Beauty (i_tame) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-05-22 16:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | baba yaga, honour bellaforte |
Bookwatching (Baba)
Errol watched people. Beauty watched him watching them pass by the windows of Bookmark Books for hours, when the troubled man worked with her, watched the creased plane of his face change in the smallest ways as he kept his own council on the things he saw. Now that he was gone, Beauty did much the same. She perched on the high-sitting chair behind the counter at the front of the store, and stared for hours out the window, watching people go by. She used to lose herself in books in the back of the store, but she'd lost her taste for it sometime after she realized Errol wasn't coming back. The thought made her sadder than her thoughts about her family, and when she considered this for any number of minutes, the implications frightened her.
Today was different, though. Today, instead of watching the wash of people pass into and out of her sight, she was watching the small table that stood just in front of her window outside. The door was wide open into the shop, the late spring breeze was filling the air with the scent of some nearby roses, and the table -- one she'd never seen before, but knew belonged to her store -- was piled high with books. These books kept on changing, every time a new person passed into view. As familiar as she was with the books in the small store she minded, she recognized most of the volumes as they appeared and disappeared on that table. Sometimes The City caught a customer like this. Most of the time it didn't.
Nearly two hours had gone by since the changing stack of books had attracted a single person.