write down anything of use. If we find a section and it matches with something we already have, we skip over it."

"Ah, I... guess that makes sense. And what if we don't find anything?" Vanessa admitted, grabbing one of the books off of the stack and beginning to skim through it. "Well, then we simply find somewhere else in the library to look. After all, with how influential you are in the community, I'm sure you have access to much more than me." Vanessa hummed. It was true, she did have access to some of the restricted areas of the library- particularly sections regarding artificial magic in the form of potions- but she didn't exactly want to admit that.

With every one page that Vanessa flipped through, Moore had gotten through at least five. Though she supposed that made sense- he didn't imagine that she'd be better at skimming through books than a fucking english teacher.

Despite their best efforts, they didn't come up with much. It was beginning to get dark, and Vanessa couldn't help but feel... guilty. Cian was a working man who rarely got a true day off, and here he was spending his free time trying to help her. They were getting nowhere, and she was becoming more and more tempted to go into the restricted section and search there. Especially since most of the regular library patrons were leaving at this point.

"Cian, I'll take over from here. You meet back with me at the Cauldron." Vanessa stated, more of an order than a request. "Oh! Are you sure you don't need me to find anything else, I know we haven't found much, but I'm sure if I take another look-" She interrupted him. "No, It's fine. Just leave the books and get back to the cauldron. Give yourself a break, maybe enjoy a potion on the house. I'll be there soon enough."

"Well, if you're sure." Moore questioned, and Vanessa nodded in response. As much as the other pheromoo wanted to help more, he wasn't going to get into a useless argument about it.

As soon as Moore was out of earshot, Vanessa sat up from the table and rushed off deeper into the library. Admittedly, there was a bit of desperation. If she didn't find anything in the restricted section, she might never get the chance to meet Cybele. Or, even worse, she might even think to.... ask Rune for help.

Gross, she didn't even want to think about such a terrible fate.