Foxwrites 22
When I came into the library, there was a raccoon, sniffling through the books... and my daughter looking at some pictures. I walked over to make sure it was not some kind of anatomy-book. And was relieved to see that it was... 'only' an illustrated fairy tale book. Of course it was German and therefore no one should look too closely at it, but... well... it was better than correct guts. "Hey mommy! Coony brought me a book!," she pointed at it, "I like it!" Which was... one of the weirder things to hear from your daughter, but hey... at least the raccoon did not bring... horrifying things.
I looked to the raccoon and how it... actually seemed to sort the books. Grabs them with his tiny raccoon-hands... drags them to the side... runs back (faster than I've ever seen the raccoon run before), looks at the next book and drags it off again. "You okay?," I raised my voice a little, to get his attention. He stopped dead in his tracks. His ears twitched. He started to clean his whiskers and face. And then rolled up on Matia's back. Apparently sleeping. I was... a little speechless. And stared. Then I asked Matia: "Does he... does he do that often?," my tone was almost as disbelieving as I guessed it should be. Matia turned and petted the rolled up fluff: "Sometimes, sure!" I frowned: "Uh... no I mean... does it... carry books around?" And my daughter looked up with those doe-eyes of hers and says: “Sometimes, sure," in an exasperated, kid-tone of voice that just wants to read her book that her raccoon picked especially for her. Apparently. That... was probably all I could do about that, wasn't it? With a frown... I settled down and looked at the book-stacks that had formed in the short two minutes that it had taken for me to come up. At least they didn't make much sense.
There was poetry and languages mixed up... and a biology book laid atop Nietzsche (again, that guy...) So... maybe the books smelled different. When I sniffed at them, they didn't smell different at all. But one book full of recipes laid there, all alone, so maybe there was something to the theory. I wouldn't know. I might have to keep more of an eye on the little bear. It's... just weird. Weird is alright. Right? ... what could I do about it, after all. I reached over and petted it's fur. It purred. And stretched a bit. Normal raccoon, flopping on it's side and down from Matia's back, wriggling it's legs in the air before it got back in a horizontal position (it took several tries). It earned some more pets with that action. Then it curled up against Matia and got auto-petted by her. That... that seemed to work just fine. It continued doing the raccoon-purr it did. Very well.
The books still needed sorting, so I applied myself to the task. Sooner or later, the dishes would be done and I would get company. And some help with this. Because there were enough doubles now already... and Mister Ruthven seems to have opened only two barrels in the early hours of the morning. He opened the third when he joined me, and really did get a slightly cold shoulder from Matia. Apparently, insulting bugs was a harder offence than expected. It's not like much happened, anyway. We sorted by genre and author, sometimes commenting on either of them in an annoyed or delighted fashion - there were more fairy tales than last time, I was glad for that, at the very least. At one point, Matia and a reluctant raccoon left to play outside and - by the sound of it - raid the cookie jar. It was all fine and well until Mr. Ruthven opened the fourth barrel and I stood up to get a generous helping and he... caught me when I stood up too fast. "Easy, lady Jibril, easy," he snuck behind me and held me around the waist, leaned back against him. The faint feeling went away. As it does. Almost immediately. I had just stumbled for a moment. When he didn't make any movement to release me again... I cleared my throat. When he still didn't move then, I sighed: "You... are aware it would be more effective to actually bring me back to the floor, yes?" "You want me to hold you on the floor?," and his tone was... was... not exactly innocent. "... you," there was no actually polite way to answer to that. Especially since I actually could have moved out of his arms by now, so I said: "No. No, I do not, but the fainting spell has worn off anyway. You can let go of me" "... can.... or should?," there was a nose in my hair. "Will," I frowned and removed the hands from my waist. And with a pout, he did let go. "As you wish," he said and went to go sort more books. The rest of sorting went without any kind of incident. It worried me a little that I wasn't that much against it. What a weird man.