AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know that this was supposed to be submitted last time, but with my track record I'm not going to get the next one done in time either, so I might as well submit this.

Back at her apartment, Alex examined the shard of glass she had taken from the library. She held it carefully - and not just because of the jagged edges. It seemed incredibly fragile. Head cocked to one side, she leaned in to examine it.

Alex peered through the glass shard, pretending for a moment that it was a window into another world, another time… and all of a sudden, she could see into another time. Raising her gaze from the fragment, she found that the image didn’t vanish. It was all around her. She really was in another time.

ALEX HAD TRAVELLED INTO THE PAST!

She was in a large, bright room with more books on the shelves than she had ever imagined. Print books appeared in museums occasionally - the Heritage Society currently had a display called ‘Children’s Literature through the Ages’ with almost three dozen books in it.

This room alone had thousands.

Nervously, Alex fidgeted with the piece of glass. The text on the signs and the spines of books was in English, thankfully. With the invention of advanced translations technology, learning a language was becoming less and less common, but Alex had wanted to really be able to understand an ancient language. She had passed all her English exams with flying colours - hopefully, that meant she would be able to communicate with these people...

“Ow!” Alex exclaimed. While she had been lost in thoughts, she had cut herself on the glass.

A librarian, about thirty years old, glanced over suspiciously. Walking towards her with a shiny red mug in his hand, his eyes immediately flickered to the fragment of glass and the blood. “Did you break a window?” he asked. Then, for no apparent reason, he took a swig from his mug (a bitter-smelling brown liquid) and muttered “it’s too early for this.”

Then he took a deep breath. “Smashing windows is wrong,” he said in a flat, bored monotone.

Alex wasn’t sure what to make of this strange pronouncement, but she nodded uncertainly. Seeming satisfied, the librarian turned away. He was extremely pale, with a long, sharp face and light brown hair that stuck up messily. Pausing, he turned back to her. Apparently, he had remembered something.

“Come with me,” he said. “You need to fill out a damage form. Also, I think you need a Band-Aid.”

“But I didn’t-”

“Shh. We’re in a library.”

“What’s a Ban-”

“Shh.”

“But you just-” She gave up. Obviously, this man was not going to talk to her. Alex went back to studying him, happy for a chance to witness a real, actual person from the twenty-first century. Presumably, his insistence on quiet was some cultural custom? He had been speaking in a very soft voice. Was this library a sacred place? She would have to investigate further.

The library was incredible. High, vaulted ceilings decorated with beautiful patterns gave the building an open, airy feel. Light poured in from the stained-glass windows, painting the ornately patterned stone floor. They were in some kind of entry hall, with enormous wooden doors open wide. She could see out through them, into what, in her time, was a maze of steel chambers.

Sunlight streamed in through them from a wide open space, carpeted in some kind of green plant and dotted with… were those trees? Alex vaguely recognised the centrepiece of this grand space as a fountain, but it was far more exquisite than any fountain she had ever seen.

The librarian (she thought the little sign reading ‘Ben’ on his shirt was a name tag, but she hadn’t ever actually seen a name tag, so she wasn’t sure) looked irritated but seemed loath to actually tell her to move on. He must really be passionate about that quiet rule. She tore her eyes away from the fountain and continued to follow Ben (she was just going to assume that was his name) towards a desk in the centre of the lobby.

An enormous painting hung above the desk, and with a start Alex realised she recognised it - it hung in the lobby of the government offices back in her time. This was clearly the same painting - a fantastical landscape of thick forest and toadstools, adorned with dancing pixies and sprites. How did a public library like this one obtain a multimillion dollar painting? Perhaps it wasn’t famous yet?

“A gift from a wealthy donor,” Ben said, clearly anxious to herd her to the desk so that he could be rid of her and go back to whatever he usually did at work.(Scowling?)

“I can’t sign this,” she said, ignoring the finger he raised to his lips, “partly because I didn’t smash anything and partly because I’m not sure I legally exist.”

She turned the glass shard over again and held it up. “You can go over and check those windows - none of them are broken. And even if they were, they probably wouldn’t match this-” she stopped. The librarian, and indeed the library had vanished. She was back in her own apartment, in her own time.

"But I was having so much fun!" she complained.