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[Francine]

There's a magical library deep within the heart of New York City. It is well hidden in the bustling city so few know of its location, but word always spreads of the strange shop. Even they don't know any of the secrets it holds. One strange thing about this corner bookstore is that every day the person who runs the cashier is different. There are not other employees in the store. If you stare long and hard enough at the illustrations in any of the books, something will move in the image.

There is no storage room in the bookstore because no other copies of the books that can only be borrowed from the library exist other than in that one library. The ones you can buy lose their magic once you exchange change with the cashier of the day, reverting back to the same book you would obtain in Barnes & Noble. Where do more copies of the buyable books come from? None know.

The most interesting bit about the library is what happens when no customers are around to witness the full power of the magic. At closing time, that day's cashier shrinks and jumps back into the book from whence they came. Yes, the characters in the stories are truly alive. There is no one to see the images come fully to life within the closed pages of the tomes.

Sometimes, characters hop in and out of their volumes and visit other's tales, changing it all together. None can see the text fading away and being replaced with new words as the characters change the paths of their lives and the way of the characters they visit in other stories. Because every character in every book affect someone else's story one way or another, all the books are connected. Here are some tellings of the lives of a few of those characters...

Rules and sign up in Tales (Rules and Sign Up)

The church right across the street from the library rang the bell every hour, one chime for each hour that has passed. In the olden days, the bell up in the steeple would be used, but now an electronic system just sent out fake bell sounds.

In traditional New York fashion, the library (whose name will go unknown) closed rather late, ten at night. The church's bell system was timed perfectly to ring at the right time. The last customer finished scanning the book he had open on the table and put it away. He seemed slightly flabbergasted for some reason. Maybe it was the pictures?

The bell sounded out. Ten chimes later, Cassandra returned to her normal state, blue skinned and mouse sized. She pulled out the chair the customer had used with her mind powers to hop up to her book. After getting safely to the shelf, she put the chair back and hopped into the spine of The Wanderer.