The library is shut, the windows are open. The shelves are lined with dirt and grime.
The pages stick together, once you peel back the cover you’ve still no idea what the text was supposed to tell you.
Was it there for you at all? Did these tomes contain solutions for times since gone? Could such answers be sought from mere pages and writings?
To take a book, one need not complete the book, you think to yourself, cracking open some pasted pages that turn to dust before you. You blow them away and try another chapter, then another book.
In ancient script you surmise the categories of books are etched above the archways between sections of shelves. This meant something to someone, once, with naught for name nor record to remember them by.
Wars were once fought, lands rose and fell, the seasons sorted and harvested, tides marked and maneuvered and thanks to the wisdoms that these sealed texts had earned for the peoples that perused this palace.
The walls are as old as the ideas posited here.
Caked in dust, soot, chipped in all corners, still they stand.