The shop's facade is unprepossessing. The shop itself is low to the ground and in its windows some less expensive stock. Photographs. Postcards. A box with a painting of dancing bears, an old tin, a tapestried pillow more books. A clothing line above books on display in the window, pinned to the line a felt board full of buttons and a poster for art shows that have come and gone or are coming and getting ready to go, fascimile pages dredged up from some musical folio, a political cartoon.
The bookstore is really two bookstores. The antiquarian bookstore which deals in the rarest of volumes and has a definite bias toward volumes with an occult theme (but some of that stuff is too rare to be out and so it is in the back), and there are shelves behind glass, locked up closely, and even the books which are not so rare and so old they require special treatment tend to be on esoteric topics; and the other bookstore, which specializes in books about and by fringe cultures and fringe art movements, art books and glossy books on the history of photography. There is a sizable collection of cheap detective stories and of science fiction from the 70s.
Inside: aisles. Corners. Tall shelves. Low shelves. A table with a pyramid of art books, every square inch of a wall full of something, even if here and there it's a doodle. Local zines. A bench. Another room downstairs, take a step to get into it, older books, cloth-bound, glass-caged, and a door going somewhere. Stairs going upstairs, to the half-room loft above the bookstore's mainfloor. The railing for that staircase is old and wobbly, glows a pale amber. A desk on the first floor, somewhere to the back, past the first of the honey-combed rooms (small window so whoever's at the desk can see into that room, except it's mostly covered in files), and at that desk a typewriter mint-green.
The typewriter has a page in it, and the sound of somebody at the typewriter is a recent phenomena, but somebody is instead at this moment cursing and looking for something on the floor behind the desk, just this hump of a moving back.
He isn't very noticeable, this somebody. He's innately, essentially Mysterious; it gives him an edge in camoflauge situations. The shop is otherwise empty.
SerafínePerception + Awareness minus three dice damnit
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1
AdamValiant and relentless, the flash of a sword, of armor, determined and unwavering; courage, courage: this is what the mage in his tower of books and ink words feels like to the keen and the canny.
SerafíneWho knew that an antiquarian bookstore would be open at a quarter past eleven on a warm Tuesday night but here it is and here she is and here they are. Sera does not keep regular hours. Sometimes Sera keeps Odd hours but she prefers to catch and release the regular ones, to let them go back into the stream.
Is there a bell? There must be a bell, a hello you have another customer bell, the old fashioned sort with a tinny little clapper connected to the frame of the door with a worn leather strap. So Hello You Have a Customer and the customer is poking about in the next room, browsing but not the way one browses for books. Browsing the way one browses for things-that-are-not-books but still live-in-bookstores.
Somehow she still manages to pick up two things to buy before she is half-way across the room. One is a picture book of bawdy and fantastical poems and the other is a somewhat beaten-up second hand glossy of a Polish graffiti artist's most enduring works. The hump of a not-very-noticeable back against the bright and certain shine of the resonance Sera knows that she can feel and co-locate and not long after the bell and all that there's a shadow and there's a young woman and she's leaning over the desk to see perhaps what the hump of a back is looking for.
"Everything okay down there?"
--
Sera is Noticeable. She smells like cloves and smoke and whiskey and it is warm tonight in Denver and she is wearing very little in the way of clothing and much of it is leather. Possibly the world's shortest leather skirt made of strops and buckles that barely covers her ass and a black leather bustier, the shape of which is outlined in somewhat wicked looking silver spikes and okay a black hoodie over that because it is warm but not warm enough to walk around with 9/10 of one's skin exposed and the hood is pulled up over the crown of her head and she has on these thigh-high tights are are opaque to above the knee where the solid black has been cut away to something like the skyline of Paris and she is wearing a gold ring on her right index finger and a leather cuff covered in spikes on her left wrist and both a rather large silver rose stud and a wicked looking silver spike through the lobe of her right ear and there are tattoos and other sundry and assorted markings on her skin and well,
let us just call her Noticeable.
Adam[What's up, man? Do I notice The Thing That We All Check For Noticing?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
SerafíneThe woman in the room is between, isn't she. On the edge of. She is doorways and corridors and porticos and it is night and both ends are dark. She is not was or will be but the point of becoming when one is both nothing else and everything around, and that is still so new that Sera feels it between her back teeth and sometimes pauses in the doorways, at the entryway, and looks backward and looks forward and catches her breath and does not understand why or how she has caught it. And she is more than that, and this is richer and older and so entirely her that if feels like she has never been without it because she has never been without it in living memory.
In her living memory, anyway.
She is gut-wrenching, instinctive, all blood-and-bone, she is teeth set into one's skin, merely for the pleasure of it and she is fascinating, captivating. When she's around why would anyone ever look away?
AdamHe became aware of the unfamiliar resonance before it was at his door and in his shop. This sense to him of liminal spaces - of thresholds and betweenesses: gut-wrenchingly, enthrallingly, adverbily, potent - and there was a bell to herald her presence in his [aunt's] shop. 11 pm isn't a popular hour but Night Owl Books has the strangest of hours. Sometimes it keeps vampire-hours, hours-for-vampires, a place to go when the rest of the city is closed for business, and the cream-skinned proprietess with the sea-jewel eyes would pour coffee for the old punks who insomniacal were driven to Night Owl Books, and they'd smirk or listen to music (there is no music going in the shop right now; it is utterly quiet, except for the shuffle of Adam's knees against the floor, and something with tiny claws), and it's pretty sweet - sometimes it'd be cheap wine or cheap vodka, too - but that was Sarah. This is Adam, and he doesn't pour coffee for the old punks who are insomniacal in just the same way, and although by now a few of them have had whole conversations with Adam, they don't remember exactly what those conversations entailed or forget them and are surprised to be distantly reminded next time they come in and they've already met Adam, and so on, and so forth, because -
Serafíne with her needle-compass senses can find him. Dark hair, something eyes. They're also sea-jewel eyes but their colour won't stay in her mind if she stops thinking about them if she thinks about them at all. Same with his features. They're present but they don't stay, even though she finds him, even though she sees him, poking his Sandman wild tousle of a head out from behind the desk, a long-necked gawk of thing our pale-as-night-monsters-are Adam circles under his eyes, shadow of a beard on his jaw around his mouth trimmed neatly (or not?).
He looks Serafíne over: a rake of a gaze, which takes in the essential hotness, and leads to a cleared throat; a sweep of a gaze, which takes in resonance, and appearance, and becomes inscrutable and distant after that throat-clear.
The Cultist is peering over the desk, and Adam scrambles up without any sort of grace at all, especially given that he is using no hands. He is holding a ferret in his two hands, you see: little bandit-furred silver-and-brown thing, bright blinking eyes, sharp, sharp teeth, predatory little mouth.
Adam has a coat on, something that looks a little big on him because he's rather scrawny, truth told, something that has patches on it in a decidedly unfashionable way, and he tries to put the ferret in one of his pockets.
"Yes, yes, Ruse just desired to introduce his stomach to my shoe laces, and my shoe laces desire to stay on my shoes. Halloo," touch of an accent, whisper-whisper, thing, the ferret doesn't want to stay in his pocket and pokes its head out, sniffing in Sera's direction, "What've you got there?"
Chin nod to the books.
Serafíne
Already Sera can hardly remember him. He's so forgettable isn't he? Nothing to be remarked upon, just the taste of his resonance and the way if buffets her sixth sense has her doing a bit more than passing him over. Well, the taste of his resonance in the back of her throat and the presence of the fucking adorable baby (?) ferret in his hands.
"That thing," the stranger - whose hotness is not merely essential, but quite nearly elemental. So much a part of her that it seems to recede back into his skin - the strange is giving him this flash of a grin, more teeth than anything, peering over the desk as he straightens, her eyes fixed on Ruse with the startled fascination that belongs to someone who is not exactly an animal person, " - is it a rat? Or a fucking otter? It is fucking adorable.
"Is it gonna bite me if I pet it? Can I pet it?"
She won't remember his seaglass eyes or his mop of wild curls, not precisely, but the next time Sera decides to wander in the directions of this shop, she may remember to bring with her a small, somewhat threadbare stuffed bunny rabbit, the origins of which she cannot remember.
She's had it since she woke up.
Which was, unlike most of them, after she Woke Up.
---
Sera's smile is a quick slash. She's hardly paying attention to him and it all feels like an afterthought, the way she's mooning over that predatory little beast, all inquisitive and sharp-toothed and peeking out of his pocket. A glance at the books in her hand, she lifts them up to look at the spines.
"Oh, Dirty Beasts - Roald Dahl - and this other thing. I don't fucking know what it is, but the pictures look cool. I like poetry but otherwise I'm not really much of a reader. My friends, though.
"Grace told me about this place."
Adam
Ruse is a ferret and ferrets are escape artists. While Adam's attention is on Serafíne, and Serafíne's attention is on Ruse, Ruse -- the just-out-of-babyhood, so call it adolescent, masked ferret -- slithers out've Adam's pocket, one tiny clawed 'hand' reaching intently for the desk. Ruse is a slinky, a living slinky, and one of Adam's hands becomes a step for-to-reach the desk, then there's the little bump of its back as it makes for one of Adam's pens.
So. One of Adam's hands became a step for the ferret. How'd that happen? "Probably not," Adam had replied, to is it gonna bite me. "You'll never know unless you try," a certain dry humor, typical of Adam. He doesn't mind being an afterthought. An afterthought can study a person and take their measure without worrying about a mirror, reflecting back. He can feel Ruse trying to get out of his pocket, which is when he looks from Sera to his pocket, then puts a hand out to help the little guy.
"His name is Ruse." He's telling Sera the ferret's name as he's taking the books out of her hands, opening the covers, checking the pencilled in price -- unless of course some sort-of unexpected resistance crops up. But that would be unexpected. He'll need the pen Ruse is making for in a moment if he's going to write Sera a receipt for the books, which he is. Grace told Sera about this place. That causes the dark-haired young man to smile. The smile is subtle and reserved but it is still a thing which darkens his gaze and sends lines around his eyes into wakefulness and dredges out a pang of sunlight.
"Why, if you're not much of a reader? Is it someone's birthday, or is it to meet me?"
Ruse has acquired the pen.
Serafíne
They're at a desk, right? And the desk is likely covered with things that belong on a desk, like blotters and ink pens and receipts and order forms and clipboards and catalogues and mechanical pencils and the endless supply of highlighters that congregate wherever office supplies are to be found. There may also be books or perhaps books and books; stacks of books over stacks of books. It hardly matters, because the point is that even though the desk is likely serving its alotted purpose Sera is a skinny creature and more to the point she does not give a fuck. There is a delightful rat-otter thing entertaining her and a desk on which she can perch her skinny ass.
So, Sera makes space to sit on the desk, moves the books and gewgaws and whatnot with hands or hip, giving up her own two books without really a second thought. She just allows Adam to relieve her of them and draws up one long leg (this is an illusion; Sera looks like she's long and tall but that is merely something about the way she is made, the sleekness of her limbs, the proportions of her frame) and bends down to brace her left elbow on her left thigh and holds out her left hand, thumb and forefinger, for Ruse to sniff, or whatever the hell it is ferrets do.
Long blond curls slide over her left shoulder and spill toward the cluttered wood in coiling spirals.
"He's fucking adorable - " Sera is declaring again, and there is a little bit of babyfication to her talking-to-animals voice, but it all dissolves in the next moment as she lifts her chin and finds Adam's face without reservation and favors him with a grin as quick and sharp as the edge of a well-honed switchblade. "Did I say that already?"
A gleam.
"I think I said that already. Hello," back to Ruse, "Ruse. You are fucking adorable. I bet you know it, too."
Wiggling her fingers at the ferret as he seizes the pen, Sera glances up again. "Mostly I came because Grace mentioned it." A bit of a rather shameless shrug. "I like bookstores fine, though. I mean, I like the way they feel, you know? Plus I have friends who spend all their goddamned time reading. I'm Serafíne.
"Call me Sera."
Adam
He does not look like a man with a black temper. He does not look like a man who could easily lose control -- and Serafíne isn't looking at him. But the black temper flickers -- an up-surge, a shadow for the young man who has none. He leashes it before it can escape to wreak havoc although there is a tension to the jaw and the articulation of shoulders that was not there before. The cause: Serafíne plopping herself on his desk after making a space. He barely had time to realize what she was doing, much less stop her, so Adam shifts a few items himself, shooing her hands decidedly away without grabbing her wrist or anything too overtly aggressive.
Ruse does sniff Sera's fingers. Little sniff sniff sniffs, spine (elooongated) eloooongating, low to the desk, pen abandoned and taken up again, strangely finicky. Ruse gets close enough for Sera to feel the tickle of his breath and the tickle of his fine little whiskers and then Ruse rolls onto his back, looking bright-eyed at the woman. If she moves, Ruse flops over, more than ever like a slinky, as if prepared to do battle. And then rolls over again, with a funny little hump-bunch run.
"He does know it. Adam Gallowglass," Adam Gallowglass says, before plucking the ferret up, his long fingers a-circle behind the ferret's fore-paws. "Just Adam will do, of course. And I do know, about how they feel, though I rather like the books too. Follow me, Sera. I want to show you something."
"Who are your reading friends? You should send them by."
He isn't staying still. Ruse is gripping Adam's thumb and sticking a fat pink tongue out at Sera or maybe at Adam and looking at the desk and sort've looking squirmly like it would really like to crawl up a sleeve or something and Adam waits for Sera to get off his desk, or maybe helps her make that decision, and then he leads her to the stairs. That's the idea. To the stairs, and up the stairs, and onto the second floor, annnnd...
And.
---
Dice @ 4:40PM
[-_-]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 8) ( success x 1 ) VALID
Serafíne
"Oh my fucking god - " Sera exclaims aloud when Ruse breaks into that hump-bunched run, which is not precisely bouncy but somehow bounding, like a teeter totter or some strangely awkward machinery except that there is nothing awkward about the sinous elegance of the little beast, and she is so enthralled that she does not see and hardly notices the shadow of temper that Adam leashes or his protective shooing over the contents of his desk. Wasn't the desk there when she wanted to sit? Isn't that the sort of thing that the universe does for her?
Yes and yes and a thousand times yes.
"How does it DO that?"
She means the run, and when Ruse flops over on his back Sera dares to go for the belly and gets mock-battled or perhaps even battled, battle-burrowed, charged.
Charmed, smiling, gleaming with an unself-conscious openness Sera is not much following the skein of conversation until Adam says his name, and then at last she glances up from the ferret to met Adam's eyes. "Alright Just-Adam,"
- a sly edge to her mouth, as she leans toward Ruse, holding out her fingers again.
Wiggling them and then waggling them.
"Maybe I will send my reading friends by. I don't suppose you have anything in Egyptian or whatever they speak there? Fucking Roman or something?"
Without much specific comment, Sera slips (at last!) off the desk, and follows Adam towards, and then up, the stairs.
Trusting creature, isn't she?
Either that or a goddamned badass.
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