Success, she thought, while happily crushing the strawberry and kiwi against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. He wasn't an easy man to read, but there were times when he obviously felt one way or another about something. It could've been the idea of poetry - he almost always seemed interested in it - but then, it might have had something to do with her, too. Ever the optimist, Beauty hoped it was a little bit of the latter as well as the former.
"Good!" she said. "Then that's what we'll do."
It wasn't long before breakfast was over, and although she knew they hadn't hurried with it, it seemed to go faster than she wanted. Work called, and they were soon sorting and shelving alphabetically by author from the boxes that had been delivered overnight. Once they'd settled into an easy pattern, Beauty practiced a single sentence three more times in her head before finally spitting it out:
"Errol, will you please tell me about your life before you arrived in the City?"
There. Direct. Simple. She hadn't meant to hold her breath, but she found that she was doing exactly that.