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Cordelia Alcott // Athena (_athena) wrote in greek_swim,
@ 2008-12-06 00:09:00

Entry tags:

anteros, athena

Athena/Cordelia and Anteros/Linus: Tomb By The Sounding Sea
who. Athena/Cordelia and Anteros/Linus
when. Evening of December 5th.
where. The bookstore Cordelia works at in Thission.
what. A debate/conversation about love.
rating. I seriously doubt this will go over PG. Maybe PG-13 if there's some language, but it's worksafe.
status. Complete.

Old Althea Halkias had gone home for the evening, leaving Cordelia in charge of the bookstore. It was kind of a relief to have the old lady who ran the store gone, since she really did like to tell Cordelia how much she "reminded her of herself" back when she was young. That would not have been so terrible if Althea was not a sixty-five year old spinster lady who thought it fashionable to wear a purple hat and leopard-print pants, and had just gone home because it was time for her to bathe her cat and sing to her parrot.

The bookstore was small, and not exactly in the centre of town. In fact, it was quite amazing that thy managed to pull in any business at all, let alone that Althea had been running it for twenty-eight years. Cordelia was half-tempted to pack up and go home early, but then she would have felt guilty for being dishonest. So, instead she got up and wandered around the store in search of some book to pass the time. At least here she had time alone with books, so it was well worth it.

She perused the rows of books, looking for something that seemed interesting to her. There was always something that seemed interesting to her: Cordelia seemed to be under the impression that there was something to learn from every word ever written, and so it was her task to read them all. But still, she stopped off in her regular section, as no matter what she wanted to read, she always had to check out the essentials of William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and Oscar Wilde first. Today's choice was a large leather-bound anthology of the works to Edgar Allen Poe. As usual, she flipped first to the poem Annabel Lee. She was never able to think of any reason in the world why she loved that poem so much, but it effected her every time she read it.

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anteros_
2008-12-06 12:40 am UTC (link)

Today’s location was a mystery to Linus; meaning he knew it was –here- he just didn’t know where –here- was. He supposed that was to be expected in any foreign country. After a few more weeks he was sure he would be used to the city. There was no better time than right now to go and look for a bookstore. He figured he had about an hour before he was expected back at the site of the shooting. The actress that had been cast for the lead always managed to turn fifteen-minute breaks into hour long ones, complaining the food here didn’t agree with her. Linus was surprised she hadn’t been fired yet, with her stuck up attitude and impossible demands.
He had been in Greece for only a couple of days, but the language barrier was proving to be an ever-growing annoyance. Linus did not expect that he would become fluent in the language during the time they were filming, but he at least wanted to know how to say the basics. Right now he couldn’t even say a simple hello.
He was thrilled when he saw a display of books in the window of a shop; he hadn’t even been looking that long. The shop was small, but it had that familiar ‘old book store’ smell that he had grown used to from the bookstores he frequented in Seattle. Without taking a step further into the store he found a display of books for those people who needed the simple phrases. He snatched the book from the display and made his way to the counter.
This was when Linus noticed that there was no one in the store, save for him and the woman who was working. He smiled at the scene she presented to him. She seemed to be greatly involved in her reading, that or she was used to no one being in her. Or, it was a combination of both. Instead of slamming his book on the counter to demand the woman’s attention he stretched his neck to see what she was reading. His grin widened, he half expected to catch her reading some hip magazine, or at least some smutty romance novel, but Edgar Allen Poe? Not only was she beautiful, but also smart, and spoke English.
“Did you know, that there hasn’t been –one- film adaptation of Annabel Lee…but if I am mistaken and there has been, it wasn’t good enough for me to see it.”

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_athena
2008-12-06 12:58 am UTC (link)

As usual, Cordelia was lost in her reading. That always seemed to happen. It made little sense she had actually memorized the poem she was reading, but she just liked to look at the words on the page. Plus, she seemed to be under the impression that if she read different publishings of the same story or poem, that somehow someone would add one extra word somewhere that would unlock the mystery as to why the poem or story held such significance to her. She had done that with stories of the Greek Myths, and did that with a few other things as well; such as Annabel Lee.

She looked up quickly when the young man spoke to her. Yes, she had heard the door open and someone step in, but she had not even considered that the person would start talking to her...let alone have such an impact on her so suddenly. Cordelia knew that she had to have gawked at him for a few moments before speaking; which was quite odd for a girl who was starting to wonder if she was asexual. It was a feel of uncertainty combined with joy when she looked at him, and in several ways, it frightened her.

"Well, the poem really only captures a few months at the very most --which is a short time considering that the average person nowadays lives to be eighty-five. While this doomed youthful romance that is the basis for this poem fits well into six stanzas, it possibly does not have enough for a two hour long movie."

And then she felt as if she had been too harsh in saying such a thing, and felt a wave of guilt brush over her for somewhat mocking the relationship in the poem. That was certainly odd. Her voice softened as she spoke again, and somehow seemed more sad than before.

"What I mean is, their love was brief but impacting--just like this poem. It is perfect as it is; it doesn't need pictures or actors. It doesn't need to be changed at all from what it was...is."