My school project was due, another stupid assignment about the old world. The white haired librarian had suggested I try the back archives.

I trudged up the metal stairs of the library, my boots clanging on every step. At the top was a small room with some historic wooden bookcases, very different to the iron ones that housed the main book selection. A rug covered the floor in the middle of the room and some large armchairs had been placed on it with small round tables next to them.

Walking down the length of books a brown spine covered in golden calligraphy jumped out at me. Carefully taking it off the shelf I hefted it onto one of the small tables and sat down. The book was covered in a thin layer of dust which I blew into a cloud in the air. The pages were stained yellow by age. The contents page was a list of odd names: Alpaca, Ant, Armadillo, Bat, Bear, Capybara, Cat...

I turned to the chapter in the book titled Cat. A drawing showed it to be a small furry thing with a tail and whiskers according to the annotations. I tried to imagine a time when these animals would be roaming around freely. Luckily this one seemed to be friendly as it was named pet, but I couldn't shake how weird that would be.