Norra

Norra’s story

"Oh dear, oh dear," Norra muttered half to herself, rustling through the trinkets and tomes lining the uppermost shelves of her cluttered, yet unmistakably grand, library. As she combed each row, the books reacted to her touch. Brave ones grew bigger, their text boldening, clamoring “READ ME,” while shyer titles shrunk as she scanned their spines. Norra addressed each book with a friendly pat or a decorous wave.

She was perched precariously atop a tower of stout volumes stacked to a staggering height. It swayed to and fro, compelled by magic to arrange itself however the yordle pleased.

“A little to the left,” Norra guided, and the pile of poetry and prose clumsily moved right. “My left,” Norra insisted, before each piece of the tower shifted in tandem, creating a great clunking and shuffling of pages that would make any ordinary librarian proclaim, “Shhh!”

But Norra was no ordinary librarian, if the spellbound spire on which she stood wasn’t evidence enough. Her stockpile contained literature and history, yes, but also subjects other scholars might dismiss:

All the Hubbub About Shrubbery

Yordle Etiquette for Beginners

Rock Solid: A Story of Stone

The Elongated History of Taffy

Pleasing Poems for Pirates

Not all of the library housed its knowledge in books, of course. One as wise as Norra knew that a great deal could be gleaned from memories. And any one of these many-hued threads—wisdom and wonder, heartbreak and heroism, and every shade besides—could be plucked from even the most mundane-seeming objects. In the paws of a gifted sorcerer, these memories could unlock secrets of the past—or, perhaps more miraculously, weave a doorway from one place to another.

In the paws of this particular sorcerer, a portal woven from such thread could connect a tea room to a turnip patch, a bathroom to a barley field, or even one realm to another—a gap that anyone less than extraordinary at such a craft would find immensely tricky to breach.

“Now where did I put that confounded knickknack?”

“Is this the one?” A pair of feline toe beans poked through an opening in a nearby shelf and wiggled out a strangely-shaped mass of metal. Perhaps it was once a musical instrument for birds, with its small levers and a mouthpiece perfectly suited to beaks of many sizes. Or maybe it was a cartographer’s guide of old, and peering through it—while pressing a sequence of its metal buttons—allowed one to chart the stars.

Regardless of its former function, the object now served another: access to a memory dear to its previous owner. Knocked from its perch, the doodad toppled from the shelf and began its predictable plummet toward the floor.

Norra reached out her arm, and like an extension of herself, her construction of canon followed. The tower weaved through the air like a serpent, keeping its mistress perfectly balanced as she stretched beyond gravity’s purview to snatch the trinket from its descent.

“Splendid!” she exclaimed. “I’ve still got it.”

“My turn!” With a mischievous chirp, Norra’s lively companion Yuumi leapt from her post high above in a rush of freshly-brushed white fur. “Faster than a falling book!” the magical cat yowled, legs splayed out before her as she careened toward her owner without a care.

Not a moment too soon, the reflexes—and celebrated luck—of Yuumi’s feline ancestry kicked in. She landed safely with a plomp in Norra’s arms, where she received compulsory pats and responded in kind with a pleasant, vibrating purrrr. "So what’s inside?"

“That’s the next part of the puzzle, isn’t it?” Norra began to fiddle with what-could-very-well-have-been-a fiddle, lightly tapping on its sides and turning it over, hoping to uncover the mysteries within. “Why, this is the invention of a most fascinating yordle!”

Yuumi, ever the curious cat, joined in the inspection. She batted around the object’s base, delighting in what began as a chore but had since become a game.

“Yuumi, do be careful!”

But Norra’s outcry came too late, for Yuumi had cleanly swiped the bottommost button. A button that only moments ago, Norra had discovered. A button that if Yuumi could read—and she could not—would have told her:

“DO NOT PUSH.”

Suddenly, announced by a sharp, exhilarating screech, the device in Norra’s arms started spewing an amorphous azure goo. It shot to the ceiling before arching backwards toward the pair, a rainfall of sludge fast-approaching. As the pitch of the machine rose to a steady whine, so too did the speed of the downpour increase.

“Dear me!” With a flick of her wrist, Norra summoned a shiny bubble, swathing Yuumi and her precious fur in protective magic. “Look for the off switch, Yuumi!” The cat obeyed, pawing at the still-spitting gloop generator.

At last, Yuumi’s claw snagged a lever too small for most paws. She yanked, and the device sputtered to a stop. The friends regarded each other with wordless disbelief… then burst into a chorus of laughter.

“How’d you know that was the right lever?” Norra asked.

“I didn’t!” replied Yuumi, through spouts of spirited hiccups. “Why’d you want that sticky thing anyways?”

“You know, for the life of me, I don’t rightly remember!” Their hysterics resumed, the two friends finding rapturous delight in their messy misadventure.

* * *

Norra awoke with a start, clutching the device firmly in her grasp. Watching the impossible architecture of Realm’s End swirl around her, she remembered with a shiver how far from the comfort of her own library she had come.

Just below her thumb, the button’s warning had changed altogether: “LOST? PUSH ME.” In her heart, Norra had always suspected this device would prove useful, though she had not then fully known why.

She turned it over in her palm, relieved that it had at last chosen to cooperate. There was no magical cat here to assist in the clean-up, after all. No playful purr to fill the silence, nor unkempt fur to smooth back into place.

“I’ll find my way back, Yuumi,” Norra said aloud. “Don’t fret.” With a press of her paw, she activated the device, and a pleasant chiming sprung forth, its music filling her mind with thoughts of home.

She concentrated hard on the memory within the device. Before long, a portal flickered before her, sewn from the thread of an afternoon spent with her dearest friend. She stepped inside—and disappeared.