Carl held the next book up to the bookmark with mixed feelings. She certainly did not want to apply the bookmark to the horror novels she had, nor the grim and nasty fantasy novels where the main hero had to fight his way through hordes of evil creatures with blood and guts everywhere. Given her current situation, she also wanted to avoid all the novels where women were second class citizens or property! With little time and a limited selection she could reach, Carl had chosen what had basically been a romance story set in a fantasy world. Though it had been years she since had read the book, as best she could recall there were hardly any battles or fights in the plot directly involving the main character and a happy ending.
Once again, the bookmark clung to the book for several minutes, then let go. This time, though, instead of removing words or leaving pages blank, almost the entire book was now blurry. Carl looked at the bookmark warily -- the image on the back had changed somehow, but still was not in focus, but it seemed close. She studied the image for a moment, then realized it was lacking a background yet. "So what did it get from this book? Plot? Theme?"
A sudden gust of warm air made her jump -- and plucked the bookmark from her hands. Twisting about in her corner, she saw that the dragon was no longer frozen, but breathing. The large yellow reptillian eyes blinked slowly among the large black scales on the dragon's head, then started to focus on Carl like someone just waking up from a long nap. "Oh... hell..."
Carl's gaze snapped from the dragon to the bookmark as she realized she had lost track of it -- the little piece of cardboard was fluttering about, then started to drift towards a pile of books. With a little gasp of fear, Carl jumped for the bookmark as that pile of books had at least two horror novels, a few non-fiction books, and a myriad number of other fiction works.
The bookmark landed on...
