Faolan walked quickly to the front steps of the library and looked out across the stone structure. Inside, he saw several lights flicker out and he realized that they were just closing up. His pulse began to race and he knew that they did not have much time before the library closed for the evening. And he did not know how he could manage to keep the elephant entertained during the night without the help of books.

He glanced back at the elephant--a daunting task no doubt--and quickly looked away, his eyes alighting upon the door. Not much time. "Hurry," he whispered, his voice floating on the gentle breeze. He took to the steps three at a time as he ran up, not entirely sure how he was going to sneak an elephant into the library. Especially not a man-eating elephant. Faolan did not want to think about it; he felt partially responsible for the demise of the people the monster had eaten on the way here. After all, Faolon was the one who led the monster through the streets.

Yes, but if you had left him alone, he would have eaten even more people, he tried to reassure himself. While he knew that it was probably true, it did not make him feel any better.

His heart pounded in his ears and he gasped for breath by the time he reached the door. He glanced at the elephant and then poked his head inside of the building. Upon seeing no librarians, he returned to the elephant. "Let's go," he said, keeping his voice low in the silence of the night. "We have to be careful so they don't see us." No use trying to explain it all to the beast who probably would not understand such delicate condition. With that, he began to creep steadily into the library.

Being a king, the need for caution was not on Abigor's list of needs. But beyond that, he also didn't understand the need for silence here. Perhaps people needed to think while they read the books? But why would they need to think? Could they think and learn at the same time?! It was an interesting thought, but a fleeting one; Abigor had no reason to keep the thought in his head. Inside the library, though, a zillion thoughts flew through his head all at once. Countless books of every size, shape and description were packed everywhere, in every nook and cranny, and it wasn't long before his neck was starting to hurt as he turned every which way. He was trying to see everything, of course, and there was a lot of everything to see. He didn't know what any of the letters were on the edges of the books, but he knew they must be important because there were so very many books in one place.

There were many shadows in the place, but every detail stood out to him like a shining lantern. Indeed, his green-tinged nightvision gave him an exceptional eye for detail (perhaps even two) and enabled him to see what many could not. He had no trouble at all seeing everything around him and examining even the minutest details of the books that filled this place. He knew, though, that he would not be able to sit down on any furniture in this place. Being well over twelve feet tall had its disadvantages, some of them rather severe. But this would be a good place to sleep, though, should he feel the need.

A librarian did come out just as he was finally refocusing his attention upon the human guide once more. He had been about to ask him a question when she appeared and screamed. He was annoyed, but only slightly. He sighed, a sound like a hurricane letting out all the wind at once, and looked down upon her (and not just physically, either).

"You go. I know books here."

He was trying to say that he was going to read them, of course, and learn from them, but the librarian could care less. She hesitated, shocked, and then ran off as quickly as her long, slender legs would carry her. She was out of the door before he knew it. He was surprised the humans could run so fast. Following her with her eyes, he snorted as the door closed behind her and turned back to the human guide before him.

Faolan walked nervously through the library and felt a sudden sadness in his chest for bringing such an aweful beast into this sacred of places. He let out a sigh as he scanned through the books, neither his eyes nor his mind focusing on any of the volumes.

Suddenly he heard the screams of a woman, and Faolan jumped nearly a foot in the air before he raced over to the elephant. To his great relief, it appeared that the books had captured his interest more than slaughtering another innocent person. But as she ran, Faolan knew that maybe that was his one chance: she would be terrified, but once that horror washed off, beneath it would be a rocky coating of anger at such a beast in her space. And then she would get help and the help would get Faolan. And then someone else could deal with the evil elephant.

But before he could relax too much, he remembered the elephant's looming presence. (Oh, how could he have forgotten?) He turned around and looked at the beast.

"Okay," he said finally, gathering up all of his courage to speak to the monster. "What are you looking for?"

The running human made him roll his eyes again. Clearly, the human wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be a warrior and save the human girl so he could earn her honor. In Abigor's society, doing so would entitle a man to marry the woman if he so chose. If he chose not to marry her, though, then her family was dishonored and she was executed. She was then eaten by her own family to prevent another family from furthering the demise of their familial honor. Honor played an absolutely huge role in the society of elephantine demons from whence Abigor had come, though honor was probably different in their society from honor in the societies of these seemingly weak, pathetic humans.

The human turned back to him as the human girl left, though, and took a breath. It was probably a deep breath for him, though it wasn't even breathing to one of Abigor's size. Regardless, the man then asked Abigor what he was looking for. First thing was first, of course: he wanted to learn to read so he could find his own information. He wanted to know where things were and what different people were like. He wanted to know what life was like in Arda. He wanted to know what kind of animals he could hunt, too, and what kind of people tasted the best. He wanted to know how to read, though, more than anything else. If he could get his own information, he wouldn't have to rely on others so flaming much.

"Teach me to know books and letters," he said in his deep, rumbling voice to the still-scared human.

The human seemed irritated as well, though Abigor was no expert on human facial expressions. Actually, he knew hardly anything at all about humans. What little he did know was hardly useful, except that he liked exceptionally strong coffee hot enough to boil most men alive. He wanted to know how to make coffee, too. That reminded him that he wanted coffee, though, and he looked around to see if there was any nearby. There wasn't. Oh, well. He would get coffee later, then. Right now, he turned back to the human. He wanted to learn how to read.

Faolan nodded slowly. Okay--the monster was very much intent upon learning. Faolan could deal with that. He thought about to when his mother taught him how to read his first letters. What did she use? He recalled a paper and a pencil and having to form the letters over and over and over. She had been patient with him as she always was, even when his letters came out looking like vomit on the parchment. She would simply guide his hand across the page ever so carefully and with tiny strokes to avoid using excess paper. Oh, how he longed for the days of his youth when things were so simple!

Misty-eyed, he looked up at the elephant. Darn it, he had to get over these tears every time he thought about his parents! How would he ever move on if he kept dwelling on the past. Never you mind the fact that they had just been murdered but yesterday--now he was faced with new, more challenging problems.

"Okay," he said at long last, his eyes on the duel-trunked monster. He once saw a sketch in a book of an elephant and how innocent it had looked. Sure, it had the massive tusks, but the book said that they were fairly peace-loving. Now he knew that he would never ever trust the book again if it was the last thing he did. And now he would never trust an elephant again. Not like he trusted them in the first place because he had never met one, but really this put a damper upon his whole learning experiences. He hoped that all things in Arda were not as screwed up as this elephant.

"Well, I need to find some appropriate books," he said, as he absentmindedly twisted the handle of the sword in his hands. "Not that I'm saying that these aren't appropriate!" he quickly corrected himself. "But, uh, they're a little too . . . well, we'll get to them in awhile." He looked around nervously and saw a desk near the front. That would be a good place to start searching from some scraps of parchment.

Trying to get the monster to hold a pencil was another task.

But Faolan scurried off to the desk and stopped right before it. He put the sword away in its sheath on his back; if the monster was going to kill him, it would have already. No use tying up his hands with it. He looked around the desk first with his eyes and then with his hands as he grew a little more frantic, but he could see nothing in the darkness. Finally his fingers felt the smooth melted features of a candle, and he picked it up in his hands and held it close to his body. After a moment, he stretched out his hand and found a package of matches. Carefully he lit one and pressed the burning tip against the candlewick until it caught. The room lit up quickly, but the small circle of light casted a limited glow.

The desk was a mess, but he managed to locate a candleholder and quickly put the candle down. He found a piece of parchment, pen and an inkwell and hurried over to a table not too far from the elephant, where he set down his supplies and the candle.

"Okay," he said, looking up at the monster. His fingers trembled as he dipped the quill into the ink. "Why don't we start." He held his breath; this was going to take awhile--probably too long for the elephant's limited patience. But they had no choice.

Abigor listened to the man and then watched him as he stumbled about, first calmly and then more and more frantically. Humans, obviously, could not see in the dark. This was very highly amusing and brought a malicious grin to the demon's face. His grin faded, though, as the human found a candle and prepared it.

"What is them?" he asked, pointing to the matches.

He had seen candles before, though on a much larger scale (as with everything else made for his society, of course), but they had been lit with flint and steel. Actually, though, they were called torches. They were used mainly for the elders that had trouble seeing due to their age. Right now, though, the miniature torch was the least of his concerns. He was mainly curious about the matches, as he had never seen them before and thus had absolutely no clue whatsoever what they were. They were obviously used to light the candle, but that still didn't tell him what they were or how, precisely, they were used. He figured it out in his head from what he had seen, though, so the latter wasn't too much of a problem.

He wondered briefly what the human was doing as he rummaged around and finally grabbed a piece of parchment and a pencil. He didn't know what those were, either, but he didn't say anything. The human went over to a table and sat down at one of the chairs, but Abigor wasn't that lucky; he was much too large for any chair in the place. So, he simply sat on the ground. This cause several massive book cases to wobble dangerously and a large number of books to fly off shelves. Chairs and tables like jumped and the flame of the candle danced and leaped so violently that it nearly went out. Fortunately, after a moment or two, it resumed its semi-normal pace of flickering. Abigor waited to see what the man would say and do next.

Faolan watched with wide-eyed fascination as the elephant actually attempted to sit in a chair; for the life of him he thought that the monster was at least intelligent enough to realize that it would never work to sit in something made for something one tenth its size. But then again, he also knew that the elephant was not quite gifted in the brains department.

Which would make teaching it incredibly fun. Faolan fumbled around for the pen for a moment and picked it up in his trembling fingers. He dipped the tip into the inkwell and brought the pen over to the parchment as it dripped across the parchment like black blood. After a brief pause, Faolan made a capital "A" on the paper in the uppermost left corner.

"This," he said as he set the pen down and picked up the paper to show the monster, "is an A. It's the first letter of our alphabet. We have twenty-six letters and there are two versions of each letter. But they both mean the same thing," he added quickly. He looked around nervously, hoping that the monster would catch on at least a little so that they could progress. It shouldn't be too long before the librarian returned with extra help in order to remove the elephant from the library; Faolan knew that he just had to keep him occupied until then.

But already the young man grew increasingly tired, his muscles aching from using the sword when he was not used to holding it for so long. He let out a tired sigh as he let the elephant observe the letter.

"There are many of them," he told the elephant. "Letters, that is. Usually it takes, um, weeks to learn them. But I think you'll, uh, learn faster than that." Oh, smooth, he told himself. But a little flattery never hurt, right? He forced a smile, though his lip trembled slightly with sheer exhaustion.

The elephantine demon listened carefully to the human's words. Despite having little intellect worthy of mention between his massive elephant ears, Abigor nonetheless had excellent memory. Actually, he would soon show quite a bit of promise for learning. The problem was that he was not used to speaking the way the humans did, for his language was not their own. What little he had learned of the common tongue he had learned from the humans back in the Ered Annon Mountains. That he spoke any of the common tongue at all was an impressive thing, but he would soon show that he could learn just as well as anyone else.

He thus memorized the 'A' at once. He stared at it for several long seconds, memorizing every dot that made it what it was. Then he nodded curtly, a swift bob roughly equivalent to the snapping of about ten humans' necks in force, before turning to look at the man's face once more.

"A," he repeated, showing that he understood.

He had heard of versions - they were different than visions and different than virgins, too. They were two things that were the same, only with differences - like dwarfs. They were smaller versions of humans. Hobbits, whatever those were, were smaller and less gruff versions of dwarfs. Gnomes were smaller versions of hobbits, but they had many qualities similar to dwarfs.

"What is other version of 'A'?" Abigor asked, wanting to know.

He would take it one step at a time if he had to, but he would not be easily daunted by the common tongue. He would learn to read it and he would learn to write it. Then he would blend in with the rest of the people here. Of course, he would have to use special magicks to truly blend in; that was the mistake he'd made here, he supposed: he hadn't even bothered to try to become human. Why bother, after all, when humans were so much smaller and weaker? But perhaps it would be prudent in this case.

Faolon supposed that the many cogs were turning furiously inside the elephant's head, and he watched with fascination as the beast seemed to mull over this point before processing it. He wondered if indeed the monster did learn it or if he just was trying not to be stupid and pretended that he knew it.

Hesitantly Faolan carried on and turned back to the page. With a quick but accurate stroke, he created a lowercase "a" upon the parchment right next to the uppercase "a." He blew across the paper to dry the ink and set the pen down on the table.

"This is the lowercase," he said, holding up the parchment once more. He studied the elephant carefully for a few moments, no longer caring that his hands trembled as he grasped the paper. "We use uppercases at the beginning of sentences and for names," he explained slowly, though be it out of concern for the elephant's learning speed or simply because Faolan himself was scared, he had no clue. "We use lowercase for all other letters. Sometimes people will write in all uppercase, too." Oh, was this going to confuse the beast?

"So, um, 'a' in either way makes multiple noises, like, um, 'ah,'" he explained nervously. "So when people go running screaming from you 'ahhhh!' that's the 'a' sound." Oohh fantastic, Faolan, he told himself darkly.

Abigor watched carefully as the human wrote the next letter with the pen, taking in everything that he was doing and saying and soaking it all up like a sponge. The human's explanation of the letters was good enough that Abigor caught on right away and was able to make a decent learning experience out of it. He glared real hard at the human, though, as he mentioned the people running from him and screaming. It was enough for him to reconsider learning from him; it was almost enough for him to decide just to eat him. But he restrained himself and turned back to the parchment.

As time passed in the relatively silent semidarkness of the library and the woman failed to return, Abigor learned more and more about the various letters. By the end of roughly an hour, he could recite the alphabet easily. He'd even managed (after destroying four pens and smashing an ink bottle) to treat the supplies given to him as gingerly as an egg - so much so, in fact, that he was able to write the letters in both cases, upper and lower, after only about a half-hour's worth of time.

During his study of the common tongue, Abigor seemed to start picking up small cues and such in the language of the human trying to teach him. For example, 'the' started coming into his vocabulary more often. With a bit of extra listening and some attempted mimicking, he also started making sentences that made more sense. As he learned the various sounds of each letter, too, he began to recognize words. After nearly two hours had passed, he was sounding out words and speaking almost normally - which was surprising considering his former ignorance of the common tongue. Then again, it had taken him only a week to learn what he had of the spoken words of the common tongue when he was back in the Ered Annon Mountains. The people there had been scared, too, but they had been useful until the coffee had run out. Unfortunately, his irritation had led him to eat the people there as a result. He hadn't had any coffee since and now he wanted some. Since he reckoned he could figure a lot out on his own from this point forward, he decided he could come back to this later.

"Where do I find coffee? I want real strong coffee."

His sentences were still short and simple, but at least they were mostly coherent now.

Faolan wiped his ink-stained fingers on a cloth he had found near the counter, probably used to blot out ink spills. But the elephant had successfully managed to smash an entire well of ink on Faolan when the monster insisted upon learning to write. Actually, Faolan was impressed that the monster had learned so fast.

And downright scared, too. For now he had to find a way to distract the beast until help came. Help's not coming, he suddenly realized as he leaned over to scoop up the fragments of the well into his blackened hands, catching sight of the ink caked in his nails. As he desposited the shards onto the table, he averted his eyes away from the elephant and down towards the carpet. He was alone. With a man-eating elephant. And he had no doubt outlived his usefulness by now. It was probably time to start running.

No, no! He couldn't do that! And then the monster would eat someone else. But I can't be of much help when I'm dead! he thought bitterly as he admired the floral patterns on the rich rug laying on the ground, the swirls of lush green vines and sprinklings of little pink roses. So he eats me and then he eats someone else. Better run while I have the chance.

"Huh?" asked Faolan, snapping to attention as the monster spoke to him. He looked up and his eyes slowly focused on the elephant. "Oh, um, okay."

And then Faolan got a fantastic idea. But he would need some coffee, first. He turned to the elephant and nodded towards the door. "C'mon," he said as he headed out of the library.