Harm was at the bookstore for the third time in her life. This time was the first time she'd not come here for her 'boss' Privet Detective Andre Sperment. This time, she was here for herself.

She'd come in over three hours ago as quietly as possible, for fear that the man that had done business with was still here and would see her. They had a mutual dislike of eachother for no particular reason it seemed. Harm wore a pair of blue jeans with a little flare to the bottom. They seemed to have been worn thin but the holes in the knees and the one just under the left butt cheek had finally been patched with a dark maroon material squares. The pants sagged below very apparent hip bones. Now that summers come she's abandoned the sweater and the once-was-isn't-anymore Spearment's leather jacket. She's in a black polo shirt, too big for her, tucked into the sagged waist of the pants.

Since she'd been eating better, her payment for working for Spearment, her chest and hips have filled out just a little more. Her hair she cut off herself to a shoulder length style that made it thicker and healthier. She was cleaner then she'd been in a long time. And now she was sitting in a back corner table with a stack of childrens books approved for the ages three to five years.

Harm was never taught to read, now she's determined.

((OOC oh look, the last boyscout charrie))

Mat carried in a huge stack of books and set them on the counter. "I'm interested in trading." he said. He reads a lot trying to understand more about what it is he can do. All of the books in his stack pertain to ghosts. The people he sees and hears the most.

It's not that Mat is out of touch with reality, more like reality wnats nothing to do with him. It's been hard to fit in since the manifestations began after his father's death. He's tried. Maybe he can uncover some secret to controling his perception. If he could turn the apparitions off once in a while....oh if only.

So he kept reading, hoping to find an answer. This was something else that got him a gret deal of flack, his co-workers found it a funny topic, that he r ad about the paranormal on his luch break. Construction workers weren't know for thier originality though....of coarse it was a crude form of entertainment for his co-workers to make fun of him. It would be even worse if they knew he believed in ghosts. They suspected and it was bad enough.

After a time the owner finished looking over the books and told Mat to go pick some so they could begin the bartering.

Mat nodded and began to look around the store. He couldn't help but notice the woman looking through the children's books, seeming to read them?

Seeming to read. There is a key word in that sentance. Can you guess? Come on. Your smart. Ah. Seeming. Harm isn't actually reading those books yet. She's hunched over a relitivly tall, and very thin book with thick paper and really big writing. It's got pictures, black, bold letters. It says 'Sue and Jim give Harry a bath.' And the picture above the words indicate so much.

What Harm sees is a bunch of forign things on a page with a picture of a boy, a girl, a bathtub full of bubbles, and a white dog. All badly drawn. Stupid picture. She could guess what the words below said from the picture. Two kids gave the dog a bath. Or some variation of it. The problem was she just didn't understand the variations, couldn't make sense of the jumble of letters.

She knows her alphabet. She just hasn't ever seen it written down. And she's scowling at the book as if she could set it on fire for it's stupid pictures and it's stupid jumbled words that she didn't understand. Someone noticed her. She didn't notice them.

On looking at the faces she was making for a few mnutes, he doubted she was reading, trying to he'd believe. Of coarse the idea of her never having learned to read doesn't cross Mat's mind. He is of the belief for the moment that perhaps English isn't her native language.

"Sometimes the pictures help less than finding someone to read to you while you look at what they read." he says in the same quiet tone one would use in a library. "Is anyone helping you?' he asks.

She looks up a him, it's not a happy face. He wonders what she must think of him asking. He certainly doesn't look terribly educated himself in his tattered jeans and threadbear t-shirt with construction grime and grease showing up as black streaks on everything he's wearing except his black boots. He no doubt looks like a common laborer.

And she, no doubt, looks like a dum, despite the fact that she looks quite a few times better then she had before Spearment had found her ruining his crime scene. Actually, she'd gained very little weight, only shaped out a little bit. And her green eyes carry a dark look that might be directed towards the book, but given she's looking up at him, it just might be for him. Probably the book.

"Does it look like someone's reading to me?" She snapped the words a little, like a short whip that was meant to frighten, not to actually do any damage, but Harm could cause a lot of damage. Was he taunting her because she was looking at a children's book? It was the reason she'd tucked away in the back corner, so people would leave her alone.

It doesn't cross her mind that he might think she just couldn't read the language.

She straightened before slouching backwards in the chair and crossing stick arms over a thin stomach and pouting slightly. Spearment would have told her to stop her bitching. "The pictures suck." No, her accent is definatly American, if a little draw says she might possibly be from the New York or Philledalphia area. And she's trying to set the book on fire with her eyes again.

Mat stammers, oh my a social faux paus, he's bungled again. He doesn't talk to many people any more. So he puts his foot in his mouth a lot. "I didn't mean helping you right now M'am. I meant at all. And it does look like that's not a great book. Is anyone helping you at all?' he asks more calmly.

So what she looks like a bum. It doesn't bother him, it is likely why he talked to her at all, mainstream people and Mat just don't click, he has better luck, wiht oddballs, outcasts and derelicts....people who might be little more like him on the surface at least.

"Oh." She frowned harder. Pouted more. "Well. No. No one knows." She turned her eyes once more from the book to the man. "Don't tell anyone." It isn't a question. Don't tell anyone or I'll hunt you down and stab you with a spoon.

Alright. She isn't that violent but she would jump you from behinde, no matter how bad a fighter she is.

Mat might have 'better luck' petting a wild couger then meeting Harm on a socially acceptable level. She's just a brat. You have to be either really stubborn or really desperate if you try to put up with her for too long. Of course, Spearment had developed a special bond with her that made her especially mean twenty-four hours to him. And he to her....stupid old man.

"Who'm I gonna tell...." he shrugs. He crouches by a low shelf of children's reading primers to see if he can find a better one than the one she's looking at. It's frustating how many he flips through that are just junk. "Drivel and dumbness." he says to no one in particular. Finally ha manages to find three.

He moves down a section and picks out a few more paranormal books and goes up to the counter to horse trade for what he'd brought in. The owner writes him out a ticket for the few dollars in credit he hasn't spent. Once he's done at the counter he walks back to the shabby disheveled woman, "Come on lets go." he hands her the three decent primers.

She doesn't like to have to ask what something is. It makes her mad that she doesn't already know or that someone else does. Maybe she's just bitter? Nearly twenty years on the street will make you bitter. Especially since she couldn't get a job and an old, stupid man like Spearment was her hero. What a happy life.

"What's Drivel?"

He walked back to the counter and she shook her head, leaned back over the stupid book with it's stupid sucky pictures. Then he's back.

"Don't you ever go away?" And he's holding out the books, which she doesn't take. She's too stubborn. And of course, she won't play charity. She has to earn everything she gets. "Go where?" Suspicious eyes. Narrowed eyes.

He doesn't answer her question about leaving, he feels she's being sarcastic, he'll tolerate it for now, she's alive, it's a change of pace to talk with the living.

"Someplace where no one will figure out I'm reading to you, sheesh, and drivel is pointless chatter most of the time." Like what the ghosts whisper to me when I try to sleep. he doesn't say that outlod though. "You coming or not?" he asks her. He doesn't seem like he'll be bothered by whether she does or doesn't.

She stared at him with suspicion, adding Drivel to her voccabulary list of growing words. Since she'd been around Spearment she's possibly doubled her voccabulary in both words and swearing. She stood, standing five feet two inches and impossibly small, and readied to follow him, though if at a distance and if not at all.

"Where is somewhere where no one will see?" Scowl.

((impossibly short!!! *dies* *dies twice*))

((Now that you've *died* twice you are no longer the coolest person alive.....lol))

"There's a church I clean a few nights a week, I have keys and no one is there now. If you want we can stop for food, I'm sorta hungry." Mat explains, hopefully she won't have a probelm with being in a church, God might see them, but he already can if he's even real. Mat is in doubt of that, what with being bombarded by ghosts and all.

"Unless you have someplace else in mind?" he asks, afterall she might have someplace she'd be more comfortable.

She follows him at a distance of a couple meters, he waits to see what she says.

The only place she's got is Spearments office, and at this point in the day, the detective was probably sitting in his chair with that stupid hat tipped down, taking a nap that Harm was suspicious of whether it was really a nap or just a show the man put on. Sometimes he just seemed to aware.

She shook her head.

"Never been in a church." She's seen the outside, beautiful as it was. She wondered if there were big carvings of mother mary and the baby jesus. She believed in God, though in a different way then most. Spearment had summoned a Demon (a god. Azriel in fact.) into his office once and endded both of their uninitiate days.

She shook her head again. "Not hungry." She is. But Spearment has the money and he only gives it to her if she asks, which works for both of them just fine. But he'd not been there when she'd left.

"Okay, I'll eat later then, not right to eat in front of someone." he said to her.

After roughly a quarter of an hour walking they reach the church. It is indeed lovely on the inside as it is on the outside. There are many carvings, but perhaps the loveliest is the stained glass windows. Mat's partial to them at any rate, he even likes cleaning them.

He locks the side door they entered through behind them and tells her to pick a pew while he goes into the Sunday school classroom for a notebook and a pen.

"It's pretty." Something about that was softer, lighter spoken then everything else she's said. It's the woman, not the bum that needs to fend for herself speaking there.

She doesn't pick a pew. She's too nosey. Instead, she explores. She's waling around behinde the podium, opening the song books, opening the bible and...scowl.

She flips the cover of the bible closed and stomps halfway down the isle and enters one isle, walks half way over, and flops down halfway along the pew, directly in the middle. She slouches until the back of her head is nealy touching the back of the pew and crosses thin arms over a thin stomach and waits.

Mat comes out with the pen and notebook in addition to the stack of books. He sets the paranoramal books off to the side and takes out the reading primers, the pen, and the note book.

He hands her the books, "Pick which one you want to start with and I'll try to teach you a little. We'll probably have to do this quite a few times, So I suppose I should introduce myself, I'm Mat Ruger." he says.

He'd normally offer to shake hands but her posture, with the arms crossed over her stomach isn't especially receptive.

Mat does his best to ignore the church's resident ghost, one of the late choir directors, as he walks up and down the aisles singing hymns.

She slide up the seat a little when he returned but still didn't look very thrilled.

She hunched over the books, attempting and failing to hide the thrill in her pale green eyes at the fact that not only was he going to read to her but he was going to teach her.

"Harm." No last name, because she hasn't got a last name. No first name either. Harm was just something some of the really old guys on the streets had began to call her, in one allyway in particular. She offered her hand to him without even bothering to look up. She was willing to do so at least. Then slide a book to him. "This one."

He moved only close enough so they could both look at the book together. He
opened the book, it had a green spine and a picture of a farm on the front.

The first few pages were the chapter and indes listings and all the credits you'd noramaly find. He flipped past them to the alphabet portion. "You know this part, or am I to skip it? " he asks her. she rolls her eyes. He interprets this as a skip it.

The next few pages deal with the sounds letters make and the sounds differnt pairs of letters make. He reads them to her a few times. "Ah...Oh...Og...Is....Go...Lo...En...." you get the idea. After a little while at this he asks her to sound them out when he points at the groups. Satisfied with her progress thus far he turns to the first chapter and reads the first page through once noramaly. "Here is Bob. Bob has a farm." he reads underneath what he is reading is the same sentences broken down into single syalbles. "You try, okay?" Mat says to her.

She listened, participated, even forgot they were in a church and that this man had insulted her. When? Who knows.

Then he tells her to try and she smirks. Smart ass. "Here is bob. Bob has a farm." Without looking at the book. "It doesn't help. Because your just telling me what it says anyways. And I'm never going to learn like that." But she's learned a considerable deal more then she had on her own. She turned the page stubbornly and began, "Bob...has...ah...." She faltered. "D..oh....Dah...Dohg." She frowned. "Whats a dohg?" Dog.

"It matters that you learn all the little patterns of letters and sound right now, but you're doing great. That one"s Dog..."he pronounces it slowly".....DAWG..."

He turns the page. "Moving right along." he says cheerfully. She gets throguh the first chapter fairly quickly. He's glad she decided to come along, it's nice to have someone alive to talk to even if it is only reading lesson. "Let me know when you get tired." he tells her, full well recognizing she's quite ambituous about this and that it might be a while.

She's been getting more and more frustrated the more words she runs into that she can't pronounce. And the more frustrated she got, the more testy she bacame to everything he said. While they got through the first chapter fairly quickly she was, by now, nearly livid. She felt like she was being showed exactly how stupid she was by a book!

Tired? Harm sleeps during the day. Meaning, she already slept this morning. She's only just woken up. And by now, she shoved the book away from her and crossed her arms. "Stupid."

What is?

"It's only a book, you can beat it, just not all at once." he assures her. Took me a week or so in school to learn what you just did. Don't get so discouraged. " he tells her. "Take a break it you need to, walk around and stretch."

The choir director's ghost is still singing and as she sulks, Mat unintentionally finds himself humming along with some familiar hymn.

"What's that?" the humming. She means his, not the ghosts. Suprisingly, she's not going to beat the book up. Which she would like to. But she'll restrain herslef. She stood up, the bell bottoms sliding down a little, one side of the shirt coming untucked. She pulled the pants back up, ignored the shirt, fingered a hole that was forming at the bottom of the pocket. Scowl.

She moved down the Isle and..cold chill. She shivered. Then continued. She'd walked right through the ghost.

The ghost answered "Swing wide the gates." which Mat heard so he told her.

He made a face as she walked through the ghost, who just shrugged.

Mat went back to humming along with the ghost, it was a pleasant tune. "How often would you want to do this?" Mat asked as she walked around poking through the church. The ghost had stopped singing and so Mat had stopped humming and stopped really paying attention to him. At least he had until the organ started playing by itself.

Shit, he thought, expecting Harm to be slightly disturbed at least. It was obvious the thing was playing of it's own accord to normal eyes....or was it? She certainly wasn't doingg anything.

He got up to walk around and it stopped, he went and sat back down it resumed. He repeated the process several times and it went teh same way. Sitting in a different pew also made it go away. Mat had no idea what it meant he just moved to a different pew. The ghost was gone, but if he sat in that spot he'd see and hear the organ play.....very strange, but should a haunted person expect less really?

He didn't want to know what woulf happen if someone else sat there. Hopefully nothing.

"Iunno." She shrugged. "Used to be I had all the time in the world and all I did was waist it. Now I got a boss and now I actually wanna do something that requires time." Of course, it was the boss that made her want to learn, although he had no clue she didn't know how to read. "So I guess whenever he don't need me, which might be incon...."

Harm was startled at first, her green eyes going dear-wide and she froze, a precicely perfect imitation of a dear in the headlights. Her eyes landed on the organ and she stiffened, then crumpled to the ground and fit her small, compact form to hiding behind a pew.

She watched his process with wide eyes, listening to the Organ stop and go and stop and go with his rhythm. Then it stopped. By this point, her hands were shaking and her throat was tight. Were those tears in our tough little Harm's eyes?

"What are you playing at?!" She shouted, it echoed. Organ's are creepy enough without playing themselves.

"He left. Figure a holy roller like that wouldn't play tricks on people." Mat mumbled.

"I think maybe we should go. Wierd things happen around me if I stay one place to long, things notice me, I'm sorry." he told her. She was pretty upset looking. Well maybe she'd keep the books to practice even if she wouldn't talk to him again. No one ever talked to him again after something like that, they all wanted to forget. Mat couldn't blame athem at all. HE'd like to forget too.

Harm stood so that she could see him and the mysterious organ in one line of sight. She held up a hand, one finger up and shook her head. "nononono. No. I'm not going anywhere. No. What the hel...." In God's house. "What was that? You tell me what you did."

She really is very good at demanding things. And overriding her fear by becoming a bitch. "What things? This is a church. There can't be things here." Please no demons. Please not a demon. Her lips are moving with a silent plea. She'd had enough of demons in just one encounter. And really, Azriel hadn't been entirly unpleasant in that encounter either. It's that the summoning had worked at all that had spooked her so thouroghly.

" I didn't do it on perpose, ghosts just act up around me. Of coarse the guy is in God's house, he was the choir director here when he died. He can't hurt you, just mess with our minds. " Mat said.

He really didn't know what else to say, most people just left. He never had many opportunities to explain before.

She glared at him, backing away from him, her back approaching a short, though it towered over her own height, statue of mother Mary, her hands up and folded in prayer. The homeless woman put her pack to the stone folds of Mary's back. Ghosts. It was a reliefe because Ghosts are more common knowlege then Demons.

There are stories that Harm has heard about ghosts, she's heard they were mean or friendly. Mean or not, they were ten times better then hearing about, or seeing, a demon. And the fact that this experiance was blunted by the fact that she was willing to believe it and that something paranormal had happened to her before. When Spearment had summoned Azriel, neither had expected it to work.

"I don't believe you. What ghosts?" Of course, she does believe. But she's not admitting that easily.

He wached her back into the statue. HE couldn't tell if she believed him at all. She acted as though she did not.

" The one you walked though earlier, maybe you felt a shiver, some people feel a hot flash. He was singing, thats why I was humming, I could hear him. I think he's upstairs now, you want to go look, see if I can prove it?" he spoke.

She froze again, standing still for a very long moment with her wide eyes roaming over his face, trying to divulge the truth.

"I walked in one." She shuddered. "A person ghost? Ew." And she shuddered again. How can you hear it if i can't. That's not possible."

Then she paused, stood up and shifted weight so that one hip was cocked

"Can I really see one?" Curiouser and curiouser?

"I dunno, I know I can, you might be able to, Sometimes they want to be seen, I don't know why they do what they do. I do get sick of hearing them when no one else can though. That's why they flock to me, want me to be a message boy to the world of the living for them. "He says as they reach the steps.

As they climb the stairs strains of guitar music drift down the hallway. The ghost is singing "Amazing Grace" Mat can hear it. "Do you hear him singing, or just that guitar?" he asks.

The guitar notes drifted down and she stopped, once again her eyes darting. She took a step back, Mat, you've now been promoted from reading teacher to human sheild. He skinny form fit behind his fine and she felt just a little safer with him between her and the door.

"just...Just the music." She strained her ears as if that would help her to hear it.

"Well than maybe you won't be able to see him, but he is up here." Mat says. He can't figure out if she's scared, why they aren't leaving, much less why she's following him towards the ghost.

They reach the door and he opens it, the music continues and the guitar hoovers above a rocking chair. "You believe me?" he asks Harm.

She whimpered. Yeah. She believes you.

Harm stared at it for a long time, a good hard stare until her green eyes were dry and she was forced to blink. She finally moved around from behind him and took a step into the room, towards it, staring again. Trying to see.

"It's good though right. Or it wouldn't....be in a church?" She made it sound like a plea. please don't be evil.

"I'm guessing so all he ever does is sing and what not. It's sorta soothing compared to the others that pester me. Nice to have music while I clean in here anyway." Mat says in reference to her question about the ghost being evil.

"So now what?" he asks her. The ghost begins to play a different song. "We left the books downstairs in the pew." He points out.

She waved a dismissive hand at him when he mentioned the books. The reading lessons had frustrated her. Now she was afraid and interested in the ghost. If she went back down to the books now, she'd still be frustrated and she'd be bored because she's got something else to be interested in.

"Will.....he hurt me if..." she frowned. Then reached out and touched the spot where the strings were being strocked on the guitar and shivered, pulling her hand back as if she'd been bit.

She moved away from it and turned her eyes on him again. "How can you hear him?"

"Because I'm a medium. I don't really understand it myself, but I can hear them, and they all know it. I wish I couldn't because it seems like fifty sppoks turn up o jabber at me whenevr I try to sleep. It gets old. They usually want such trivial things too. You think the dead would move on, but nope they're just as hung up on life as the living." he tells her.

The ghost doesn't hurt her, but he does stop playing when she reaches for him.

The music stopped when she put her hand through the ghost and she licked her slips from where she was at the moment.

"I'm sorry." She says in an unsure voice. Listening to him her eyes drifted to him, then to the ghost again. Could it hear her if she couldn't hear it? Why not? It could see her when she couldn't see it. She wondered if maybe her life would be less complicated if she'd listened to Adrian and left that house when he'd told her. But no, she'd had to stay.

"Cant you tell them go away?"

" I can tell them all I want, but I have no power to command them, they have free will." he explained.

The ghost spoke to Mat, and Mat turned to Harm, "He wants to know if you wanna request a song?" Mat aked her.