Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction ❯ Contemplations on Condescension ❯ A Night Spent in Curiosity ( Chapter 7 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Kacfrog711 
Kafei confronts Link about their bet. ...Or is it the other way around?
Non Anime: Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Psychological / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 08.07.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 333 | Status: Completed
Kafei confronts Link about their bet. ...Or is it the other way around?
Non Anime: Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Psychological / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 08.07.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.0K | Visits: 333 | Status: Completed
Chapter 7: A Night Spent in Curiosity
I stayed in the back of the shop well into the night, as I had no real desire to leave (with the exception of hunger, but that was easily ignored in such a stale-smelling room). I finished the book a fair amount of time after Ric had gone; it was an exceedingly short work that only recorded a brief period of Termina’s past, but the writing was archaic and intensely descriptive, thus it took me a number of hours to get through it. The shop below was soon opened for business, and the clock on the wall - though half-concealed by junk - confirmed the time as 10-something. Still unwilling to return to the inn, I dug through the stacked piles for a new book, finally settling on some epic poem that looked promising. I’d barely gotten past the invocation, however, when I head Ric’s louder-than-usual voice through the wall. “Hey, it’s the kid!” I heard shuffling. “You ever find Kafei?”
I was at the wall in a flash, my eye easily finding the hole there. The angle was odd, and I couldn’t see much past Ric’s balding head for a moment. He then leaned forward on the counter, however, which presented me with a clear view of the (notably short) customer. Green-hat was talking steadily, but I could hear only mumbles from the distance.
“Yeah, he likes that place,” the shop owner said. Talking about me again. I was just surprised he hadn’t– Then he looked in my direction, as if seeing through the wall, and practically shouted, “Don’t you, Kafei?”
I immediately jumped backwards so my eye wouldn’t be visible through the hole, only to lose my footing, trip over some metal instrument and fall in a rather loud commotion. Well, so much for subtlety. I heard Ric’s laugh through the wall: short and sharp but deep. The bastard, ratting me out and enjoying it, too. ...Not that I had been hiding from Link in the first place, but it was the principle of the thing. Now that the boy was aware of my presence, I was sure nothing good would be said. But that didn’t stop me from listening, of course. I sat on the crate below the hole, resting my head on the wall. I could hear Ric clearly when he spoke, but only a word or two of Green-hat’s reached my ears. Thus, it was hard to say what they were speaking about most of the time, but what I made out didn’t sound particularly engaging anyway: how business was, how long Green-hat had been in town, his non-existent plans for the night, their mutual health. When they started talking about what the weather was like, I exploded, “Would you two say something worth saying or just shut up?!”
Green-hat replied with something that sounded only like muttering to my ears, and Ric responded to him with a whisper of his own. There was a pause, and then the brat said loudly enough for me to hear, “What should we say to entertain you?”
A few thoughts came to mind, but Ric interrupted my serious musings on the subject with, “Should we put on a play? Do you want comedy or tragedy?”
“How about mime?” I spat. There was no sound for a moment, and then Link started chuckling. I chanced a look through the hole (hoping to catch Ric making an idiot of himself) and fell back again at the startling sight of a huge brown eye.
Ric laughed and spoke directly through the hole so I could see the movement of his lips and nothing else. “Why don’t you come down here already?” The lips disappeared and were replaced by the curious eye once more.
I sneered, “No, I don’t think I will.”
“Suit yourself.” He said, and I heard him jump back down to the floor. There was more muttering of a conversation out of earshot, and then the shop’s door creaked open and closed. I sighed. Ric’s sense of humor usually clashed with mine, but at least he knew when to stop. ...Well, sometimes. Actually, the man was rarely serious, if he could avoid it. I suppose a sense of humor is useful when constantly dealing with criminals as he did. I picked up the fallen book and replaced it on its stack, no longer in the mood to read.
“Hey, kid.” Ric called, and I naturally remained unmoved. If he were talking to me (and he was), I wouldn’t respond to that address. “Hope you’re decent,” he said, then added, “On second thought, I hope you aren’t.”
“What? Why?” I shouted back, hesitant to hear the answer.
When he responded only with a dark chuckle, I peered through the peephole: Ric was smiling deviously at me from behind his shades. I cursed and turned towards the stairs. He hadn’t... A moment later, my suspicions were confirmed as Green-hat rounded the bend. ...Of course he had. He’d invited the little nuisance up because I wouldn’t go down. Wonderful.
The boy stopped on sight of me, then smiled widely. “Sorry about that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really didn’t know you were up here.” After a thought, he added, “I mean, I did when he... But, at first, I didn’t.”
I rubbed my eyes. “It’s fine.”
There was a moment of silence; when I looked up, he said, “Should I leave?”
“No, it’s--” I began, until the thought stuck me. “You lost.”
Green-hat looked confused. “I what?”
“You lost the bet.” I began smirking with the words. “You left the inn.”
“What?” His grey-blue eyes had gone wide, and he said vehemently, “That wasn’t what we said!”
Now I was confused. “What do you mean? The bet was that you wouldn’t stay for a week.”
Link splayed his hands and pushed out his chest. “Here I am.”
I narrowed my eyes and accused, “But you left the inn.”
“That wasn’t the bet!” He said.
“Yes, it was,” I demanded.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It was!”
Something started pounding against the side wall, and we both stopped our arguing to stare in the general direction of it. The sound stopped abruptly, and Ric shouted, “Hey, keep it down up there!” He added loudly, “Damn noisy kids.”
I considered throwing something at the wall but didn’t see the good of it, as it wouldn’t hit the owner by far and would cause minimal damage to the wall itself. I looked back over at Green-hat, and he was looking at me. “Well?” I said.
“The deal was,” he said calmly, “That I wouldn’t leave Clock Town, and I haven’t.”
“It–“ I caught myself in the argument, unwilling to repeat the previous degeneration in conversation. “I suppose we didn’t discuss the finer details of our deal.”
“I suppose we didn’t,” he mimicked back.
I crossed my arms with a sigh. Actually, I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it before now. When we’d made the deal, I’d just expected that Link would be where I wanted him to be, where I would have access to him at all times, thus allowing me my interrogation. I suppose that was a poor assumption on my part. If I could hardly keep the boy in town for a week, how did I expect to keep him within my eyesight for the duration? He was a child without parents: a wild animal, like those prankster children running about in their gang, causing havoc. I wanted him on a leash. ...But I would have to settle for a cage. “I admit, it would be cruel to confine anyone to the Stockpot for an entire week.” Though the word was hard to get out, I managed, “I acquiesce.”
“Good.” He nodded his green-hatted head.
We stood in silence: me in the room, him in the entranceway. I thought on it but could come up with nothing else to say regarding our bet. Curiosity finally provided me with a question. “Did you decide yet what you’d want if you win?”
Link looked up at me, smiling. The sight reminded my vaguely of Ric, and his smiles were ones to be feared, not encouraged. “I may have,” he said enigmatically. “But since you already agreed to ‘anything,’ I figure I’ll keep my options open for now.”
“How expedient of you,” I intoned.
“I think so,” he said proudly.
Again, there was silence between us. I took the moment to stare at him openly, my eyes following his ridiculously large boots up his ridiculously skinny legs, up further across that ridiculously grass-green tunic, and up to his ridiculously thin neck. He was laughable to look at; I wondered if he knew it. By the time my eyes were on his face, his own were downcast. The lack of those adult eyes, now hidden by dark lashes and white-blonde hair, completed his entirely infantile look. I couldn’t believe the perfect juxtaposition of how reasonably he spoke and how juvenile he appeared. It was absurd.
“How do you know so much?” I asked outright.
He glanced up at me, his eyes serious for a moment. Then he smiled. “I listen.”
My initial response to this was, of course, an annoyed frown. “Are you implying that I don’t?”
“Was I implying that?” he laughed, and I wanted to punch those teeth right out of his head.
“You’re very frustrating,” I said as succinctly as ever.
“So are you.” He met my eyes with a more subdued smile and returned, “You just don’t seem to mind it.”
I scoffed and moved to push past him, but he turned and began trotting down the steps before me. Once we were out in the fresh night air, hunger hit me with its full force. “Have you eaten?” I asked, not really caring about the answer, but rather musing on food in general. Where to eat...
“Hours ago,” Green-hat replied, walking. “At the inn. Anju asked about you, and I didn’t know what to tell her.”
I ignored this bit of extraneous information and contemplated my options. There are a limited number of places one can find food in such a town. The most obvious of answers is, of course, at one’s residence. In my case, that meant the inn, unfortunately enough, and I had no intention of going there tonight. The next option that came to mind was the Milk Bar, which served a limited selection of food with their drinks. I immediately rejected this idea as well. The food wasn’t very good to begin with, from what little I’d sampled, and I was still prejudiced against the place as a general principle. Another, even less desirable alternative was to go to my home: the house at the back of the mayor’s office. There was a fully-stocked kitchen there, and I could fix myself something easily enough. However, I was fairly certain that returning home meant encountering my mother (something I strove always to avoid in life), which put me off the idea entirely. There was, of course, the Curiosity Shop’s back rooms. Ric didn’t have an oven of any kind, as he’d more than likely burn the shop down with it, but he always kept the place stocked with a variety of dried and quasi-edible food. Having spent the day and just left there, though, I was in no hurry to return.
By this point, we’d come to a full stop in the middle of South Clock Town, for lack of any purposeful direction. Link was looking at me with interest, but I merely frowned over his head and continued to ignore him. After a moment of loitering, he asked, “Aren’t we going to the Stockpot?” I didn’t reward that brilliant question with a reply. I felt his continued stare, and it bothered me beyond the point where I could remain silent.
“Go, then, if you’re in such a hurry to return.”
Link looked near incredulous; had I been less vexed, I would’ve been amused by it. “So you’re just going to stand here?”
I wanted to, when he said it. I decided in that second to remain standing there all night, just because he was so against it. ...The immediately following second, however, this idea suddenly didn’t sound palatable in the least. So I decided to do opposite, and I walked off in the direction of West Clock Town: as far away from the inn as I could get myself.
It took a moment for the action to register, but then Green-hat was right on my heels again, following me to the west like a stray dog. I replied snappishly even as I walked, “I thought you were going to the inn.”
“I thought you were,” he said, struggling to keep up with my quick pace.
“Why are you following me?” I demanded of the air before me, not condescending to look at the brat.
He stopped walking, and I continued ever-forward. Soon he was a good distance behind. I rounded the bend in the street, and he was gone from me entirely.
...It was a curious thing, I realized once he was no longer within sight. I sat down on a store’s front step, and I considered what I’d just done. I’d gotten rid of the boy. I’d forced him out of my presence. And I was glad to have done it. I really couldn’t stand him... His body being there, his constant staring. But then, as soon as he was gone, I could think of nothing else. I’d wanted to interrogate him; what of that? How had I forgotten? No, I hadn’t forgotten. I had asked him, when the opportunity had arisen. And yet, when I hadn’t gotten my answer, I’d allowed him to completely change the subject, without even being aware that he was doing it. The cunning of him! How underhanded, how sly... And then when there was nothing left to be said - a time in which I should’ve forced my questions into the conversation - I didn’t ask him. I didn’t want to speak to him. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from him, the nervous feeling crawling under my skin. Something about his presence consistently bothered me to the point that I felt the need to move, to end it, to walk away. And yet, once he was gone, my sole directive became only to get him back again. It simply didn’t follow. It was completely illogical. It was insane and unhealthy, I reasoned, like being addicted to the very thing that kills you. And something had to be done about it.
...But I wanted dinner first. The south end of town was more the place to buy food, but any vendors there would be long closed by this time at night. The shops in West Clock Town mostly sold weaponry, clothing, medicines, and a variety of... ill-reputed services. Any food bought here needed to be tested first, preferably by someone you weren’t very fond of. The image of Green-hat choking immediately came to mind, and I allowed myself a smirk. That would shut the brat up. Then, the naturally-following image was of him dead... and that was somehow less pleasing. But it was all irrelevant anyway, and I strove to put it out of mind.
I finally ended up back in the Curiosity Shop’s upper levels, and the food I dug from the pantries there was less than satisfactory. It all tasted like smoke and dust, anyway. But it satiated my hunger, and that was enough. And even more convenient was the close proximity of the place to the laundry pool. On my way out, I took with me a candle and a few books, and I spent a good number of hours reading by the waterside. I fell asleep on the grass with my head on my arm and a book still in my hand. When I woke, it was long past sunrise, and the candle was a mere hardened puddle of wax beside me, long since gone cold. I noticed that the books were neatly stacked and was surprised to find a scrap of paper holding the page of one. On the note, there was writing in a messy, ink-spotted hand that said simply, “I’m not a library. Keep them in the store or pay me.” It wasn’t signed, but the author of it was obvious.
In response, I stood and kicked the books into the pool.
I stayed in the back of the shop well into the night, as I had no real desire to leave (with the exception of hunger, but that was easily ignored in such a stale-smelling room). I finished the book a fair amount of time after Ric had gone; it was an exceedingly short work that only recorded a brief period of Termina’s past, but the writing was archaic and intensely descriptive, thus it took me a number of hours to get through it. The shop below was soon opened for business, and the clock on the wall - though half-concealed by junk - confirmed the time as 10-something. Still unwilling to return to the inn, I dug through the stacked piles for a new book, finally settling on some epic poem that looked promising. I’d barely gotten past the invocation, however, when I head Ric’s louder-than-usual voice through the wall. “Hey, it’s the kid!” I heard shuffling. “You ever find Kafei?”
I was at the wall in a flash, my eye easily finding the hole there. The angle was odd, and I couldn’t see much past Ric’s balding head for a moment. He then leaned forward on the counter, however, which presented me with a clear view of the (notably short) customer. Green-hat was talking steadily, but I could hear only mumbles from the distance.
“Yeah, he likes that place,” the shop owner said. Talking about me again. I was just surprised he hadn’t– Then he looked in my direction, as if seeing through the wall, and practically shouted, “Don’t you, Kafei?”
I immediately jumped backwards so my eye wouldn’t be visible through the hole, only to lose my footing, trip over some metal instrument and fall in a rather loud commotion. Well, so much for subtlety. I heard Ric’s laugh through the wall: short and sharp but deep. The bastard, ratting me out and enjoying it, too. ...Not that I had been hiding from Link in the first place, but it was the principle of the thing. Now that the boy was aware of my presence, I was sure nothing good would be said. But that didn’t stop me from listening, of course. I sat on the crate below the hole, resting my head on the wall. I could hear Ric clearly when he spoke, but only a word or two of Green-hat’s reached my ears. Thus, it was hard to say what they were speaking about most of the time, but what I made out didn’t sound particularly engaging anyway: how business was, how long Green-hat had been in town, his non-existent plans for the night, their mutual health. When they started talking about what the weather was like, I exploded, “Would you two say something worth saying or just shut up?!”
Green-hat replied with something that sounded only like muttering to my ears, and Ric responded to him with a whisper of his own. There was a pause, and then the brat said loudly enough for me to hear, “What should we say to entertain you?”
A few thoughts came to mind, but Ric interrupted my serious musings on the subject with, “Should we put on a play? Do you want comedy or tragedy?”
“How about mime?” I spat. There was no sound for a moment, and then Link started chuckling. I chanced a look through the hole (hoping to catch Ric making an idiot of himself) and fell back again at the startling sight of a huge brown eye.
Ric laughed and spoke directly through the hole so I could see the movement of his lips and nothing else. “Why don’t you come down here already?” The lips disappeared and were replaced by the curious eye once more.
I sneered, “No, I don’t think I will.”
“Suit yourself.” He said, and I heard him jump back down to the floor. There was more muttering of a conversation out of earshot, and then the shop’s door creaked open and closed. I sighed. Ric’s sense of humor usually clashed with mine, but at least he knew when to stop. ...Well, sometimes. Actually, the man was rarely serious, if he could avoid it. I suppose a sense of humor is useful when constantly dealing with criminals as he did. I picked up the fallen book and replaced it on its stack, no longer in the mood to read.
“Hey, kid.” Ric called, and I naturally remained unmoved. If he were talking to me (and he was), I wouldn’t respond to that address. “Hope you’re decent,” he said, then added, “On second thought, I hope you aren’t.”
“What? Why?” I shouted back, hesitant to hear the answer.
When he responded only with a dark chuckle, I peered through the peephole: Ric was smiling deviously at me from behind his shades. I cursed and turned towards the stairs. He hadn’t... A moment later, my suspicions were confirmed as Green-hat rounded the bend. ...Of course he had. He’d invited the little nuisance up because I wouldn’t go down. Wonderful.
The boy stopped on sight of me, then smiled widely. “Sorry about that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really didn’t know you were up here.” After a thought, he added, “I mean, I did when he... But, at first, I didn’t.”
I rubbed my eyes. “It’s fine.”
There was a moment of silence; when I looked up, he said, “Should I leave?”
“No, it’s--” I began, until the thought stuck me. “You lost.”
Green-hat looked confused. “I what?”
“You lost the bet.” I began smirking with the words. “You left the inn.”
“What?” His grey-blue eyes had gone wide, and he said vehemently, “That wasn’t what we said!”
Now I was confused. “What do you mean? The bet was that you wouldn’t stay for a week.”
Link splayed his hands and pushed out his chest. “Here I am.”
I narrowed my eyes and accused, “But you left the inn.”
“That wasn’t the bet!” He said.
“Yes, it was,” I demanded.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It was!”
Something started pounding against the side wall, and we both stopped our arguing to stare in the general direction of it. The sound stopped abruptly, and Ric shouted, “Hey, keep it down up there!” He added loudly, “Damn noisy kids.”
I considered throwing something at the wall but didn’t see the good of it, as it wouldn’t hit the owner by far and would cause minimal damage to the wall itself. I looked back over at Green-hat, and he was looking at me. “Well?” I said.
“The deal was,” he said calmly, “That I wouldn’t leave Clock Town, and I haven’t.”
“It–“ I caught myself in the argument, unwilling to repeat the previous degeneration in conversation. “I suppose we didn’t discuss the finer details of our deal.”
“I suppose we didn’t,” he mimicked back.
I crossed my arms with a sigh. Actually, I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it before now. When we’d made the deal, I’d just expected that Link would be where I wanted him to be, where I would have access to him at all times, thus allowing me my interrogation. I suppose that was a poor assumption on my part. If I could hardly keep the boy in town for a week, how did I expect to keep him within my eyesight for the duration? He was a child without parents: a wild animal, like those prankster children running about in their gang, causing havoc. I wanted him on a leash. ...But I would have to settle for a cage. “I admit, it would be cruel to confine anyone to the Stockpot for an entire week.” Though the word was hard to get out, I managed, “I acquiesce.”
“Good.” He nodded his green-hatted head.
We stood in silence: me in the room, him in the entranceway. I thought on it but could come up with nothing else to say regarding our bet. Curiosity finally provided me with a question. “Did you decide yet what you’d want if you win?”
Link looked up at me, smiling. The sight reminded my vaguely of Ric, and his smiles were ones to be feared, not encouraged. “I may have,” he said enigmatically. “But since you already agreed to ‘anything,’ I figure I’ll keep my options open for now.”
“How expedient of you,” I intoned.
“I think so,” he said proudly.
Again, there was silence between us. I took the moment to stare at him openly, my eyes following his ridiculously large boots up his ridiculously skinny legs, up further across that ridiculously grass-green tunic, and up to his ridiculously thin neck. He was laughable to look at; I wondered if he knew it. By the time my eyes were on his face, his own were downcast. The lack of those adult eyes, now hidden by dark lashes and white-blonde hair, completed his entirely infantile look. I couldn’t believe the perfect juxtaposition of how reasonably he spoke and how juvenile he appeared. It was absurd.
“How do you know so much?” I asked outright.
He glanced up at me, his eyes serious for a moment. Then he smiled. “I listen.”
My initial response to this was, of course, an annoyed frown. “Are you implying that I don’t?”
“Was I implying that?” he laughed, and I wanted to punch those teeth right out of his head.
“You’re very frustrating,” I said as succinctly as ever.
“So are you.” He met my eyes with a more subdued smile and returned, “You just don’t seem to mind it.”
I scoffed and moved to push past him, but he turned and began trotting down the steps before me. Once we were out in the fresh night air, hunger hit me with its full force. “Have you eaten?” I asked, not really caring about the answer, but rather musing on food in general. Where to eat...
“Hours ago,” Green-hat replied, walking. “At the inn. Anju asked about you, and I didn’t know what to tell her.”
I ignored this bit of extraneous information and contemplated my options. There are a limited number of places one can find food in such a town. The most obvious of answers is, of course, at one’s residence. In my case, that meant the inn, unfortunately enough, and I had no intention of going there tonight. The next option that came to mind was the Milk Bar, which served a limited selection of food with their drinks. I immediately rejected this idea as well. The food wasn’t very good to begin with, from what little I’d sampled, and I was still prejudiced against the place as a general principle. Another, even less desirable alternative was to go to my home: the house at the back of the mayor’s office. There was a fully-stocked kitchen there, and I could fix myself something easily enough. However, I was fairly certain that returning home meant encountering my mother (something I strove always to avoid in life), which put me off the idea entirely. There was, of course, the Curiosity Shop’s back rooms. Ric didn’t have an oven of any kind, as he’d more than likely burn the shop down with it, but he always kept the place stocked with a variety of dried and quasi-edible food. Having spent the day and just left there, though, I was in no hurry to return.
By this point, we’d come to a full stop in the middle of South Clock Town, for lack of any purposeful direction. Link was looking at me with interest, but I merely frowned over his head and continued to ignore him. After a moment of loitering, he asked, “Aren’t we going to the Stockpot?” I didn’t reward that brilliant question with a reply. I felt his continued stare, and it bothered me beyond the point where I could remain silent.
“Go, then, if you’re in such a hurry to return.”
Link looked near incredulous; had I been less vexed, I would’ve been amused by it. “So you’re just going to stand here?”
I wanted to, when he said it. I decided in that second to remain standing there all night, just because he was so against it. ...The immediately following second, however, this idea suddenly didn’t sound palatable in the least. So I decided to do opposite, and I walked off in the direction of West Clock Town: as far away from the inn as I could get myself.
It took a moment for the action to register, but then Green-hat was right on my heels again, following me to the west like a stray dog. I replied snappishly even as I walked, “I thought you were going to the inn.”
“I thought you were,” he said, struggling to keep up with my quick pace.
“Why are you following me?” I demanded of the air before me, not condescending to look at the brat.
He stopped walking, and I continued ever-forward. Soon he was a good distance behind. I rounded the bend in the street, and he was gone from me entirely.
...It was a curious thing, I realized once he was no longer within sight. I sat down on a store’s front step, and I considered what I’d just done. I’d gotten rid of the boy. I’d forced him out of my presence. And I was glad to have done it. I really couldn’t stand him... His body being there, his constant staring. But then, as soon as he was gone, I could think of nothing else. I’d wanted to interrogate him; what of that? How had I forgotten? No, I hadn’t forgotten. I had asked him, when the opportunity had arisen. And yet, when I hadn’t gotten my answer, I’d allowed him to completely change the subject, without even being aware that he was doing it. The cunning of him! How underhanded, how sly... And then when there was nothing left to be said - a time in which I should’ve forced my questions into the conversation - I didn’t ask him. I didn’t want to speak to him. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from him, the nervous feeling crawling under my skin. Something about his presence consistently bothered me to the point that I felt the need to move, to end it, to walk away. And yet, once he was gone, my sole directive became only to get him back again. It simply didn’t follow. It was completely illogical. It was insane and unhealthy, I reasoned, like being addicted to the very thing that kills you. And something had to be done about it.
...But I wanted dinner first. The south end of town was more the place to buy food, but any vendors there would be long closed by this time at night. The shops in West Clock Town mostly sold weaponry, clothing, medicines, and a variety of... ill-reputed services. Any food bought here needed to be tested first, preferably by someone you weren’t very fond of. The image of Green-hat choking immediately came to mind, and I allowed myself a smirk. That would shut the brat up. Then, the naturally-following image was of him dead... and that was somehow less pleasing. But it was all irrelevant anyway, and I strove to put it out of mind.
I finally ended up back in the Curiosity Shop’s upper levels, and the food I dug from the pantries there was less than satisfactory. It all tasted like smoke and dust, anyway. But it satiated my hunger, and that was enough. And even more convenient was the close proximity of the place to the laundry pool. On my way out, I took with me a candle and a few books, and I spent a good number of hours reading by the waterside. I fell asleep on the grass with my head on my arm and a book still in my hand. When I woke, it was long past sunrise, and the candle was a mere hardened puddle of wax beside me, long since gone cold. I noticed that the books were neatly stacked and was surprised to find a scrap of paper holding the page of one. On the note, there was writing in a messy, ink-spotted hand that said simply, “I’m not a library. Keep them in the store or pay me.” It wasn’t signed, but the author of it was obvious.
In response, I stood and kicked the books into the pool.