AN: Before we get started, I want to warn you all: This chapter is not as fuzzy and sweet as the last one! There's nothing that would earn a T rating, but it's different from chapter one and if you expecting more of the same... Well, you'll be disappointed. That said, read on. (By the way, this is your fault Vaxl. You inspired me to go ahead and write the follow-up. Hope you like it, even though it's probably not what you had in mind.)
If there was one thing Ms. Lydia Kole learned from her time in Mossdeep, it was that being a librarian was hard, harder than being a pokemon trainer ever was. Make no mistake, she loved her job. It was just that she seemed to be trapped in an eternal cycle of her own indecision and procrastination when it came to the Saturday story time.
Each week after story time she would select a book to read the next week after all the children left, and she would invariably neglect to re-familiarize herself with it until the following Thursday. Then, on Friday, she would decide it was unfit and frantically search through the library's collection for a new candidate. The children never knew it, but the drama had played out the same way every week since Ms. Kole took up her post.
This time around, the dilemma seemed especially knotty. Sitting neatly on her desk were three books Ms. Kole had singled out, all that was left to do was to choose between them. The first was a large collection of nursery rhymes that she had qualms about reading to the young children of Mossdeep.
She knew it was silly to object to reading nursery rhymes to children, the audience they were intended for, and she doubted the kids would have enough historical background or life experience to actually understand all the double meanings and innuendo built into the rhymes... But it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides, how long could she keep their attention with such short verses? It wasn't as if she could sing them or play a guitar accompaniment to spice the tales up, all she could do was recite.
Ms. Kole flipped the thick anthology open and thumbed through the pages, reading lines aloud as she went.
"Mary had a little mareep, its fleece was charged with static... Round and round the berry tree, the mankey chased the furret..."
Her eyes skimmed quickly over the pages, sighting short rhymes like 'A Wise Old Noctowl' and 'Three Little Skitties' before she stopped at 'Three Blind Rattata' and frowned. Call her old-fashioned, but Ms. Kole didn't believe that cutting off the tails of pokemon with a carving knife was anything to sing about, especially not when the victims were three cute little rattata.
Reading further she found two more lengthy rhymes that could possibly work.
"Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of rye, four and twenty murkrows baked in a pie... Hey diddle diddle the meowth and the fiddle, the miltank jumped over the moon, the growlithe laughed to see such a sight, and the dish ran away with the spoon."
They were longer, yes, but reading them still took her all of thirty seconds. The problem with nursery rhymes, she concluded, was that they were too short to build interest. Setting the book of rhymes aside, she reached for the other two contenders displayed on her desk.
The first was a classic children's story, The Wind in the Willows. It was a lighthearted tale about all the various bits of adventure, mischief, and mishap that befall Mr. Politoed and his friends. The other was the beloved short story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the brave zangoose who heroically fights and nearly sacrifices himself to save his young trainer and best friend from a pair of evil sevipers.
Both books seemed as if they would be equally interesting to the children, so to help her decide which one to read first Ms. Kole fell back on a technique she often used to sort out difficult situations. The practice was a relic from her past as a devoted role-playing gamer and a carryover from her favorite game, Dungeons and Dragonairs.
After placing the two books on opposite sides of her desk, she pulled her trusty twenty-sided die from her drawer of useful junk (the largest drawer in her desk). The book on the left, The Wind in the Willows, was one and the book on the right, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, was twenty. She would read the book whose number was closest to whatever value the die turned up.
Taking a deep breath, she picked up the die, shook it in her hands for a count of three, then rolled.
Nineteen. Sorry, Mr. Politoed, no contest.
AN: All right, I should hope that most, if not all, the rhymes I adapted are familiar to everyone. Mary had a little lamb, Pop goes the weasel, Hey diddle diddle, Sing a song of sixpence, Three blind mice... The only obscure ones I have are A Wise Old Owl (which is four lines about the virtues of shutting your mouth and listening) and Three Little Kittens (a story about three greedy yet adorable kittens who just want some pie.)
I suggest that you (if you are of age and mature of mind) go and research the hidden meanings in nursery rhymes. There are several that are truly... Ah, let's say "interesting."
Note: I know I said Three Little Kittens was a short rhyme, well, it's not. It's quite long; I just needed a name to stick in there.