5 points
Her fingers grasped the doorframe, knuckles tight, and she peered around the wall and into the bookstore at Shawchert. At first it did not look like she was going to come out from behind her shield, but after taking a moment to scan the shop she slipped out from her hiding place and gingerly stepped into the shop. After a minute she put her hands on her hips and nodded in approval. “Okay, good. Good job. Thank you.”
Another beat passed and Orin was alive again. Her face lit up as she took a good look around the shop. This was just the kind of place she was looking for! Her eyes widened as she peered at the shelves and beamed. “Look at it all! Isn’t it perfect?” Happily, she disappeared into a row of books, only to come out a moment later from behind another stack.
“It’s all in really good condition. Sure, they’re really dusty and a little ripe now, but I might be able to take care of that. Anyway, who cares, books are too valuable to throw out because of a little odor.” She looked at Shawchert as though awaiting confirmation, then turned back to the bookshelf. “Usually if you find an old library or a bookstore the buildings are so old that water has leaked in and molded the books, or they’ve been eaten by moths and rats... Sure, there are a few that are unusable here, but they’re mostly in pretty good condition.”
She grabbed a book off of the shelf at random. It was a hard cover, large in dimension but thin in pages. She blew the earth off of the dust jacket, sneezed, then giggled as she read the title. “Hey, look at this,” she held the book up to Shawchert. On the cover was a faded picture of a running wolf and the title read The Wolf Almanac.
Orin thumbed through the pages, more so skimming the photos rather than the text, and stopped on one particular photo of a wolf pack. She held it up again, “Look, it could be you.” She grinned; the wolf did bear a striking resemblance to Shawchert, though was missing his rusty highlights.
“I wonder if there’s anything we can learn about our history from books like this.” She thought for a moment, then set the book back on the shelf and wandered back into the open floor where her eyes were drawn to a staircase, which immediately had her inspecting the ceiling’s integrity, remembering the incident in the lighthouse.
“I’m curious to see what’s up here...” she muttered as she headed for the stairs. There were not nearly as many as the lighthouse, since this was a much more standard two-story building and did not serve as a life beacon for ships. The door at the top of the stairs swung freely, and she peered into the shuttered room. There was a desk, more shelves and books, and a file cabinet. “This would make a perfect bedroom!”
She turned and poked her head back out, bending over to see past the stairwell wall and appearing to be nearly upside-down at the top of the banister. “This place is perfect. Can I keep it?!”
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