Introduction
Katrina Brunig slowly waded through the another well-occupied sea of students and books during mid-terms, unable to move faster than she wanted to because of the squeaky wheel maintenance had yet to fix, and the administration had yet to replace.
A scholarship student at a prestigious private college, Katrina worked at the university library to cover the what the scholarship didn't with a portion of the tuition, food, and anything else. It was the best job she could hope for, mainly because of her love of books versus other positions like the school fitness center or an executive assistant for the administration. A slight misanthrope, Katrina hoped that of all the jobs she could take, being a librarian would involve working with the least amount of people; her hopes were dashed just a month into being on the job, with much of the library constantly being a third full, keeping her busy enough to put leisure reading and studying aside.
Considered a quiet, diffident, mousy personality to those who knew her best at the college, Katrina rose only to a height of 5'3, as short bobbed hairstyle barely able to hide just a clean face bereft of make-up, plainly keeping to plaid and jeans versus some of the designer clothes some of her richer classmates like to show off in. She seemed invisible to the average person on campus, which was often better compared to those treating her as a target of humiliation, or a servant to wealthy whims.
She'd carefully picked out different books to pick up from empty parts of tables or study cubicles; the experience of being yelled at for putting books back that were still in-use shook Katrina up a bit, and it didn't help that her supervisors sided with them, and never admonishing the loud, entitled students for making such noise. It was made even more odd considering the supervisor's standing mandate for putting books back with more immediacy.
It was her luck that her cart was almost knocked over by a few passerbys, pulling her away from collecting a few stray books. She caught the cart before it made a loud noise of tumbling books, just in-time to see Danica Arwood take one of the stray book. One of the legacy students at the university and a reputable queen of mean, Katrina had only heard of Danica but never met. Danica's elitism was actually warranted enough as her family showed a great deal of philanthropy at her school, including the library being named after them. Her breath caught as she managed to avoid two potential tragedies in nearly the same moment, and when Danica tossed one of the two books at her cart, walking away with the other.
Collecting the books she could without issue, her sphincter unclenched and anxiety lessened as Katrina thought herself low enough that Danica couldn't see her from the high horse she rode. Making it to the stacks to finish the last of the organizing before her shift ended, every book was accounted and put back where it belonged, with the exception of one, the stray book tossed her way.
As Katrina held it in her hand, she noticed it was a sturdy, aged book. A harder cover than most hard covers there, almost like a tome.
Fears of having taken someone's property by accident didn't overtake the slight shock to see the book begin to glow a yellowish-gold, feeling something as she held it.
Katrina Empowered
The faint glow of the book forced Katrina to spirit herself away, behind the a few unoccupied aisles nearby, trying hard not to draw attention to the supernatural or magical happening. Racing thoughts rapidly mulling over how to hide it better, where it belonged, and why it chose her hands to glow within decelerated to a crawl; Katrina's cognizance narrowed to a sense of something indescribable growing in-tandem with the brightening yellowish-gold.
The typical shyness drawing her to be unseen took a backseat as a strange boldness grew. Every breath in filtered out what made the old Katrina, and what was left of her felt ejected with every breath out. Simply standing amongst other books as their tint turned as yellow as the strange tome, fingers tingled with the urge to open the book, to scroll the pages, to begin to discover the daunting "why" and "how". Katrina fought it at first, trying to reason with herself about external manipulation; but understanding what she was being cajoled into became accepted rather quickly by her senses, as if the woman she'd always been wasn't destined to be, and what Katrina felt at that moment was. She closed her eyes, momentarily enjoying the silky feeling of the page ends, shining gold and rubbing off on her.
By the time she'd opened her eyes again with an exotic curiosity, the book had slipped open by eager fingertips. Excited eyes drifted over the open page somewhere in the middle of the book, narrowing with confusion as she found the page pristinely-blank. Turning several pages yielded the same unwritten white, only adding to the confoundment. It was only when her fingers touched the page that something changed. Dragging her finger across the surface, the tip of hers unlocked a penning, briefly revealing script that didn't look English, something almost pictorial, but more complicated. Katrina's eyes widened as she found her lips moving of their own volition, reading the language she'd yet to understand.
As if written in glow-in-the-dark ink, writing disappeared just as quickly as glowing fingers passed over them. Katrina would've dropped the book to run away in a panic if her muscles and mind weren't fixed and concentrated on interpreting as she saw the writing glow in yellowish-gold crawl up her fingers, hand, and arm. Her mouth droned on in the silent language as she read still, feeling the language travel over her body. The sensation was impossibly-astounding; it felt like a relaxing, rejuvenating shower starting from her fingertips. The words traveled in no hurry, allowing them to pass over her body with enough time for each muscle and nerve to interpret, understand, and assimilate. Logic easily eroded as the words running over her body traveled axiomatically. The uncompromised part of her brain knew the rest of her needed no proof to believe the words.
All that was presented in the way of arguments was how the enlightening words trekked all over her body, even slower across her sensitive parts as if massaging them. Nipples grew stiff, pulled at and circled. The ticklish parts were stimulated just short of making the body reflexively pull back. Between her legs, crevices were filled and lovingly-explored, making her eyes travel away from the words on the page. Katrina knew once the words moving across her throat, chin, and cheeks would insert themselves into all the crevices of her brain, the Katrina Brunig the world knew might cease to exist. But the words etching themselves inside her consciousness proved her wrong as a wordless conversation was had, and all she could express was understanding and agreement.
When she was told to pay attention to what was happening in the physical world, she did so. She looked at her hands to see the tome floating just centimeters away from her grip. She looked down to see her whole body engulfed in the light, floating above the floor, and exposed parts of her skin partially covered in the magical script. Katrina wondered why her glowing self looked taller from the floor, only to realize the floor beneath her had become reflective. When told to look up, she saw perhaps the strangest thing yet - an upside down replica of the library itself, dim except for the glowing section where she stood. So much of it was easily recognizable from her experience, except for some gothic architecture unique to the ceiling world and a dark air of mystery to it.
