have a heart, dude.

Adam

There is a bookstore which has two names. Night Owl Books is one name. An Arch Key Books is another. This is the same bookstore. (But they are also two very different bookstores. It is just as it is with your high school love. They will always be your high school love but they are also not your high school love. Even in high school, they are something else too. Two things. Same time. Many things. At once. Once is a good word for a bookstore because Once upon a time.) It is located on a street corner or near a street corner and there is an old library cart parked outside in spite of Weather, spiteful of Weather, weathering Weather, and a collection of one dollar books. A narrow and very threadbare oriental rug lies across threshold of the door to this two-named bookstore, part of it outside beneath the overhang, the rest of it inside for muddy boots to be wiped on. Bells ring when the door opens. There is no chime. It is bells, ringing, because it is that kind of bookstore regardless of its name.

The windows that look out on the street are full of such things as: a clothing line above books chosen for display, pinned to which are advertisements for art shows or writer's workshops or retreats or concerts, some of which have come and gone and are faded with time, others of which are a shock of new ink. Buttons of satirical or political nature. A little brass lion, some book-ends: old, musty looking stuff that matches 'antiquarian.' Fascimile pages from 17th century folios next to a picture of Che Gueverra riding a my little pony.

Through the door:

Almost straight ahead toward the back is a desk. The desk has a register and a typewriter and a computer and books and boxes and a bell and it is - at present - devoid of presence. Behind the desk is a door with a brown sign curly gold lettering which says: employees only. And a thick museum poster from some 1970s exhibition on Alchemy in Italian Renaissance Painting, or maybe Symbolism in the French Romantic Tradition, or - well. There is a door and a poster of that sort on the door and it is for employees only and it is closed. To the left of the space behind the desk and before the door there is a wall which has a couple of tall bookshelves stuffed with papers and other such things and also a window which peeks at --

The furthermost back of the left half of the store. Get it? There is a room there. Take a step down. No door, but still: it is a room. And the room is full of cloth-bound books, the kind that are thick, are reference, are rare. Much rarer than anything found to the right of the store. It is dimmer in that room, in there are five aisles, and gloom behind. Take a step up (because we are going widdershins from the desk to explore Night Owl Books, first floor), and one is in the section of the store that is to the immediate left of whoever opened the door. That section has middling high shelves some of which are locked and glass-doored and those books look expensive but the ones that aren't looked up look like the ones that have to do with natural philosophy or maybe poetry or ghosts and hauntings and there is a low low shelf right next to the door (well, left next to the door) that is filled with children's books and - deep breath.

There is also a staircase which leads up to a second level. Loft-level, peer up and see the railing for it. There is a huge table with a big messy pyramid of books on it. Art and photography and how to build a bomb and Anais Nin's memoirs and a Polish grafitti artist's suicide letter and a little box of zines by local artists or not local artists whoever brought them and maybe a gardening book or two anyway cool art books something called birdwives and fishwomen and a bench someone draggged there at some point and

That is to the left. Skip over to the right and: windows.

Also: more books. And it is necessary to 'step down' a step again, although there's a do-it-yourself (probably twelve years ago: it looks like the foundation has settled) wheelchair accessible ramp-thing, another oriental rug. And - paperbacks. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Oddments on some of the shelves. A display of local talent and a few new books, more art books (allegorical criticism, feminist commentary), some of which are new, some of which are not, some of which have been autographed! and there is a ladder and and and

this is the bookshop that has two names.

The first floor, anyway.

There is currently a box spilled over on its side and a track can also on its side: very much as if somebody had dumped the entirety of the box into the trashcan in spite of the fact that the trashcan in no way could ever swallow the whole box because it is a small trash can meant for paper and receipts and maybe the odd coffee cup.

There was somebody in the shop, but that somebody is leaving with something approaching haste, and in leaving that somebody is leaving behind Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass, Adam to the Magi of Denver. He is a dark-haired smudge of a Mystery, writing with furious zazz in a 99 cent notebook with a very expensive pen of wood and mahogony [the first wand], a shallow bruise on his cheekbone and dark circles beneath his eyes. He is behind the desk, which is his desk, apparently serene in the knowledge that he needn't pick up the overspilled box or trash until he is ready.

Hawksley

Today the weather was brightly sunlit and yet supposedly freezing.  The wind is finally dying down.  In parts of the city the sky threatens freezing fog, which is just as horrible as it sounds.  But sunny.  Denver boasts three hundred-plus days of sunshine a year, though anyone who really looks into that claim finds out that there's not an easy way to decide what constitutes a 'day of sunshine'.  Is it number of unobscured hours of light?  Given that Denver also boasts chaotic, ever-changing weather, does it matter if those hours are contiguous?

You can't get stuck on the details of these things; the truth is that Denver really is very sunny.  Winter passes brightly, not like those lake-country states where above you there is only endless gray for months on end, half a year or more.  It can be frigidly, agonizingly cold outside, the sun blazes cheerfully on.

And then the sun blazes cheerfully on, unconcerned with your life and your shelves and your bruises and that man and your garbage can, right in through the front door.  At least it feels like the sun for a moment, and then quite sharply feels like the end of gravity, the sun lifting you up to its level, and yet, given a gaze, looks like something else entirely.

The man at the front door is lovely.  He is fair-haired and sharp-eyed and even in his coat its obvious that he is broad-shouldered, well-built.  The coat itself is fine, the jeans costly, the shoes fashionable and pretending to be more vintage than they are.  His nose is aquiline and his bearing is almost regal for it; for a brief second or two, one can imagine him diving in the shadows, plucking some errant mouse from the darkness and swooping away with it again to tear it to pieces while perched on a branch.

He takes no notice of the man at the counter at first, does not even look around to see if someone is there; the clerk keeping shop may as well be part of the shop, and just as inanimate.  Hawksley, whose name is an amusement to those who see him so clearly as a raptor upon first glance, takes off his gloves as he walks into the shop, immediately drawn towards the back of the store: reference, rare.  Old and gloomy, smelling thickly and richly of antiquity.

Adam

[The obligatory roll: Am I Aware? Is the Awareness keen?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Adam

Hawksley swoops in (or -- that is what it seems [that is what some sun-soaked radiance after-image expresses in the space of a blink where the bright-fading image is]), and he heads for the glooming gloaming back where the books are ancient and there is a certain smell. Those books do not remember that their pages were ever a green wood, but they are still part of a wood. The bookstore is a Brociliande forest but instead of thorns and impassable briers there is marginalia and illuminated basilisks and instead of a season there are the different shades that pages become when they age and there is foxing spots of rust here or there of sun-damage and instead of black knights or green knights or gladsome beasts or wizards-in-trees or towers there is [actually, there is a tower. A picture of one in a gold frame, a delicate water-color. Dusty. The second wand.] a shopkeeper who really is part of his shop. The cool word-wood suits him: he is often a shadow, since he has none of his own. Light does not pull darkness or shade or relief out've Gallowglass, no.

What does pull something out've Gallowglass, in this case, attention, is not the bells which herald Hawksley (jesses, ringing? No;), because to tell the truth he rarely looks up when he hears bells. They've done their job and told him somebody's here. What more do they want? He looks up because Hawksley heralds Hawksley, playing rather lightly (ruffled from the kinetic energy of that plummet [kingfisher flashing fine?]) on his awareness. His pen nib stops, digs into his page, and his eyes flick up as he passes.

That's all he does at first. Watch Hawksley go. Watch Hawskley browse. Finish writing his word, looking briefly down at the page in order to do it while staying aware of his new customer. Every now and then he looks through the window that's by his desk and lets him keep an eye on whatever mischief people might get up to in that corner. Adam is dark, and thin, long-necked and with a beard that's just growing in, a mop of hair that comes from an illustration of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (although perhaps Daniel, if Daniel were dark, for Dream isn't quite Adam's style). There is nothing arresting about Adam, and he is more than willing for now to have Hawksley browse without interruption.

The other mages who've come into his shop haven't really browsed. Not one. Serafíne comes closest. What does that say? What does it mean?

Hawksley, if he goes further back and back until the wall, will find another door, but that one is locked and has no sign. There is a cosy seat, and a table, and a low-lit lamp.

Hawksley

Whenever he drives that goddamned Porsche of his somewhere, Sera thinks he's flying.  He would tell her that flying would be different, but he doesn't really know except from his dreams.  She thinks he's flying because he seems like he always is, though.  It wouldn't be strange to look at his feet and see them separated from the ground.

And truth: he is his own herald.  But he would seem even more the part if someone walked ahead of him, announcing him.  He does not need that, though.  He folds his gloves into his coat pockets, glancing at and studying shelves as though he is looking for something in particular but really just looking, absorbing, browsing.  But he really is making a line towards the reference section, because where else would anything interesting live?

He is back there, unbuttoning his coat, aware of the window and aware of the other man but not looking at him.  He's just a shopkeeper.

Hawksley picks up a book that takes both of his hands, and he is not a fragile man.  He lifts it, and when he smooths a hand over the leather cover, an expression of brief ache comes over his face.  He runs his thumb over the engraving of the name, and then, quite suddenly, he is coming out of that room, right up to the desk, and laying the heavy tome with its wrinkled pages in front of Adam.  Without a word, he pulls out his wallet, which is supple caramel-colored leather.

Adam

First Adam takes the book. He opens it with the same ease a skilled swimmer might dive into a pool, thumb careful on the edges of the pages: moth-light on a skull's cheek-bone that light Psyche-kiss nothing at all. There is probably a little white sticker with a little ink price on the little white sticker stuck inside. If there is not, it is pricey indeed, and Adam will look at the title and know what the price is. He is already familiar with Night Owl's stock. He has to be: doesn't he? The green man's gotta know what trees are in his wood.

But he's not looking at the price, or for the price; that's not his quest. He's looking at it because the bright hawkish man chose it. So: he looks at it with interest, sublimated by his absent-minded presence, and keen's the edge of interest when Hawksley takes out his wallet. After closing the book again, Adam takes out some paper to wrap the book in. It's that kind of shop: no bags, just paper and tape. Or: maybe bags. Bags that've been culled from other places, and only upon request.

Anyway: He says, "Swifter than I thought you'd be, somehow. Been here before?"

While he writes Hawksley a receipt. Adam has to write the receipt by hand and he does. He doesn't use the heavy and expensive pen to do so (old-fashioned, fine). He uses a plain plastic pen someone left behind after signing a check. The pen's cap is chewed up, and it writes in hop-skip sketchy blue; the story of the pen is an arduous one and it has had many homes. We shan't repeat its story here. [Humble though it is: The third wand.]

Hawksley

This would be one of the ones that has no sticker.  This one is handwritten by a witch who some know by her name amongst the Verbena.  She lived several generations ago.  Every page is soaked with her touch, even if her magic has long since faded from it.  Hawksley stares at Adam while Adam inspects the book.  He does not offer explanation, because even though this was pulled from the rare books section, he is not asked for one,

and he is the sort of man who does not often think to explain himself to anyone.

Adam begins wrapping it in paper.  He tells him a price, a high price, because it is one-of-a-kind.  Hawksley lays down a Centurion Card for it.  It's completely unnecessary, but Hawksley is not known for his discretion or his modesty by any means.  The man tailors his plain white t-shirts.

"Never," he says, while Adam is writing the receipt after using a funky carbon-copy machine that he may or may not have had to dig for to get out.  He smirks.  "Maybe it called to me."

Hawksley

[Okay, now he's curious.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Adam

The dark-haired young man feels, to the uncanny senses, to the arcane attention, like something terribly terribly valiant. Terrible, perhaps, because it is relentless, and what is worse than relentless valiance? Unceasing courage? There is something in it that could be bright -- flash of armor or a sword; but that brightness is sublimated; suggested, rather than present.

Now one shouldn't take away this idealistic idea of Adam the bookshop-clerk as the kind of Keeper of Books who is a genial and kind-hearted sage, ready to dispense with his treasure to any errant wanders through the doors, satisfied and made well-happy by the thought of the book going to a good home -- and thus did the little children love him.

No: there is a pang, sometimes, when Adam sells one of the rare ones, covetousness being a draconic virtue of his. What fairy lord ever willingly let even a leaf out of his enchanted forest? So: There is even a touch of wistfulness, occulted by reserve. He takes the elitest-of-elite cards without more comment than - if necessary - "ID?" and then runs it.

"Maybe it did," he replies, his tone some mix of bemused and thoughtful. "Or it is the call, you know." There is a ghost of some other accent sometimes when Adam speaks -- it belongs nowhere: it's a diplomat's brat accent, raised abroad and everywhere and on the east coast and then abroad again. "With this volume, and your, er, you, maybe there is something antecedentish afoot."

The bemusement gains ascendancy and, as he hands Hawksley's card back to him: "Nobody referred you?"

- just to be sure.

Hawksley

There is a moment of annoyance, a flinch of irritation, when Hawksley is asked for his ID.  How mundane.  But he hands it over: the name David Livingston, the address in Cherry Hills Village, the unsmiling head-on stare in the photo.  He is not an organ donor.

"No one that I know of," he says, taking his card back to his wallet.  He is quiet a moment.  He taps the top of the book.  "It was written by great-great-et cetera grandmother of someone I know quite well.  It would be a crime if I didn't return it to her."

So maybe, yes: it called.

Adam

Less than mundane: banal. But Adam diligently checks the ID, and gives offers Hawksley a pen (somehow a completely different one than the blue, or the first silver-tipped wand-of-a-pen: something that is nice, but not too nice; something that doesn't need to be dipped or re-filled or cared for every night as if it were precious; still, this is the fourth wand) so he can sign the name David Livingston.

"I see." Just that.

Then, "Only if the great-great et cetera grandmother and your friend share more than a bloodline, I'd say," says Adam. "Otherwise, the crime's in a return that's no return at all. Has your friend an interest in -- been searching down -- remnants of her great great, etcs., work?"

He rubs his jaw, then pops his neck. Long-neck, crack!-bone. It'd be absent-minded, except he, his attention, is so utterly fixed. 

Hawksley

"Not that I know of," Hawksley says truthfully, "but I utterly disagree with you.  Whether she was Awakened or not, she --" he does not call her 'my friend', "-- has every right to this volume."  He is frowning a bit.  "It was handwritten by her ancestor and it's sitting in some crowded bookshop to be picked up as a curiosity or forgotten entirely as it rots.  It hardly matters if they are both witches or not.  Have a heart, dude," he chastises, the scolding no less fervently intended due to the 'dude' tacked on to the end.

He lays down the pen that he used to sign the receipt, sitting atop the paper-wrapped book.  "Can you ship this?"

Adam

A bemused lift of his eyebrows. A mobile expression, if not necessarily an open one. He is hiding nothing, but that means less than one might think. "Yes. International or domestic?"

Adam opens a desk-drawer, shuffling through papers for a moment, before coming out with a form for Hawksley to fill out. The form desires an address and a name for the person who'll receive the thing, and a return address in-case-of. There is no option for insurance. With a book as expensive as the one Hawksley as purchased, it's standard procedure.

The bemusement is not - of course - over whether or not they can ship it. It's for the disagreement.

"And I partially disagree with you. If she is asleep, then she does not have every right to this volume. There are rights that a lack of interest forfeits. And there are the rights of those who might be spiritual descendants, rather than a descendant of blood, apprentice to mentor to apprentice, and so on.

"But I'll concede that whether or not she is Awake now hardly matters. Interest's the thing." He frowns, too. A stitch of a thing, considering and turned-inward.

Hawksley

"International.  London."

He takes a pen again, a new one.  He is frowning as he fills it out though, something twisting behind his features that he cannot or does not bother to conceal very well.  "Well, it's lovely that you disagree with me, but the book belongs to me now, and soon it will belong to her,"

he caps the pen, pushing the form back to Adam,

"and I daresay neither of us give a good god-damn what you think of 'spiritual descendants' or who has rights to something based on interest."

The name it is going to is Katherine.  The rest somehow doesn't seem as important.

Adam

[Am I maaad?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Adam

There is a beat.

And a beast, too. A black beast: the very devil of a temper, esconced within the breast of one A. Gallowglass. It isn't easily pricked, per se, but when it is, it is difficult to control. And he wishes to control it. He does, this time, though at cost of a tightening of his jaw, a brief blacking of his expression, frown going sharp and eyebrows going low. He looks the form over, perhaps as old camoflauge. He does not like people to know when he is annoyed at them and it is a struggle not to -- do whatever it is he does when he loses the leash.

"Looks in order." And the form, and the book, are whisked away and off the desk, and then -- 

Both elbows on the desk. His voice is the worst kind of tolerant -- tolerant and cool: "I wouldn't have allowed you to purchase the book if your beliefs were going to be an issue." Beat.

"Keep your shirt on, dude."

Hawksley

There is something in Hawksley ready to rise to that.  The raptor, the black-feathered sky god, the Something that lived before man or bird were conjoined in ancient reliefs, the Something that evolved by fire and death and path and came out on the other side with wings.  He sees it in Adam's eyes and there's a part of him ready to clash with it, eager and ferocious and yet

not malevolent.  Not evil.  Just primal.  If Adam were to punch Hawksley right now, there's not a bone in Hawksley's body that would hate him for it.  He would almost be grateful.  He would almost be ecstatic.

But Adam doesn't, and Hawksley smiles a little as he bends over the form instead.  Gives him that tolerant-cool rejoinder.  The little smile turns into a broad grin when Adam says what he does.

And ends it with dude!

Hawksley looks fit to burst into laughter.  "I could just kiss you," he says, but he is managing -- barely -- not to laugh.  He just grins like that, taps the paper-wrapped book, and folds his receipt away into a pocket.  As he heads for the door, he lifts a long arm and points back at Adam.  "You and me," he says, gesturing between them as though You And Me is a thing, it's a tangible line between them.  "It's gonna be awesome."

The bells jingle as he leaves.  He looks elated.