Re: [Secondhand books: Hannah & Aleksi]
Hannah nodded about the book, about her interest. "I'll read that one next, and I'll tell you what I think along the way," she said, and she would. Life existed outside of books, and Hannah knew that, but she could almost be human when she read a book. She could forget about all the ways she wasn't human and normal and free, and books were wonderful, transporting things. Even in the dream, she'd been thrilled to see his bookshelves scattered incongruously around the forest. She understood that a book could make even a bad place better.
She led the way to the table, this girl that looked like a girl, sounded like a girl, and she was a perfect copy, a thing perfected that no one had managed to create again. The AIs in the theme park she went to, they were amazing and bordering on sentience, but she was a person who'd been alive once, and that made her different. But she wasn't thinking about any of those differences as she trailed her fingers along the back of the chairs in a circle and offered to get him something to drink. Right then, she was just a girl making a friend, and she nodded when he asked for tea. "I'll be right back," she promised.
And she did come back. He was seated by then, and she balanced his tea and her own coffee, and she set both on the table with a small bag of cookies between them, in case he wanted something to nibble on. She sat, and she sipped, and she continued their conversation as if it had never been truncated. "Can you tell me about your experiences with strangeness?" she asked quietly, so her voice wouldn't carry to those around them. "I see a lot of strange things too. Like my house in the dream, that was real. It wasn't a lie or a made-up thing," she admitted, knowing somehow that he wouldn't run away from the comment. "Your bookshelves, they reminded me of how often I read to keep from thinking about the scary things breathing down my neck. And now, whenever I remember that I'm not like everyone else, I read a page and it's like I'm somewhere else, someone else, and it doesn't matter so much that I'm not like I should be."