THE COLLECTIVE

she's a little thing, maybe a foot tall. she wears horn-rim glasses and a neat blue pinafore, and makes her home in a glass case on the counter at the library. there's a bit of masking tape on the front, bearing the sharpied words "friends of the library — donations accepted". you smile at her every time you check books out, and occasionally slip a fiver into the donation box under the case.

one day you're taking home two cookbooks, a history of famous local buildings, and the tenth in a line of spectacularly trashy urban fantasy novels that you can't seem to stop reading. when you put the books down on the counter, a librarian adds one more to your stack.

"staff recommendation," she says.

you shrug and accept "The Chronicles of the Friends of the Library, Vol. LXIV".

it begins with a mysterious robed figure in a library, and a quest to retrieve a book checked out by a king. the tenth chapter ends with a doomed scholar-swordswoman wiping gore off her tattooed arms and her magic-charged blade, knowing that the crawling things are coming back. she has already lost some of her height and strength to the curse, and it will keep sapping her until she can no longer lift the sword, but she vows in front of her comrades to keep going until relief arrives, however long it takes. the twentieth…

the urban fantasy and the cookbooks are still untouched by the time you return to the library. a librarian accepts them at the returns desk.

"oh", she says, "you're reading 'Chronicles'."

"it's incredible. the main character is a beast. i don't even care that i didn't start at the real beginning beginning, there's so much going on and i have to know what happens to her. is there a newer one?"

"well, um, not really. i can give you an outline, though i'm surprised you didn't guess. they never broke the curse. they never found someone who would swear to carry on her duty and inherit her power and eventually trade places with her. she diminished. she's still waiting," the librarian says, "for a friend."

she nods her head towards the case.

you look at the doll again, really look this time, and you see the tattoos peeking out under her sleeves. the shape of something comes together in your mind.

"friends of the library. donations accepted."

she nods.

you reach into your wallet.

"they really should write a sequel."

"they should. i've always wondered what comes next."

it appears that gentle death still stands sentinel at the end of our lives and casts a shadow back over us as if he were interposed between us and a fantastic radiance but OTOH crowdsourcing has made it incredibly easy to buy a “minimalist wallet” made of aircraft-grade aluminium weave and hey

I'm a full-time wheelchair user and can say from experience, it *is* my legs. After a while the brain just registers it as part of you.

If something is damaged or calibrated wrong, it feels like walking with a limp. Unusual noises feel like they're coming from your joints. It's deeply intimate and sometimes unsettling when someone reaches into the mechanisms you can't see to adjust something or make repairs.

While obviously it has no sense of touch, someone laying their hands on it feels deeply personal, and invasive if they do so without permission.

Even when I'm not in it, seeing people handle it feels strange, like an out-of-body experience seeing someone handling your limp form.

The Magic School Bus can time travel

When asked, Ms. Frizzle denies that she “knows everything”

However, Ms. Frizzle always knows what her students are up to, knows the answer to every question they ask her, and never shows fear even when in extreme mortal peril, as if she’s experienced this all before

Although we know she was in a rock band called the Frizzlettes and was a Shakespearean actress, Ms. Frizzle’s childhood remains mysterious

Ms. Frizzle is EXACTLY the sort of person to travel back in time to teach herself, and is in fact the most likely fictional character to do so

Nobody is ever named “Valerie Frizzle” at birth

Ms. Frizzle dresses queerly and laughs at her own bad jokes

A lot of the series is about Arnold learning to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy - that phrase is more or less targeted at him as a student

me: Are you fucking kidding me Larius I told you to do that outside, now it's gonna smell like ass in here all day

my elf roommate: *puffs a perfect ring of smoke* What Is A Day In A Life That Lasts Centuries?

me: not everybody lives as long as you dude. put that thing away

my elf roommate: That Is Not What Thy Mother Said

me: hilarious