xiv. fairy tale

He's here again.

Wordlessly he walks up to the shelves, wordlessly he picks a book. He sits at one of the long tables, his back to her.

Wordlessly he reads.

He would turn the leaves with the corner pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Sometimes he would rifle back a few pages. Other times he would stop, put the book back on its shelf and take a new one.

They would spend whole afternoons in silence, immersed in printed worlds, living in the typeface, traipsing along the chapters.

Books smell of fairy tales. This is turning out to be one.