ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Crimes Against Art

Vignette - Crimes Against Art
Dramatis Personae Tatters, Lily
In Absentia	2013-02-01 Lily is distraught to discover that some things are not sacred after all.
Location <NYC> NY Public Library - Midtown East
"WHAT." Tatters blinks at the uncharacteristic outburst from her sister, looking up from her own reading and giving her a look across the reading table. They're at the library again, Tatters sifting through a stack of heavy, boring-looking volumes of municipal records, Lily sitting with a sketchpad and some nature guides, hunting for reference material. "LOOK at this. LOOK." Clearly agitated, the smaller sister half climbs up onto the table, lifting a book and holding it up for the Morlock's inspection. What is labeled as an illustration of a cherry tree is pointedly blank, just an empty white rectangle with a thin black border. "Huh. Is it a misprint or..." Lily cuts her sister off, shaking her head and turning the page. A smattering of pink leaves and discarded are strewn across the page, obscuring the text, the trail ending two pages down the road where the remains of the tree lie collapsed against a spruce, branches scattered all over the page. "The whole THING is like this. Look at it!" Lily drops the book in front of Tatters and plops back down in her seat, shaking in fury, arms crossed over her chest. "I've used that book before. It WASN'T like that a week ago." Tatters repeats her "Huh," and flips through the book. Similar deforestation is everywhere, among other vandalism: trees bent into obscene positions, text rearranged like a bunch of fridge magnets with discarded words scrunched illegibly into the corners. "This is...actually kinda neat. It's a little um, word word word, juvenile," okay, a LOT juvenile, "but isn't appropriative guerrilla art what YOU do?" "I don't ruin BOOKS. In the LIBRARY. People need to use these!" Lily huffs and waves at the pile of artbooks before her, "There's a photocopier right over there, for fuck's sake! I wouldn't take fucking SCISSORS to a library book, this isn't okay either." With a shudder Lily forces herself to regulate her breathing, closing her eyes and settling down a notch or two, digging out her sketchbook and opening to a new page, making an entry. '~~ Shit List ~~' 1. Library Vandal Tatters watches her with a worried frown. Lily...well, she doesn't swear. And she doesn't get, well, livid: even during the whole Daedalus fiasco, she'd conducted herself with unusual calm and almost frightening cheerfulness. There is evil in the world, Lily knows, but she had not expected to find it at Dewey 589. "I'm going to take this to the people up front." Lily stands and coolly retrieves the offending volume, snapping it shut and walking off without a word. With a shake of her head, Tatters turns back to her trawl through municipal minutiae.