Eloise had a habit of wandering the library rather aimlessly. She rarely stayed in one place to sleep, instead choosing to stash her things in random lockers and corners depending on where the day took her. For the most part she "borrowed" and replaced books, reading them voraciously, often finishing one or two in a day if there was nothing else to be done. It was the kind of existence she would have envied as a child, but for an adult it was monotonous at best -- boring at worst.
And this was why she wandered. Sometimes it was to find people who needed help: mothers with too many children to watch, senior citizens unable to gather for themselves, injured men and women with no families left to care for them. She never went far from the Public Library anymore, but was outside more often than anyone would advise for a single person -- simply trying to feel useful, fill her time finding necessities for others. It was a quiet existence punctuated by moments of violence, emotional clarity. Sometimes Eloise thought she was wandering simply to keep her mind off of the thoughts that formed when she was too stagnant. Even her body couldn't stay in one place for long. She was unable to stay asleep beyond four or five hours.
It was waking from one of these periods of sleep -- which seemed to fall at random times that had nothing to do anymore with night or day -- that Ellie remembered Brennan. He had come to the Public Library already; she'd been meant to say hello, which had ended up simply being a walk past the periodicals room to be sure he was in there. And he was.
Today, though, Brennan seemed to have gone exploring. That, or he'd already settled into the patrol routines of the Immune. Eloise thought she might know where to find him in that case; and when she'd climbed the stairs up to the silent second floor, there he was.
"Hello," Ellie called out to him, pausing to adjust the hat that had been Evan's gift days ago. "Already...?" She let her question trail off as she crossed the room, assuming Brennan would know what she meant. Though he was very forthcoming about his research, for one reason or another Ellie felt protective of it, as if it were a secret she needed to keep quiet.
"I like your binoculars," she told him, tone level. "What are you... Observing?"