A/N: A good equivalent to Lukas would be those medieval monks who would spend weeks to months working on a single letter or page in an illuminated manuscript if you're in need of a mental image or comparison.
Flash Fiction February 2025 Day 11 Prompt: Change
Lukas has never liked change for as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve known him for quite a long time at this point. Unfortunately for him, change is a part of life, and doesn’t care if he likes it or not. Over time however he has found ways to cope with unexpected change and to make adjusting to new changes easier. Luckily for him to counteract the ever changing world some things never change, like the sun rising each day in the east and setting in the west, or the predictable routine preparing for the weekend to finally get a chance to rest even if it is only brief. And there are always his books, while the titles may change over time with editions coming and going there are always more to be sorted, shelved, and circulated in a never ending cycle. I find him one day down in the archives working on carefully restoring a text that had gotten water damaged in its previous home due to flooding before it was donated to the library. Luckily people like Lukas exist with the skill and patience to carefully restore such things, it is a very old art not often practiced anymore, making Lukas a valuable asset even if he does have his peculiarities that might make working with him difficult at times. So long as he’s left more or less undisturbed, and informed of any major changes well in advance of them actually occurring, he’s perfectly content and capable of being incredibly efficient. No one else I know has managed to commit to memory the complex filing system that is used to ensure books are reshelved correctly. I still don’t know how he did it, I still don’t know how he’s done a great many things actually. Aside from giving me a brief acknowledgement and asking how I am on my way down the rickety ladder into the small dusty room full of times I’m essentially ignored for a time until an intricately detailed letter is finished and set aside to dry. Taking a seat on one of the wooden stools near the workbench Lukas picks up a piece of square paper and begins to fold it as we catch up until it becomes an animal, this time a fox, the next a swan, then a rabbit, and another crane to add to the ever growing collection. When or how he learned to do that I’ll never know exactly, I assume he picked it up from Fyr at some point over the course of that series of misadventures who likely got tired of his fidgeting and so gave him something to do with his hands. Lukas often fidgets with his hands when anxious, overwhelmed, or simply bored having something to occupy him helps. The animals are put on a shelf alongside a number of others made previously. A long standing habit formed to make the constant uncontrollable change that exists as part of life a bit less scary in what has become a very scary world.
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