Flashes of red flew past shoppers in the street, barely missing displays, almost scaring an elderly woman to death as she turned from the darin cart, the red fruits spilling out of her wrinkled hands. The street was filled with milling shoppers and carts manned by merchants from the Sille Sector or farmers who’d come into the city from their farms out in the Fields. People from sectors all over the city had swarmed into one, Densal Sector, the central Sector. Housewives from as far away as the Thastin Sector on the farthest edge of the city had come for this once a month gathering, Goods Day.

The red flashes were Emmi Selana. Everyone in the Densal Sector knew her name, and she knew most of theirs. A long legged, thin girl with a heart shaped face and shoulder length, straggly red hair that shone in the sunlight and flew everywhere when she ran. Emmi loved running. She loved running like a flower loves sunlight.
The only thing she liked more than running was books. That was why she was running through the streets on Goods Day, when most girls her age were shopping with their mothers, as well as looking forward to their next birthday, the day they didn’t have to shop with their mothers anymore.
Sixteen was the age when you were considered an adult in Seraina, and most girls waited for that day to be free of their mothers, but not Emmi. Emmi was already free. She’d been free since she was thirteen. Almost three years now, she’d been free, and she hated it. She envied the girls who still had people who did things for them, who looked forward to their sixteenth. Emmi considered her sixteenth an omen. She could live off the city’s community service money until she was sixteen, then she was on her own.
But for now Emmi was happy with running through the streets, ignoring the carts full of tempting things. She’d been up at dawn so she could be the first shopper, as she had been for almost three years now, always there the moment the carts were open for business. Not only did she get first pick of all the produce, textiles and everything else, but most people would pay her pocket change to help them set up their carts and organize their merchandise.
Now, unhindered by thoughts of a shopping list, she raced past cart after cart, barely missing shoppers as she wove past them through the crowd. Rising up at the end of the street, a tall, Pink Glass building rose up. This reminded Emmi of the book on rocks she had at home, she’d found it in one of the library’s old storage rooms, and the owner, Mr. Dawsen, had said she could have it.
The book had all these strange rocks in it, in colors she’d never seen before. In fact, most of the rocks were grey and black! Grey and black rocks? That was crazy! Anyone could tell you rocks weren’t grey and black, they were orange, pink, green, purple, blue, and if you were lucky, you could occasionally find rocks that shone with strange colors. One such rock, called Trean by people today, was often likened to how Emmi’s hair shone in the sun. The book called a similar looking rock ‘Gold’ but that was a silly name, just like all the rest. There was also a pink rock a little like the Pink Glass, but not as shiny, that was called ‘Quartz’ but Emmi didn’t even know how to say that name. What use was a name you couldn’t say?
Without thinking, Emmi tried to sound out the name. The first letter was one she hadn’t ever seen anywhere except the rock book. Mr. Dawsen said it made a sound like K did, so she tried it out for the millionth time,

“Kuh-oo-art-sss” she mumbled, then shook her head and skidded to a stop, almost running over a little boy from another Sector. He stared at her with wide moon eyes, before a harried looking woman with a dirty apron over her skirts and a baby on her hip grabbed him and steered him away, fussing at him for running off.

Emmi smiled to herself before glancing up at the Pink Glass building. Seraina’s leader lived richly somewhere in there. But at least he worked. Some of the rich people were lazy, very, very lazy. They all moved to, or were born in, the Rend Sector. All the rich and influential people lived there except the leader. He lived here in the center Sector.

Turning from the shiny building, she walked, a strange thing for her, through the double doors to the building on the left, the Library. The closest thing a minor like her could have to a job could be found through the double doors in the room that smelled of old paper and aged leather. The handwritten books filled the room with a comforting feeling, and the candles hanging in groups from the ceiling cast a calming glow across the cozy two-room library. This was all the library there was to most people.

But to Emmi and those lucky enough to work here, there were over fifty underground rooms to sort through and carefully select which books to join those above, and which would be organized into three shelf-filled rooms closest to the surface for future staff to look over again if the need arose. Emmi was currently assigned to Room 23, the deepest room anyone had been to yet. It took months for each room to be gone through properly, and Emmi was proud to be on her fifth room.

Sifting through the old, sometimes ruined books was harder than it seemed. If the book was in bad enough shape or was almost illegible, the sorter had to rewrite it and bind it into a new book, and then you had to carve the title, author, and their name under the title of Transcriber. Following all that, they had to fill the carved letters with Trean colored ink.

Emmi had noticed that the deeper she went, the bad handwriting got worse, but the good handwriting got better. Once she had snuck down to Room 46 and found some of the writing had an odd perfection to it. Every letter matched and every letter was the same size as every other letter in a way no one had ever seen.

Pulling a book off the second shelf and proudly glancing back at the empty first shelf, she thought of the workers above her putting books into order on the shelves upstairs, whether for storage or to be read by the public. Glancing at the cover and flipping open to the middle of the book, she grimaced at the horrible curliqued, swirling handwriting this person had written with. Glancing at the book’s thickness, she groaned, this would take days to copy! It looked like a stuffy old man’s life story based on the title ‘That Which I Recall’. The last book she’d copied had been a nice short little book about the stars, and the handwriting had just barely crossed the line of legibility. She’d finished that one in two hours, and was proud to know she had 53 books up in the library that she’d transcribed in her comfy, quiet room at home.

Slipping the pointless book into her bag, she turned back to Shelf 2. At the front of the shelf she was halfway through was a group of maybe four papers, written out in tiny, tilted handwriting. Carefully pulling them down from the shelf, she decided this was worth transcribing here, so she pulled out her board from the bag and took out four fresh sheets of paper as well.
She copied the title onto the first sheet letter by letter, then stopped and stared when she read it. ‘Destruction’