InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Follow the butterflies..."

Ava Wright (avagardener) wrote in yegods,
@ 2012-03-19 20:16:00

Entry tags:

!log, avani wright, richard palmer

WHO Rick Palmer and Ava Wright
WHERE Alexandria Bookstore, Catacombs
WHEN March 19th, afternoon
RATING G
SUMMARY Regular patronage
STATUS Complete

Alexandria Bookstore in the Catacombs was a not particularly creatively named store tucked in between a falafel house and what appeared to be a pet store that sold mainly fish, but was indeed just another restaurant for an entirely different sort of being. The front of the bookstore had two large windows on either side of a wooden door, with each window holding a display of different old, worn leather books in a variety of languages, and a series of drawing of birds created by the owner’s four-year-old daughter Harriet, who liked peacocks. All movement in and out of the store was signaled by a sleighbell situated at the top of the door, which normally caused Ava’s head to come up and look, as she was usually the one seated at the somewhat Scrooge-ish desk and stool by the front. All customers passed her, all money went through her, and she could answer most inquires pertaining to the bookstore. If she could not find it, the scruffy young man in charge of shelving materials probably could. Emmett Franklin, the store’s owner, had an office in the back, but could often be seen moving about on the other side of closed shades, or heard talking to one or another of his five children on the phone.

Today Ava was working in the afternoon, sitting at her old Victorian desk and stool with a large, surprisingly new and colorful book sitting open in front of her and an orange highlighter in her hand. The orange highlighter was just for things she found in the book relating to school assignments. The yellow highlighter, which sat nearby, was for things she thought might be useful in the future. The Pink highlighter, slightly farther off, was for things she just thought were cool. A green highlighter was for words she did not know, or concepts she did not understand. That highlighter sat farthest from her book and was seldom used.

The sleighbell over the door tinkled in a way that still always made Ava think of Christmas, and she smiled warmly and placed the bookmark in her book and closed it, revealing it to have some ghastly title like ‘Integrated Marketing Communication.’

“Hello Mr Palmer,” she said, never entirely sure if she should address him by his rank instead. She was clearly not police (her clothes were too flattering) so she figured she could forgo his rank for now. “Emmett is in his office so it’s safe to come in. How may I assist you today?”

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avagardener
2012-03-20 03:14 am UTC (link)

"Well this is the Egyptian section," she said and pointed. "Though it mostly seems to be animals but you never know. This is the sort of general sacrifice books here, and then you have your..." she didn't want to say 'lesser,' pantheons could take that badly. "Other pantheons like the Aztec and Voodoo down here," again she gestured. "I would probably suggest maybe looking in the general books and seeing if you can find anything that could lead you find something you'd want to look into further among the rest of them."

Ava's boss had a general rule against browsing. 'We are not a library.' But he wasn't around and had no idea about customer service anyway. And at this point what was he going to do, fire her?

At the mention of her time Ava did swivel and look down the way they'd come. The shelving fellow was still around to help anyone that might need it, and she could hear the sleighbell from here. You could hear it from everywhere in the store. "I have time," she said, only briefly thinking about having homework to do.

She walked over to the other shelf and looked over the books. Her attention went immediately to the Shinto section, and she pulled out a book with the spine tied together. It was a book on yokai, and while it was in Japanese and she had to flip through it from left to right, she recognized a lot of the creeps and monsters. Including the one that had sliced her father's face open.

Ava turned and looked at Rick, showing him the book. "This is me. I get these guys."

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strukbylytning
2012-03-20 03:30 am UTC (link)

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," he agreed as he reluctantly looked at the general books. It was just going to be time-consuming, and he didn't really feel like he had a lot of time. Three days and no leads. None at all. Truthfully, now that he thought about it, Voodoo and Aztec seemed pretty likely. Aztec especially had a solid foundation in the human sacrifice area. Still, he picked up one of the general books and started flipping through it. It would be better for him to know he had a good source before he bought it - it would be a waste of time for him to come back to return it if it was completely useless.

Rick was so engrossed in what he was doing, or at least thinking about how much there was to analyze, that at first Ava's words didn't make sense. He stared at her blankly. 'This is me?' Ava wasn't a monster. "Oh!" he suddenly said as the answer dawned on him. "Shinto! You're Shinto?" he asked curiously.

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avagardener
2012-03-20 04:05 am UTC (link)

She nodded. "Inari adopted me, but for some reason the children of Inari get attacked by yokai a lot," she explained, looking back at the book and flipping through it, sort of making a mental tally of the yokai she had fought, some just seen out of the corner of her eye. Ones that were easy to defeat, some that were trickier. Some that, oh boy, she had not met that one yet and hoped she never would. She grimaced a little and looked away from it back up to him.

"There are actually less of these in New York than Hawaii, since Hawaii is closer to Japan. I only get attacked about one every two weeks now. They sort of eat demigods if they get the chance, if that is what you're looking for," she said. But then she looked down at the book. "Oh, well, unless you know Japanese not this book..." Ava herself did not know Japanese, though she had tried, but it seemed like a shame since the book looked like a good resource.

She thought she might be better help if she knew why he was looking for these things, but a part of her wasn't sure she wanted to know, and she knew for certain it wasn't any of her business. Customers were customers and she was just there to provide a service to help them find information and entertainment they were looking for. She was still curious though, it was horribly annoying.

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strukbylytning
2012-03-20 04:22 am UTC (link)

Rick knew very little about Shinto, or any of the Asian mythologies, to be honest. He didn't precisely know what a yokai was, but it sounded like a demon or evil spirit as best as he could figure. And then Rick almost stumbled, even though he wasn't moving.

"Attacked? Ava, these things attack you?" Rick's face was lined with concern. And he never used her first name, even though he knew it. He always afforded her the same level of formality she showed him. Except, the gravity of the situation made him lose the formal address - he was very worried for this young woman now, and had completely pushed his original reason for being here from his mind.

'Eat demi-gods...' Um, yes, that was the thing he was looking for. Still, he hesitated a moment before returning to his original search. He wasn't going to drop this thing about Ava's safety, and made a mental note to return to it before leaving the shop.

"Do any of them prefer the liver to other body parts?" he asked, a bit uneasily. It was such a disturbing question. Though, now he was pretty sure that his estimation of Ava's life was pretty far off. If it was such a regular occurrence... disturbing things were probably not so shocking to her.

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avagardener
2012-03-20 03:49 pm UTC (link)

She nodded, rather matter-of-factly about the whole thing. Yokai had been attacking her, after all, for eleven years by now and she had not gotten eaten yet. "And sort of follow me, but like I said there are less here... so it's actually been awhile," her eyebrows furrowed as she set the book back in its proper place and went trying to find one in English.

Her attention went back to him at the mention of the liver. She narrowed her eyes slightly, wondering what exactly he was up to, but again realizing it was not any of her concern and she was just a very good businesswoman helping a client. But she had to think, because yokai was one of the things she happened to know a lot about.

"There is a kind called kappa which are thought to eat livers. And rape women. They live in the water," she said and looked at him, thinking. New York City must get more than its fair share of odd murders, and if you added the godly element and the things walking around that normal people could not see, well... he was likely to come across all sorts of things.

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strukbylytning
2012-03-20 08:32 pm UTC (link)

Rick continued to watch Ava with grave concern, all the more so because she was so matter-of-fact about it. Having creatures trying to kill you shouldn't be an everyday part of life. Not for someone so... good. Not that, that really seemed to matter. Bad things happened to good people all the time, but Rick still could wish that the world didn't work like that, or maybe that someday it wouldn't.

He caught her scrutinizing look and sighed. "I'm sorry Miss Wright, but I can't tell you why I'm looking for this information. Just... as disturbing as it is, it is important."

"Kappa," he repeated. Well, Mr. Canonici was not a woman, nor was the body found near water, but that didn't mean that he hadn't run into such a creature. Especially since the body had been moved.

"Thank you," he said, as she continued to look, returning to his own search for the appropriate books.

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avagardener
2012-03-21 12:46 am UTC (link)

He was standing over Ava's left shoulder, which she didn't really realize until he spoke to her and she had some trouble hearing him. She turned and managed to only really hear the last half, about the information being important. But she spent a lot of time not entirely hearing people and knew how to make up for the fact. She smiled. "I know. Everyone has their reasons for things, my job is not to be nosy and help you find it and try to get you to buy fancy bookmarks."

She nodded about the kappa, frowned slightly and turned back to the books. She frowned because kappa were actually her least favorite of all the kappa, except maybe some of the ones pictured in that book that she hadn't seen yet. Hawaii just seemed to have water everywhere, and kappa seemed to have an easier job of coming over from Japan. Ava had gotten a few of them good with her shovel.

"It is probably something horrible looking, whatever you're looking for. If it's a creature. The more horrible the things it does, the more horrible the creature looks, in my experience," she said and turned to look at him, both to not miss any possible response and to see if he'd had any luck.

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strukbylytning
2012-03-21 01:26 am UTC (link)

Rick smiled, and chuckled slightly. He appreciated her understanding and willingness not to press for details. He also appreciated her levity when he felt like he was bringing gloom with him over this research. "Well, I like the fancy bookmarks," he answered, smiling playfully. He did have a few actually. Correction - he had bought a few. Mostly to give as gifts. Little trinkets that made him think of someone.

Ava's words couldn't help but make him pause. "If only it worked that way with humans..." Sad to say, but the scariest creatures he met were humans, to be perfectly honest. There were few crimes he encountered that he could chalk up to divine interference, and that meant most of the crimes that crossed his desk were committed by humans. And the crimes were particularly heinous.

After his musings, he pulled a couple of books from where he'd lain them across the tops of other books. "I think I have a beginning," he said with a tentative smile. Reading pages of gruesome monster info wasn't really something to smile about.

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avagardener
2012-03-21 01:59 am UTC (link)

Ava had specified it only seeming to work with creatures. In humans and demigods she largely suspected it was the nicer looking ones that seemed to do the most damage. Ava thought a nice looking person was least likely to trigger all of those danger alarms that people have in their head. Oh, he's handsome, and tall, and well dressed, he should be trustworthy. And always a man, it seemed. Hm. Ava was glad she was going into business, where she new ahead of time that everyone was a wolf. She did not envy Rick his job.

She had moved on to Egyptian nasties when Rick said he had found a beginning. She set the book she'd been looking through back correctly on the shelf (or the boy that shelved things would have her head) and walked over to see what he had found. "Anything to help narrow your search?" she then paused. "If you'd like me to leave you to narrow your search in privacy you can just say so. We do take the privacy of our customers very seriously here. Well... at least I do." Ava planned to be a seamstress someday, a lot of that would involve keeping secrets for her customers. Namely their measurements.

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strukbylytning
2012-03-21 02:13 am UTC (link)

Now wait a minute... It was not always a man. Rick would protest that. Also, her description of the suspicious man could well have fit him, when it came down to it. And Rick was actually lucky in that, despite what he saw day to day, he was somehow able to maintain an optimistic outlook when it came to human beings, and human decency. Too many of his fellow officers were too jaded to have any sort of expectation when it came to human behavior.

Rick smiled when she asked about narrowing down the search. Picking up one of the books, he flipped to the back where the index was. "It occurred to me..." he began, and pointed to the entry reading 'liver'. "It's a lot easier than trying to skim through all the passages." It meant also that books without indexes were automatically knocked off his list, and it was certainly likely that not every book with a liver-eating monster listed liver in its index. Still, it was a place to start.

"No, Miss Wright, you've been very helpful. I'm thankful," he insisted with a broad smile. Now he might actually find something!

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avagardener
2012-03-21 02:27 am UTC (link)

She smiled back, and looked down at the word liver, which was... admittedly an odd thing to smile at. "Well in that case, aren't livers high in... something? Like doctors would suggest it to patients that had a deficiency in that. Perhaps the creature or person you are looking for craves whatever that is. Or..." she looked around, her eyes and mind scanning the book shelves around them, and thinking about what the store held beyond what she could immediately see.

"I am wondering if we have materials on the significance of certain body parts in the different pantheons." He had not mentioned livers earlier, so now she really had to think about it. "Maybe in our health section? The importance of different organs..." she set a finger on her mouth and thought, and then looked up at him to see what he thought. There were options here.

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strukbylytning
2012-03-21 02:56 am UTC (link)

"Iron. If you're anemic, which means you have low iron in your blood, that's what's recommended." He thought for a moment. That was a possibility. Of course, it meant he'd have to widen his search again, which was exactly the opposite direction he wanted to go on this. Oh God, this was frustrating. Outwardly, he merely frowned thoughtfully.

"That, too, could be important..." he admitted, inwardly ready to kick the whole thing into a fire and call it a day. He was more inclined to go with this second suggestion. The first was valid, but it was not likely that a creature that fed on iron would suddenly change to eating livers because it craved the mineral. It was more likely that someone was either trying to make a statement, or find a precious spell component. "Let's try that. Lead the way, please," he said, gesturing for her to do so, with an encouraging smile.

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