[Closed] Expecting the Worst

[Tom Cooke]

Deventry • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
ow can you look forward to somewhere you’ve never been?

He grunted after a moment, as if to say, That’s fair. A cursory bow and some awkward maneuvering took them round a gaggle of trussed-up ladies who wouldn’t, for some reason, walk single file; when they fell back into step, he’d thought about it more, and Cerise was speaking again.

A carriage skidded by, tossing a spray of water on them. It was one of those flooding days, he thought admiringly, resisting the urge to grin and laugh again. On heavy days like this, you couldn’t help getting wet; it didn’t matter if you were a queen in a covered litter, swathed in curtains, something would get wet.

He wished, suddenly, he could fold up the umbrella and leave it behind. It was cold rain, he reckoned, nothing like the warmer rains of Hamis; he still missed when the tilting of the weather didn’t ache in all his joints, when he didn’t feel – and look – like a drenched weasel for taking a walk in the rain. It wasn’t the walks in the rain he missed the most, and he thought he’d’ve given them up, just to have some of the rest back. But he missed when the rain had made him feel clean; nothing made him feel clean, now. It was just one step after another deeper into the mire.

He smiled anyway when Cerise turned to scowl after the coach, though he hid it well as she turned back. He dared another sideways glance when she said, We haven’t traveled much, though he didn’t linger for long, and he couldn’t see her face with the tilt of her umbrella and the cloud of her hair.

You spent some time in Bastia, didn’t you? When you were a boch. He didn’t want to ask; the bundle in her cloak already toed the line named Mama, and he didn’t know what else that question could unfold into. He was supposed to have spent time in Bastia, too, for all she knew. He wondered, his eyes on the rain-slick stones, how much she did know.

The back of his neck prickled. As if in tentative answer to his wondering, the physical mona drifted deeper in their mingling. He felt the sharp edge of her curiosity; he might’ve cut himself on that blade – might still.

It was nothing like the comfortable mingling with Ezre or with Nkemi. He wondered for the first time what it’d been like to caprise Anatole. If Dr. Arushi and all the careful-hid smiles behind hands – at balls, at teas, in the halls of the Council – if all the polite comments about his returning field, not-quite-right, spoke true, he thought it must’ve been nothing like this. He wondered if Cerise had ever had a comfortable caprise with her father after she’d gone off to Brunnhold, or if he’d held his strong perceptive field separate.

The back of his neck still prickled, but he smiled over at her. “Nothing’s old hat to me, these days,” he said with a crooked-wry smile, aching with the honesty of it.

His smile twitched, and he looked back down at the sidewalk.

“I want to see something different, too. I think.” He shrugged, frowning. “A month or more in such a different kingdom is going to be damned strange. I’ll be occupied well enough, and so will you” – a tiny grin – “but I already half feel as if I’ve stepped into a strange kingdom, this last…”

They paused at a street corner; he looked either way, through the rain slanting steadily down, then over at Cerise as they stepped over the stream of water along the curb and into the street. “Not that I’m in the least bit apprehensive,” he pronounced with all his politician’s dignity, lifting his chin and setting his jaw.

He let his own caprise drift deeper. He let go some of the hold on his field, let it loosen at the edges, blend and blur; like an exhale, a little shiver of worry and sadness went through it, and he let them.

He got the funniest urge to apologize for it, for all of it, which didn’t make any sense. She’d hated her father; she didn’t give a damn about him, either, or where he went, or what he did, or how he felt. This was all, he knew still at his heart, a ploy in one way or another. And he was a thing that had done what it could to survive; he couldn’t apologize for that, ever.

With his jaw still stubborn-set and his face a professional frown, his field gave a little pulse against hers, just as curious.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Deventry, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

Her mood was a little soured by thinking about the travel and the strangeness, and from being drenched by the coach that had gone by. Not that she hadn't been steadily accumulating water on her person as they walked through the rain anyway; she was a little worried about the books when they finally did reach their destination. It was really the lack of consideration that bothered her, and she had scowled at that the same way she had scowled at the gaggle of women who seemed to feel the need to occupy the entire sidewalk.

Cerise kept half an eye on him as they continued, difficult as it was through the tangle of her hair and the angle of their umbrellas. Enough to see him smile someone else's smile, declaring that nothing was old hat these days. She hummed some noise that could have been agreement or disbelief. If there was a smile in her to return, she couldn't find it before he looked down at the sidewalk and away from her face.

What have you been seeing that you need a break from, this last year? In this strange kingdom--what has been so displeasing as you need to leave it? Cerise tried to find some soothing thread in the "month" but mostly heard the "or more". You don't have to lie to me like that, she thought sourly. We all know. We can all tell. It wasn't as if she wanted him home, not really. It just felt strange that he never was, and that she wasn't allowed to be, and that all of this was just supposed to seem--fine. Like nobody was going to comment on it, and act like nothing was happening.

The step from the curb almost misfired and put her straight in the stream of water; she was distracted by a sudden urge to laugh. Not in the least apprehensive--yes, that seemed true, with the way he said it out loud from a tilted jaw set tight and dignified. She thought she recognized the action well enough; she did the same thing herself. That made her feel sour in her stomach again, but it was the laughter that showed on her face.

The whole time he was talking they were heading down the sidewalk, and their fields had not pulled apart. She hadn't known what to say, even though she had pushed a little harder before she could stop herself. There was something like sadness in his after; she couldn't quite keep the confusion out of hers, or the ache. She had never done this before, and didn't quite know why she was doing it now.

The pulse made her look over at his perpetual frown. "Why?" she asked simply, finally, her voice frustrated. It wasn't the best way to put the question. It was hardly even a full question, but no matter how he took it she thought she could have meant it that way so she let it stand the way it was.

This wasn't comfortable, at all. It was, in fact, deeply the opposite. Although that seemed natural enough; she didn't think she'd ever really been comfortable with any part of her father's presence since she was very small. Even then, it was hard to say if "comfortable" was quite the right word.

[Tom Cooke]

Deventry • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

T
he last thing she did was laugh, before they crossed the street; now, she’d been silent long enough his thoughts began lapping at each other, strange old fish swimming too close to the surface of the water. There wasn’t much to look at except for the pounding rain and the passing facades, much like on the last four, and the stones beneath their feet, for all they’d both already soiled their hems.

The air, for him, was full of colors. Not just his own. When he breathed in, he felt hers, too, bleeding into his, so strong he could barely smell the rain.

It wasn’t only curiosity; it was confusion, too, and a sinking, twisting ache of a color he had no name for. It cut the tongue of all his protests. They writhed about voiceless in the pit of his stomach; his own confusion pressed back, flicker-yellow-shift, and his heart tightened. He felt them reflecting each other, the physical and clairvoyant mona pushing each other like the same pair of hands on different sides of a mirror.

No, the rain did not make him feel clean. His socks were soiled and his hems were heavy, and all his skin felt clammy and prickling.

He felt heavier with it. Why? he thought, trying to bear the weight of looking at it. There was no other way, with what had bled out into her field. Why in hell are you doing this? He felt, not for the first time, as if he were being horribly cruel. He looked aside at Cerise, whose pointed nose was downcast, whose face was indectal through the billowing of her hair.

Why? she asked.

His eyes snapped away, down toward his own slick shoes. His frown deepened. A muscle twitched in his jaw. This was a smaller, quieter street; there were no giggling ladies to pass, or dignified gentlemen waiting for coaches. There was nothing else to keep him from answering. Why are you impersonating my father? Who, she might’ve asked, are you?

I don’t know, he thought, I don’t know, I don’t know. He blinked. There was a raw prickle in his eyes. He took a deep breath that might’ve been a sniff; he grit his teeth harder and raised up his face, stared into the rain as if his eyes weren’t reddening. He blinked; no tears welled, and no tears fell.

He steadied his breath. Why, he thought instead, are you going to Thul Ka? No, she knew the answer to that, or at least any he could give – the Symvoul shifts, and I must go with it. He wouldn’t patronize her with that. The thought made his stomach twist.

What, then? The field?

This? All of it?

He took another deep breath in, fighting down another wave of warm prickling behind his eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it.” He tilted his umbrella so he could keep half an eye on her profile. “I wish I could,” he added, “because that’s a coward’s talk, and you deserve better.”

Did she? Again, all his protests – still tongueless – why? He didn’t know that he could turn the question back on her, now that she’d asked it. Why did you come to the museum? he might ask. Why did you ask me to lunch? she might ask in return. Why did you accept? Why did you send me the letter? Why did you respond? Why did…

“Warding speaks to me,” he added instead, taking a deep breath. No tears, still; the warm prickling was gone. “It’s good for monic reconciliation. Taking the time to draw the lines and hold the upkeep. I might’ve once said differently” – more than that; horrified, thinking of the nightmares he used to have about monite – “but I like it.”

It wasn’t too far from the book shop. “You didn’t have to respond to my letters,” he said, and found he could smile over at her. I’m grateful you did, he thought to say, but held it at the back of his tongue. Soft, he thought irritatedly. He didn’t ask why, either, for all the curious tilt in his field; he just smiled and looked back toward the street.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Deventry, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

There were a lot of easy ways to take her question, or at least to answer it. She wondered if her father would pick one of those. Cerise had rather expected so; she was irritated to find that she didn't think she'd pursue it if he did. She held what she hoped was a neutral face. How well he could read her field she didn't know--everything else was sideways, so why not that too? She hoped not well. She had always been rather poor at keeping herself out of it.

The question had been very simple, and Cerise wasn't prepared for the way he acted when she asked. There was a sound that might have been a sniff, but she couldn't be sure. And it was cold, after all. Her own nose was red from it. That was all it could possibly have been, if anything at all.

"Do I?" Cerise asked and frowned, not sure how to take the declaration of cowardice. She raised her dark eyebrows in disbelief. For all that, she was willing to believe he was at least moderately sincere, if only because it was such a bizarre thing for him to have said otherwise. Evasive, but not particularly diplomatic or glib. And also because this was, perhaps, the easiest of the versions of the question to answer. Which wasn't disappointing, because it had just been what she'd expected.

Reconciliation was an interesting thing to need. She turned it over in her mind without commenting. She did not know that the mona were in the habit of being upset with those who had suffered some kind of medical issue. At least, not to her knowledge, although she did barely pay attention in her introductory living lectures. Perhaps it had come up then, and she'd missed it. That seemed like the sort of thing that would have grabbed her attention, but who really knew. What she knew of the living conversation, she knew even less about warding beyond what she needed to know. There was not much need, she found, in the sorts of matches she was in.

"Maybe you would have," she said evenly. Longing for a weight at her shoulders that wasn't there. She glanced at him, and then away again. "I don't think I'd know." If it was a barb, it felt like a lament; if it was a lament, it was probably too sharp. The wrong shape either way.

When she looked over again, he wasn't looking at her, but he was no longer frowning either. A corner of her mouth twitched. She didn't know what he would have said a year ago, or two, or ten. But she supposed she knew the answer now, and that was all she could ask for really.

"I almost didn't," she said and shrugged. Honest and simple. "I hadn't really expected you to respond to mine, afterwards. But, well... I really do like Mircalla. It would be a shame if you never found a copy to read yourself." Less honest, that time. But about as close as she thought she could get, even in an empty street. A small smile stayed on her face, too soft for her to even have noticed it was there. "Besides, it was fun."

She cleared her throat, embarrassed. The bookstore had to be close, she thought. Either it was close, or they were lost and meandering around Deventry in the rain for nothing. Privately, she wondered that both seemed equally acceptable.

[Tom Cooke]

Deventry • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

N
o, he thought, staring through the rain, you wouldn’t, would you? He just managed to suppress the shiver that’d begun to crawl the length of him. He knew what she meant well enough, or he thought he did, at any rate. However well you think you knew him, he thought, however angry you are at him, I think you knew him well enough to know I’m not him.

Or did she?

He kept his chin up and his eyes ahead, as if to look aside or move a muscle would break the spell. Halfway down the quiet street, he could see it. There was no shopfront to speak of; the facade might well’ve been a townhouse’s. Only a flimsy wooden sign, hung on one of the blue-painted front doors, redirected any would-be visitors to the side entrance of Aveline’s Books. He could see it now, though it was only a dark shape against another dark shape at a distance.

Wherever the sun had been the quarter of an hour ago, it was out of sight now. The sky was darkening steadily, and warm lights glowed from inside apartments and cafes on either side, phosphor and oil.

He stepped to the curb. The spell had broken with neither of them any the wiser; he was laughing, then, even as she cleared her throat. “It was fun,” he agreed, rather unabashed, snorting. “I had to look up the word coruscating.”

He looked this way and that for coaches that seldom went down this avenue. There were none this time of the evening, much less other people.

He could finally look at her as they stepped into the street; he thought there might’ve been something like a smile on her face, but he couldn’t be sure. It was more like the memory of a smile, he thought; it was as if he’d missed the smile, and caught only the dregs. He thought he might’ve liked to see that smile, and his stomach twisted again.

He turned it over in his head as they went. Pressing at the edges was the thought of her offering him the book, of her saying Mama’s first in writing, and now in person. Of the sharp, watchful gaze he’d felt prickling at one side of his face, off and on. He felt sure there was something he’d been meant to say and hadn’t.

He still didn’t, he reminded himself, know what she wanted. Their fields were still mingling, merging softly at the edges, sharing flickers of color. He could still feel the echoes of that bitter ache.

So what, he thought – she had problems with her da. That didn’t mean she wasn’t angling for something else; that didn’t mean all this vodundun wouldn’t peel away in its time, to reveal what she was really after.

The door to Aveline’s proper was tucked into a small alleyway. It wasn’t bottom of the spice rack by any means; if anything, the side door was even more quaint, with a small diamond-shaped window and Circle statues set into niches beside the stair-steps. The windows on the front were dark and slick, but the window beside the side door was cluttered with a leafy potted plant and a row of books, spines facing tastefully outward.

Under the tiny awning, he folded up his umbrella and shook it out. The door jingled a bell when he opened it; he stepped inside, then held the door for her. It was dim, though a few lamps were lit on tables and on the unattended counter. The shelves were close-set and labyrinthine, packed with books, and the floor was a riot of carpets. It was warmer in here; he took off Anatole’s long coat, hanging it on the rack.

“This is where I went looking for Mircalla first,” he said softly; his voice seemed suddenly loud in the muffled quiet. “The collection’s – eclectic.” He hung by the door a moment, waiting for the rainwater to drip off.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

The sun disappeared, they stepped off the curb together, and her father laughed in a way she'd never heard him do until this month. A knot in her chest loosened. So he'd had to look up "coruscating"--Cerise resolved never to tell him that she'd had to do the same when the letter came. The moment called for it, but her pride wouldn't quite allow it. A flicker of warmth went through her anyway.

The street they were on was so quiet, it seemed unlikely to contain a shop of any kind. All of the buildings around them looked like townhouses. She thought--maybe we really are lost, and he just won't tell me. But they got closer and she could see in the dimness a shape that seemed like it might resolve into a sign if she kept staring at it. A sign or just a shadow; from where she was standing it was hard to tell the difference.

It wasn't that she felt any better. Cerise thought it over and decided: no, she didn't feel any better. The questions that hadn't been answered still lingered. The prickle that came with them lingered too, but it was easier to set them aside and think about the bookstore and writing letters. They were personal, but only just. Not too much. There was probably more risk in the way she left their fields all tangled together, heavy and light mixed.

The shadow did become a sign, in the end. So they weren't lost after all--she just couldn't see where they were going. For a moment she couldn't find the door, but her father turned down an alley and there it was. Sort of cute, hidden in among all the houses on the street like a secret. The statues set into the steps made her smile, along with the potted plant in the window.

She waited under her red umbrella, stepping to the side and studying the little statues while he shook his out under the awning. There wasn't quite enough room for the both of them to do it at once, at least not comfortably. Their shoulders would have to have been almost close enough to touch. She waited until she heard the jingle of the door's bell and then trotted up under the awning.

Rainy days were not ideal for visiting bookstores, really. Despite her umbrella, her cloak and boots were wet. Cerise was a little concerned she would damage the books, especially in so tight-fit a maze as the shelves were arranged into. She took off her thick, dark cloak and hung it on the rack next to her father's coat. She tapped her boots against the carpet by the door, trying to get off the excess water.

"I'm a little surprised you couldn't find it," she commented idly while she looked around. Her voice seemed too loud in the hush of the unattended store. She shook anything she might have felt about that off along with the rain. "If it's so eclectic a collection." After a moment she brushed by him and went deeper into the shop.

The organization of the shelves was not immediately apparent. Alphabetical by author, she thought--but then sections seemed to start over with no clear label of what the difference was. The whole place smelled of paper and dust and bookbinding glue. Sish staying home was good on more than one level; the little miraan would have had a field day in here. Aveline's proprietor would likely not have felt the same.

"What made you send me the other book, the one you did find here?" The question came as she walked slowly by the shelves, running eyes and fingers over each one of the spines in turn. She forced a kind of casual air into it. She did not ask if or why he was thinking of her, specifically.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e’d set himself diligent about his shaking off of the umbrella, then his buttoning of the tie, then his opening and holding of the door. If he was watching her, if he saw the small smile on her face as she took in the little statues of Alioe and Hurte and swirling Hulali, of tree-branched Vulker and more, scattered with offerings of tiny damp things in bowls, he showed no sign of it. He kept his jaw set, a professional enough frown on his face, his back straight.

As he hung his umbrella and his coat, he didn’t look at her, not directly. Nor did he look at her coat, or the weight that tugged one dripping side toward the floor, disrupted the woolen folds. She was kicking off her boots; he was scuffling his on the ratty doorway-carpet, fussing and tching at the damp pinch of his socks.

At her question, he finally looked up.

These lamps were oil lamps, not phosphor; the waver of it, the smell, was part of why he’d taken to Aveline’s. That, and Aveline herself, Miss Berjeau, the spinster with her barely-dasher perceptive field that did not bother him so badly.

(He hadn’t yet told Cerise, of course, that she didn’t know him as Incumbent, or even as Anatole; he supposed the lass would have her laugh when the dagka came out and recognized him. Or maybe she wouldn’t, judging by the look on her face when her Alain kov had called her Miss Vauquelin. Or maybe she would, after all, all the more because she understood, and it was a knife she’d the right to twist a pina manna.)

The soft yellow light cast deep, rich shadows in her dark hair, and deeper shadows in her face. As she moved past him, it sparked in one pale grey iris; he watched her move into the shadow of a shelf, her sharp chin lifted, one pale hand tracing its fingers across battered spines.

He had some more drying-off to do, given the puddle he’d stepped in. He wondered that his socks would be seeping through the soles of his shoes all night. “She may’ve had it, at one point,” he said, lifting his chin to scan the thicket of shelves. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Or it may be here, somewhere. I’ve not a damned clue how many books are on these shelves, and there’s more upstairs. She told me she’d sold her last copy, but I wouldn’t be so sure.”

She had disappeared into the shadow of a shelf; all he could see was a few stray dark curls, and then nothing. He heard her voice, then, drifting down the aisle, floating across the spines.

He sucked at a tooth, stepping off of the carpet. If he tracked, he didn’t think Miss Berjeau would mind. “When the Wicked Lie Still in Vita?” he asked, as casual-like as she’d drifted among the books, as if he didn’t know.

“I read the description in the cover,” he said after a moment. “Based on Mircalla, it seemed like something you’d like. I know it’s not the first in the series,” he added, lips twisting, “not by a long shot, but I couldn’t find the first.”

The titles he skimmed now weren’t much different. He ran a shaky fingertip over the words Of Blood and Chalk, over a rumple of water damage and a twisted knot in the spine. In the gaps above the books, he saw more books – he looked down, and up, and down, and then once, he caught a flash of grey eyes, and his own crinkled in something like a mischievous smile. He moved in the other direction, eyes flicking up to the highest shelf.

His field still mingled with hers; he had not backed down, not even now. “Alexandra, the heroine of that one – she reminded me of you.” Still fair casual; he shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. “Just from the description. Tough lass who chooses the rules she plays by. I didn’t read any of it, but I had a feeling. I half wondered if you’d already heard of it.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

For someone who only rarely managed to attend her classes--and even then only in body and much less in spirit--Cerise loved bookstores. She loved books, really, just not the kind she had to read for school. Even the ones she did enjoy she didn't like reading for school. Classes seemed to drain some vitality out of them. It was perhaps, she thought sourly, having to listen to her classmates reading haltingly out loud. Or having to stay on the chapter of the book the class was discussing, remembering what was foreshadowing and what had already happened, when all she wanted to do was get to the end and think about it all at once.

Safe behind her wall of shelves, Cerise grinned. If there was a copy of Mircalla here, it would likely be well-hidden. And if there wasn't--well. Cerise felt it weighing down the bag at her side. She had planned rather to give it to him the moment they entered the shop. Then there would be no reason to linger; goal accomplished. She could go home, or to her dorm room at least. Home, maybe, in a few weeks. Once he'd left it, and she was allowed in it again.

Cerise kept walking slowly through the aisles, her eyes skipping over titles and authors. She wasn't really looking for anything, honestly. She had plenty of books to read in her room. He had, after all, just given her a box of them. The lack of mystery of why she was here anyway was something she chose not to examine right now.

He was still at the door. Probably trying to dry off more before he stepped further inside. Cerise hadn't the patience for it, and it seemed a useless venture besides. With all the rain coming dow out there? Fit to drown, that's what it was. They were lucky they weren't completely waterlogged. She heard his voice come drifting back to her from somewhere in the store.

"That's the one," she called back, making no effort to find him again properly nor to pull away. A comfortable distance, if they had such a thing. She had barely looked at it. That, of all of them, seemed the most personal addition. The others had been promised to her, but When the Wicked Lie Still in Vita hadn't been in the promise. That he had chosen to give to her without prompting, and Cerise didn't know why that tied her heart into a neat little knot. Circle preserve, she did miss having someone to talk to at times like these. And whose fault was that?

So what was she doing here, exactly?

Something she'd like. How would you know what I'd like? she wanted to shoot back. Except she kind of thought he was right--it had rather seemed liked something she'd enjoy. A series she'd heard of, but not yet gotten around to reading. Their eyes met across the shelves once. She thought there was a smile there, before he moved in the opposite direction. Cerise paused for a moment, her hand on the spine of what appeared to be a romance, next to a crime novel--then kept on in the direction she had been headed before.

"Is that what you think I am?" she raised her voice so he could hear her still, casual as can be. "I've heard of the series," she continued. Hesitated. "But I've not read any of them. Not that one. I look forward to it."

"Tough lass who chooses the rules she plays by" sounded a fair sight better than "impossible child" or, even simpler, "Cerise". She would have bet money--she would have bet her life before this moment that her father thought of her as the latter. It was a complicated sort of feeling, hearing the other. Does Cerise Vauquelin prefer to fight with her fists? The question echoed through her head again, a feeling she couldn't quite shake.

"Were you looking for anything specific today?" she asked carefully, calling out again as she approached the end of the aisle. She walked more slowly than she would have if she were alone. Not, she thought, because her father was walking the other way and she wasn't quite ready to move out of range of leaving their fields intermingled as they were. Even though it wasn't comfortable in the least. She was, at least, growing somewhat accustomed to it.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

T
hese reminded him more of the books she’d liked to read. At least, the ones she’d tucked under hama’s sofa when she was thirteen or fourteen. Some, of course, had been bafflingly boring – he’d never been able to figure why she was so interested in the biology of sea creatures, and he’d sure as hell never asked – others, he thought he’d’ve liked to read, if he could’ve. A few of them’d had pictures like the ones in Mircalla, such that he’d sat on the couch with them open in his lap, trying to piece together the story from the prints when he’d got tired of trying to sound out the words.

Cerise was a voice on the other side of the shelf. He’d lost track of her; he could feel her caprise at the edge of his, but any farther down and she’d’ve been out of range.

“I suppose so,” he replied after a moment, sounding for once genuinely bewildered. “I suspect,” he added slowly, “neither of the two of us knows what the other is.”

Her voice had been airy and flippant, and he couldn’t tell if he’d offended or pleased her. He suspected that wasn’t new, either.

He smiled to himself when she spoke again. Let me know what you think, he thought to say, and then swallowed a lump, and then caught something in the wrong windpipe. He let out a muffled cough and cleared his throat, sniffing. He scowled professionally at the novel at eye-level and read the word Blossom a few times, not knowing what it meant, or that it was a word at all.

To have something to do with his hands, he slid the novel out. It was one of those that still had its paper cover, intact if chipping and cloth-soft. The front was a flurry of faded, brightly-colored blooms, with the title in a pretty script. It was less scandalous and less ridiculous both than some of what he’d found last he’d been in, but he knew the type well enough.

The Blossom in Snow, he mouthed, smoothing the cover over the rough twisted spine. “No,” he replied, glancing up over the tops of the books; he saw only more books on the other side. “Just thought you might like the place. There’s room upstairs to sit and smoke, and I won’t be surprised if Miss Berjeau – that’s Aveline – tries to bring us tea before this is over.”

He opened the book, turned over a few pages. Again, blocks of blurry type; he squinted and a letter came into focus. He felt a familiar dizzy ache begin to bloom at the base of his skull. He took out his reading-glasses and settled them on his nose; he wasn’t sure why. He skimmed a few lines, but even though he knew well enough what the words meant, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on them. All he could focus on was the field just brushing the edge of his, never quite out of range.

“I think I found a copy of Tales From Near and Far here,” he said, without knowing why. Mama, he thought again. “What do you...”

He paused, then took one step, then two, in the direction of the field. “I haven’t read much like this,” he said. “Stories about – different places, and gods, and things like the undead. Why do you like them?”

He shut The Blossom; somehow, he didn’t think she much liked romance. But he wasn’t sure what she much liked, after all.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

Cerise lingered in the aisle, re-reading the spines of a few books. She didn't know what to make of that statement. You know what I am, she thought, I'm your daughter. You've known me all my life. Except perhaps lately--so maybe he was right. The thought made her heart ache. Maybe they never really had.

At the edge of the range of her father's field now, Cerise pulled a book off the shelf. It was hard-bound and the named had worn off the spine; it had just been printed on top, and not embossed at all. Without the paint, both title and author were a mystery. She heard a muffled cough followed by a sniff, and was very briefly concerned. She still didn't know what it was that had caused the stroke in the first place; she suspected nobody did. "His health" was all anyone ever said. She squashed it down; her concern was not wanted. Remember?

"I wouldn't complain. Unless you smoke." Her smile spread across her face before she could stop it. She did like it here. Actually, she was surprised he did--and she frowned. Just how often was he here, to know it so well? And since when? Had that been before, or was it a recent phenomenon? The barrier of spines kept her expressions safe, and let her keep looking at the book she had pulled from it. If she glanced over the tops of them and back the other way, she could just barely see the edge of her father's face.

It was a crime novel, the black book. And one she had read before; she thought it was a little dull, but it had been an easy enough read she couldn't begrudge it much. Cerise flipped through the copy she held, if only because her alternative was to turn the corner and move to the next aisle.

What did she...? He started to ask her the question and then stopped. Cerise frowned, about to complain, when she felt him step a little closer. More comfortably in range. Like he'd been trying not to move away, either. That was a complicated sort of feeling as well, pleased and annoyed and sad all at once. Did you buy it? I won't lend you that one; that one was more important than the Mircalla, although she couldn't have said why. She touched her hand to the bag at her side.

"Why?" The question surprised her, and it came out in her voice. She didn't often get asked, not in a way that seemed like the asker genuinely wanted the answer. Emiel had asked, and she wasn't sure he understood her answer but she'd felt like--she didn't want to think about it. "They're interesting."

No, that wasn't a very good answer. That was the answer she gave classmates and mildly interested professors. An answer that didn't invite more questions. Her face creased into a sharp frown as she thought, a little notch forming between her brows. The crime novel--Murder in King's Court--was still open, but the words seemed distant and meaningless.

"Because they're honest," she said at last, slowly. "Some of them are just fun, but... I like them best when they have something more to say. Using the lens of the fantastical to say something very real--a prism, so aspects of the truth can be seen more clearly." Cerise blushed lightly, closing Murder in King's Court with a snap. "Or something like that. Maybe I just like gruesome stories about monsters." She shrugged, even though he couldn't see her.

"Why do you like your books? The poetry I mean." She looked up, and she could see him just through the space between the shelves.