Re: [bookshop: ren & elijah]
Nefarious. It was an excellent word. From the Latin, to mean 'wrong'. It was wrong, the way in which everything dampened, like a wind off the ocean heavy with salt and damp, weighty cold. Wrong but it wasn't malevolent, a word that rolled around the tongue like a cherry. Elijah wasn't malevolent, he didn't know how. Would be, perhaps, if he did. Malevolent was prickles and bristles instead of soft, pale skin that could do things to people that they begged for.
No guidance. Didn't want his own tastes reflected back at him like a smear of oil on a street. Hungered for something else, someone else's thoughtlessness, their brains as tangled and complex and appreciable as labyrinths with tastes held in myriad places all difficult to pry at. Elijah waited as the beans joined the books. Beans and books. He cocked his head, the shrinking of his shoulders as he made himself small and harmless made the gesture all the more bird-like.
"Ground. No grinder." He did, but it had broken. Didn't want the fuss of finding a new one.