Art Nouveau traditional watercolor, absolutely beautiful, stunning work by  kirfur_008

Here’s an adventure! What awaits
Beyond these closed, mysterious gates?
Whom shall I meet, where shall I go?
Beyond the lovely land I know?
Above the sky, across the sea?
What shall I learn and feel and be?
Open, strange doors, to good or ill!
I hold my breath a moment still
Before the magic of your look.
What shall you do to me, O book?

Kendra is certainly someone who knows the value of books. Among her many skills, she is a linguist who can read dozens of dead languages. What may be meaningless pages of characters in an ancient tome to others is to her lost stories and knowledge, worlds she can experience as few can.

Her friend Koda grew up as an honorable warrior who has gotten into adventures that would make their own fine books, and likely shall someday. Vicious monsters, ancient curses, devious warlords, lost civilizations and foreign lands, he's been there, he's experienced that.

She's led him into endless evenings of exploring old volumes, learning of honorable warriors past, of battle strategies, ancient curses and prophecies, even just stories to enjoy together on an icy winter's night. He's intelligent and literate, and enjoys that...much to the confusion and chagrin of more foppish courtly cats surprised to see the big lynx in a castle library!

In turn, he's helping Kendra reconnect with her roots as a feline just as he is, to experience the natural world, and to go on their own journeys and adventures together across exotic lands. To write their own story that may some day be read, in another book, by another generation.

Because that is what a book does.