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The new house has a library.
A library full of books, floor to ceiling, which Zoe finds incredibly cool, while her dads think it's creepy. The rest of the house is completely empty, so they may have a point, but she forgets all about it as soon as she enters the giant room overflowing with knowledge and fun.
"Wooow," she can't help exclaiming, to no one in particular, before reaching out to grab the first book that draws her attention.
"Boooooooo. Don't."
"Huh?" There's definitely no one else in the room with her, and the sound was quiet enough that she's not sure if she even heard anything. Or maybe a door creaked somewhere else in the house. Or something.
"Don't touch the books. Booooooo. Oooooo."
Okay, no. That was real.
Zoe looks around the seemingly empty room, bewildered, and briefly considers doing something reasonable like getting the hell out of the library, but she can't resist asking first, "Why?"
Silence.
Eventually there's a mumbling that sounds a bit like "No one—" before trailing off.
"I didn't catch that. Sorry?" Taking to a disembodied voice is not what she planned to do here, but for now it feels only puzzling and intriguing, and not particularly dangerous.
"No one has ever asked me why. Just don't, okay?" No booing this time, and the voice sounds a lot like just a scared kid, overlaid with some cheap sound filter.
"Are you afraid of me or something?" Zoe asks, not unkindly.
"No!" the voice bristles, a bit too quickly and forcefully. There's a sudden movement behind one of the shelves.
"Ha, there you are!" Zoe runs up, and the movement shifts a bit further, but she still can't see anything else.
Then she hears a quiet growl, a bit like an angry kitten, and she stops looking too closely, just because it doesn't seem polite.
"You are just not going to be afraid of me, are you?" the voice sighs and doesn't wait for a reply before choosing a different strategy. "Uhhhh... This was in one of my favorite books when I moved here. A note from a previous keeper. Just look."
A piece of paper flies out from behind the shelves, covered with sparkly violet letters that are as swirly and beautiful as they are impossible to read.
"I don't think I know what it says," Zoe says, squinting at the paper.
"Oh. You can't read Eildese?"
"... No. I'm afraid I can't." Considering she has never even heard the name of this language before, she's confident that she can't read it.
"Oh, okay." The hidden creature takes a deep breath, valiantly hyping themselves up to actually explain the problem using words. "Humans— Humans eat books."
"What? No, they don't. No, we don't." Zoe is not sure what else to say to such an unexpected accusation.
"Yes, you do!" It's almost a shout, still quiet but decidedly upset and indignant, before the voice gets soft again. "You are proud to be bookworms." Zoe is sure the creature just shuddered, even though she can't see them.
"It doesn't mean that we eat books. It's like— a joke?"
"Not a very funny one!"
"No, I guess not? It's a metaphor. It means we enjoy reading books so much that it's almost like eating them. It doesn't make much sense. But I promise we don't eat them. I don't think it would even be possible, even if it wasn't super wasteful."
"A metaphor?" The voice zeroes in on this one word. There's some shuffling behind the shelves and a moment of silence, until the creature reads out loud, "A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable."
"Yes, exactly!" Zoe beams. "You really like books, don't you?"
Making friends with the creature behind the bookshelf was not in her plans for today either, but suddenly it sounds a lot more fun than anything else she could be doing with her time.
"Yes," the voice sounds dreamy and enthralled, and suddenly not all that shy anymore. "So much knowledge! So many different worlds! And I'm only a thousand and fifteen years old. There is still so much I don't know."
"Oh. I'm not even fifteen years old myself. I guess we both have a lot left to learn," Zoe grins. "Hey, can I see you?"
The sudden silence and stillness tells her that it wasn't the right question to ask.
"I don't have to see you to talk to you. Don't worry about it," Zoe smiles and shrugs, just when a furry arm emerges from behind the bookshelf. It's golden and as sparkly as the text on the note that Zoe is still holding, and seems to have spikes where human fingers would be, but it disappears before she can see anything more clearly.
Zoe waves her hand in the direction the arm came from. "Hi! Nice to meet you. I'm not going to ask you your name or anything. We can get to it later, if you want to."
"Okay," the voice is shaky, but it sounds reassured. "Nice to meet you too, human-who-doesn't-eat-books."
Zoe laughs softly and changes the topic to a more pleasant one, "Hey, so what's your favorite book?"
There's a flurry of movement behind all of the shelves at once, stirring up a wind and making a lot of shuffling noises, until at least fifty books float down to the floor at the same time. "All of these. I can't choose."
Zoe walks up to each of them. About half of them are in languages she can read or at least has heard of before, while the others must be either in Eildese or in other languages her new friends speaks. They seem to range from children's stories to advanced science textbooks.
"Wow," Zoe says, genuinely impressed. She takes care not to get too close to any of the books, in case she's still not fully trusted not to eat them. "How about I don't touch these books, so that you know they're safe, and you read one of them to me? I know it's hard to choose just one, so you can also read all of them to me, if you feel like doing that. I live here now, I can visit you every day."
"I— I would love to!" The voice sounds like a gasp, full of disbelief and delight.
"I don't know some of the languages," Zoe continues. "So if you could also throw in a textbook or two—"
A few more books float out, one them landing in her hands. Zoe smiles, holding it gently and carefully, like the precious token of friendship it is.