Romeo

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Born in a small Bookwyrm family, tucked away in a reference section, he grew up uncharacteristically lonely. As was common, he was allowed to roam the archives as a hatchling, to develop his own sense of books and literature. He immediately latched onto romances—myths, love stories, poetry—and spent his youth working through that section of the library. He soon discovered a benefit to the eyes that wound down his body, and began to devour books at a faster and faster rate.

It was in the mythology section, immersed in ancient lyrics, that he stumbled across another fae. Their shared passion for the old stories sparked conversation, then fondness, then bloomed into an adolescent romance. As they wondered about the odds of them having met, their conversations turned to Bookwyrm society, and how divided it was. Together, they formed a plan to unite and preserve their species. His reading moved from fiction to non-fiction, as he began to study history and anthropology.

When he came of age, he took the name Romeo: he felt he could succeed where the tragic hero had failed, and balance his love with his duty. (The connotations of Rome didn't pass him by either. Something deep inside him dreamed of raising the secretive Bookwyrms to a level of the ancient empires.) His love, now called Andromeda, joined him in making their dream a reality.

It proved harder than they expected. Even with Romeo's formidable researching abilities, and Andromeda's ceaseless exploration of the archives, they were only gathering stray pieces of Bookwyrm society. He began to understand that their species, maybe by nature, was more solitary than communal, finding their companionship in small families and vast tomes. He fell into despair, watching his dreams flicker and die, scrap by scrap.

This was until Andromeda came back from one of her trips with hope glowing in her eyes. It had taken a while for her to realise, but she'd found a common thread between every Bookwyrm family she'd found: the names. Baffled he hadn't noticed it before, Romeo realised how strange it was that both he and Andromeda, and apparently every Bookwyrm, named themselves after a character. Hope restored in the idea of a collective Bookwyrm culture, they began their work anew.

Romeo now understood that the any means of connecting the species would have to work around their already isolated tendencies. With Andromeda, he began to work out systems of letters and notes that could be left throughout the archives. Andromeda was happy to pass on these ideas to the network of families. She also took it upon herself to oversee the namings, giving them a ceremonial aspect to aid their preservation.