This would be when the words all run together. This would be the time of day- late afternoon, early evening. It's hard to tell (she reflects, letting her eyes stray for an instant to the window), with the old smoky glass rippled like a live thing calcified, with no way of telling the tint of the sky past it.

It's hard to tell with the lamplight, soft and gold as candles tucked away into this softly rustling alcove, the scent of paper in the air, and dust- the sort of dust that gets into your hair and eyes and nose, into your ears and under your fingernails, beneath your feet and inside your bones. It comes with years, she knows; and she knows that nothing comes with years like books. Trees haven't got it. Trees that stretch on and on, up and up and drier and drier to make more of themselves- propogate the species, as all living things.

Books do not reproduce. But they germinate, they spark in the minds of thinking things and it never really ends. Nothing waits like a book. Not even Kristopher Hekas' mother. Has Moira ever waited around for anything that wasn't the general existence of the universe? Eighteen years, eighteen years was nothing. How many years would it take? How many years has she got?

Kristopher stares at the book in her lap- large, old, heavy; the warm yellow light and her own lack of sleep making the words swim. She leans over it, rests elbows on the worn-soft pages and her face in her hands (dark hair spilling over her face) and exhales a long sigh. Four days and counting, and she could use another cup of coffee. Her mind and her body complain quietly- back cramped up- crick in her neck- thoughts soggy at the edges, dripping down her face like egg and rainwater- too cold in here, too cold for the tank top. Wings. Oh god, the wings. If only she could forget the wings.

They're still there. Four days and counting. Useless things- fans- vestigial, stupid little chicken wings in her back, and heavier than she'd ever imagined. Nobody notices. If only she could forget them- but she can only push them to the back of her mind and so, it seems, does everyone else. Kristopher is afraid of what might happen if she thought about them too hard. Too heavy, too small, too bulky; too jittery, too tired, too achey, too decaffeinated. Too sober.

She risks a glance between two parted fingers; coal-dust eyes narrow, widen, narrow again, as though trying to focus. She didn't know it was possible to see double out of one eye.


And so Kristopher sits in this static and dry corner of the book store, thin fingers tracing the words that may or may not be there, and lets her wings settle over her shoulders.

Seraphine walked silently along Elm Street, her camera in her hands, the strap around her neck. It’d been a long time since the woman had had enough time to venture down here. She’d not really wanted to come to shop, other then picking up a bag of sunflower seeds to feed to her mice. She’d just come down to walk, relax, and take photographs.

The pack of seeds stuck out of the pocket of her baggy black pants. The pant legs covered her feet, hiding her black and white pair of Vans. Her belt was leather with holes that were clipped with metal. A single chain linked from her back pocket to a belt loop. She wore a slightly baggy shirt tucked into the pants. The shirt was blue. Her long blonde hair reached to her waist in a messy braid down her back.

She entered the book store as an unconscious after thought. Maybe I should pick up a book to read. I’m not doing anything else with my spare time other then visiting Seya or mindlessly wondering around in boredom. So the little bell jingled as she entered the shop and was greeted by the amount of books, waiting to be bought and read.

She walks down one isle, choosing this one for no apparent reason other then it was there. Most things in her mind weren't complicated, so why was her life so rough? Just recently, some freak had begun to follow her around, A man had done something to her in an ally, though she wasn't sure what since she'd gone weak then passed out, and out of her fear of men, she was begining to think something was between her and Seya. She sighed and came out of the isle at the other end. A woman sat in the corner, looking tired and dried up.

"Are you alright?" She asked softly, hoping she was disturbing her too much.

Are you alright?

The words rattle through her head- she can feel them, rebounding off the insides of her mind- and she jerks upright convulsively, hitting a wing on the back of the chair on the way. "I. Yes. What?" Kristopher claps a hand over her heart (still going in surprise), and takes a deep breath.

"Uh. Sorry. I mean thanks. I mean, yeah, thanks." The words won't go where she wants them to, why isn't she making any sense?

Seraphine frowned deeply. "Oh, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm sorry," she said, sticking her thumbs into her back pockets. Her frown deepened slightly at the flow of words that would have made more since if only they were unscrambled and put togather in a proper order. "Are you sure you're alright?" She asked, a disbelieveing tone just barely laceing her tone.

Seraphine wasn't the kind of woman who usually butt into other people's affairs but usually she oppted to follow her first instinct and ask at least after the well being of people. She was also not a very forward and oppinionated woman. Usually, she kept her oppinions and ideas inside. That little bit of doubt had slipped into her tone accidently. "You look exhasted." She commented in the most polite way she could manage.

"Don't worry about it. I'm quite fine, thank you," she manages after some thought and effort- the phrase mechanical and forced, but it does in a pinch. Her smile's a little worrying, closer to a pained grimace than a polite gesture, and then she stares blankly at Seraphine, a faint frown creasing her brow. Familiar. Familiar. Kristopher has been living in the land of Deja-what-the-fuck today, or the sensation of I Have Made These Mistakes Before. Everybody looks so familiar.

"Er, do I really?" she aks, a note of reproach in her voice. "Look exhausted, I mean. Um."

Seraphine smiled gently, her thumbs hooked into her back pockets, her hair in that usual long messy blonde braid. She shifted her weight onto one foot, then rocked back onto the other, then repeated the guesture slowly sevral times, rocking back and forth. She chewed her lower lip lightly, not enough to break open that scab yet.

"Yeah," She said finally, slowly and admitingly as if she'd been accused of asking something wrong. "You really do. Like you havn't slept in days." Seraphine knew that feeling well.

"Oh man." Kristopher mirrors Seraphine by rocking forward and back a little, chewing her lower lip. "Damn. Well, uh."

Her eyes fix on the face over her- kindly- unassuming- and all of a sudden she hates Seraphine unbelievably, for what? For being nice, for concern- and it only lasts an instant but she would like nothing more than to rip the girl limb from limb and when it's gone (split second) Kristopher doesn't even remember that it was there, as though she merely blinked (now you see the world, now you don't and lo and behold it's back again).

So instead Kits merely smiles apologetically and chuckles a weary, knowing chuckle.

She was curious what could make a woman so very tired, so weiry. "Maybe I could...get you some coffee or something?" She'd passed a coffee stand down the road and had been tempted to get herself some but she'd resisted.

Oh, temptations. The options trip groggily through Kristopher's mind- Seraphine isn't that bad-looking, really, and she's always admired the sort (so to speak) who can grow out their hair long and more or less maintain it, her mother disincluded- Moira never could handle long hair, although she always had it.

"Um..." She pauses, glances from Seraphine to her book and back again. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.

Seraphine smiles gently. Now that she was going to the coffee stand anyways, she herself couldn't resist the steaming cup. "Alright then. I'll bring it back here." She wasn't done looking for a book, she hadn't even begun.

Seraphine tunred and left the shop, the little bell ringing, braid swishing. She returned only a little later with two cups of black coffee. Nodding to the worker, she found herself back in the corrner, squating down in front of the other woman and placing both cups on the floor. She emptied her pocket of little tubs of creamer and packets of sugar.

"Set the book down. That's probably whats killin ya." She held out a hand. "Seraphine."

"Yeah. You're probably right." She rattles out a chuckle, setting the book carefully on the floor, and shakes Seraphine's hand. Her own hand is shaking badly and, chagrined, she withdraws it as soon as it's possible to without being rude, and instead reaches for the coffee, taking it black.

"I'm Kristopher. And, um. Thanks."

Seraphine frowned at Kristopher's shaking hand but chose not to comment on it. She felt she'd already overstepped her usual boundries.

"Nice to meet you." She let herself fall back into a sitting possistion and picked up a creamer tub and shook it, glancing at the book. "So what is it that your reading?" She was looking for something interesting that would keep her busy herslelf, maybe Krisstopher had some suggestions.

"Book of myth and... that sort of thing," she says around a gulp of coffee. "It's... um, research on the old gods and how they apply in this day and age. I mean, -I'm- doing research. This book is old."

Kristopher peers down at the yellowed pages myopically, and silently thanks Seraphine for prompting her to put it down for a while.

((Sorry it took so long to Reply..I thought I'd already done so..))

Seraphine glanced back at the pages again. Research? She looked back up and took the lid off her coffee, dumping the white stuff they were trying to pass of as creamer into the cu[p. More like wattery milk then creamer. "Research for what? A class?"

She was saveing money to go to college but that wasn't going well.