10-11-2018, 03:23 PM
Raffe blinked. The presentation of a paper sketchpad was endearingly quaint. She must have a Wallet in that bag too, and that would have been the implement most people reached for first. Writing was practically archaic. Yet she didn't seem embarrassed, or even particularly cognisant of the oddity. He took the gift with a bewildered grin, and thumbed through to find a blank page.
The woman watched from her cross-legged perch beside him, but didn't seem to mind as his eye caught on the drawings within and paused; fur rendered in pencil that looked real enough to touch, followed by paws and muzzles and tails. Gleaming eyes that felt like they might blink at any moment. Stranger things too. The profile of a girl with hair dripping like wet ink. Piles of odd creatures staring hungry from cross-hatched shadows.
While he lingered, a little entranced, she was still talking, steady as a whispering stream and as conversational as if she had known him all her life. "My Nanna's family emigrated during the eighties. When we were kids she used to tuck my sister and I up with stories of the Aos Sí. My mother said she filled our heads full of daisies."
Raffe reflected that there were worse things to have a head full of. Family was a somewhat alien concept, at least insofar as the type tied by blood. He couldn't even remember his mother's face. Friends were easy to come by, but even now they scattered like leaves on wind.
Maybe it was only that dark feeling of pressure dipping his stomach low.
She laughed, dispelling the self-pity. He'd lost the meander of her words. A shiver burrowed inside, like his body could not choose between heat and cool. "Have you ever been to the Bodleian? One of the biggest libraries in Europe. Fewer books than MSL, but gosh, it's like living inside a dream. I grew up in Oxford. I saw the Rawlinson B 502 there once. There's beauty in the old things." She leaned in to tap a finger against one of the pages. "They're just doodles. Write anywhere."
The woman watched from her cross-legged perch beside him, but didn't seem to mind as his eye caught on the drawings within and paused; fur rendered in pencil that looked real enough to touch, followed by paws and muzzles and tails. Gleaming eyes that felt like they might blink at any moment. Stranger things too. The profile of a girl with hair dripping like wet ink. Piles of odd creatures staring hungry from cross-hatched shadows.
While he lingered, a little entranced, she was still talking, steady as a whispering stream and as conversational as if she had known him all her life. "My Nanna's family emigrated during the eighties. When we were kids she used to tuck my sister and I up with stories of the Aos Sí. My mother said she filled our heads full of daisies."
Raffe reflected that there were worse things to have a head full of. Family was a somewhat alien concept, at least insofar as the type tied by blood. He couldn't even remember his mother's face. Friends were easy to come by, but even now they scattered like leaves on wind.
Maybe it was only that dark feeling of pressure dipping his stomach low.
She laughed, dispelling the self-pity. He'd lost the meander of her words. A shiver burrowed inside, like his body could not choose between heat and cool. "Have you ever been to the Bodleian? One of the biggest libraries in Europe. Fewer books than MSL, but gosh, it's like living inside a dream. I grew up in Oxford. I saw the Rawlinson B 502 there once. There's beauty in the old things." She leaned in to tap a finger against one of the pages. "They're just doodles. Write anywhere."