[Secondhand books: Hannah & Aleksi]
Hannah liked the bookstore. She'd started going there when she'd befriended Ren, and she went there often now. She traded books in and out and in and out, and she always had something to read somewhere near at hand. She had books scattered in her trailer and at Jeremiah's, and her room at the facility had been the same. She had no room there now, in the facility, but that didn't change the near-constant nearness of some story, whimsy always near to her fingertips. Hannah liked whimsy very much, and she was a combination of practicality and absolute not. She was also not human at all, but she was such a good approximation, something nearly magical and, thus far, unable to be reproduced, that even animals took her scents and pheromones to be that of a normal woman.
She walked into the bookstore casually dressed, with only her bare feet really making her appear as oddity; she liked the feel of spring grasses between her toes. Her faded-copper-penny hair was bundled loosely at her nape, and there was nothing of the old crone in the young woman who walked into the place with a skip-hop of comfort, as if she was home. She looked around as she stood just past the jingle of the door. Left, right, left, right, and she saw someone unknown. Hannah liked watching people. Watch, watch, watch, and she knew most everyone in town on sight, but she didn't know the dark-haired man whose eyes were roaming the shelves. Fearless, as she always was, she walked up to him on quiet toes, and she tapped, tapped his shoulder. "Hi. Am I looking for you?" she asked, her Florida accent a nonexistent thing, her eyes a bright cornflower blue, and her smile warm. "I'm Alice," she added helpfully, hoping to jog recognition with the use of her name. "Rabbit?"