june 25th - the gutter bookshop ( @bedlamroad )
There’s a book open on the table in front of him, a rapidly cooling cup of coffee by his elbow, but the only thing he can seem to focus on is the way the clouds are shifting outside the window - twisting and undulating like a serpent shedding its skin, preparing for a new beginning.
More rain on the horizon, then.
Oz heaves a sigh and sinks further down into the stiff wooden chair he’s claimed. He’s at his usual secluded spot, wedged into the corner of the building, behind the last set of non-fiction stacks. It’s quiet. Peaceful. This far back in the shop, the noise from the other patrons is deluded to a soft murmur. The only other sound is the comforting hum of the ancient AC unit overhead.
He’s been coming here for ages, now. Ever since his first year of university, when the campus library still seemed so daunting - too crowded and competitive and loud. At this point, The Gutter is more of a security blanket, than anything. A safe haven.
Somewhere he can let his guard down, even if just for a few fleeting moments.
Oz forcibly returns his attention to the tome he’d grabbed from the folklore section earlier. He flips a page or two, scans a couple paragraphs as he chances a sip of his now stone cold coffee. He’s not really looking for anything in particular, honestly. It’s just.... habit. To come here and research - about Fae. The Otherworld.
Knowledge is the only armor he has. The best way he knows to keep himself safe. In the beginning, after Aoife, the only thing that kept him sane was this corner table and the publications he’d consume here. Back then, he inhaled ever scrap of info he could get his hands on - whether there was any truth in it or not. Anything was better than nothing, then, and he wasn’t willing to risk skipping over something on the off chance that it was purely fiction.
And all that studying did yield some results, in the end.
He fidgets with the plain, iron ring on his index finger, turning it round and round as he reads. That was the first, and best, thing he learned: iron. The one thing, it seemed, that stayed consistent throughout all the legends. He went out and bought the ring on a whim, one afternoon, and he’s seldom taken it off since.
He knows that, in all likelihood, it wouldn’t offer that much protection if a Fae were truly intent on harming him. It mainly exists as a reminder - a promise to himself. That he’ll never forget who he is and what they are. A line, drawn in the sand.
He takes another sip of coffee. Grimaces. Contemplates heading home. But, instead, his eyes drift once again to the landscape outside the window. To the dark, foreboding sky overhead.
“I think we’ve had enough fucking doom-and-gloom lately, thanks,” he murmurs to himself.