THE HOLLOW , ( grishaverse )

five: BOOKSHOPS

THE HOLLOW
five: BOOKSHOPS

WEST RAVKA IS NOTHING SPECIAL. Maybe that is why so many run. It's like Ketterdam without the entertainment, without anything to hold your interest. The streets fee hollow and empty, and stretch for miles without direction, winding and twisting, folding out into shop after shop without consequence or necessity.

There's no nightlife, no frivolity or celebration like Ketterdam; it's only pubs are dingy and cold, empty and uninteresting. They'll ply you with cheap, solemn drinks to nurse in your own company, and twist your self-loathing into evil as you reach the bottom of your third ale glass.

Lilia has enough of that within her to last a lifetime. These places of damp and decay would only rot her further.

She can't imagine ever building a life here.

Then again, she can't imagine much of a life in Ketterdam, either. Or anywhere at all, for that matter.

There's a small bookshop on the corner of one of the streets. In the window, sits a display, built of heavy stained wood and old, worn-away carvings that once seemed to resemble crawling ivy. The book in the centre catches her attention, demands it, even; it's old and leather-bound, a deep crimson in colour, embossed with delicate gold and surrounded by cream fabric draped in peaks and mountains across the platform.

The book is nothing special. Not to most. Just a silly old children's book that everyone in Kavatero seems to have read, one time or another. But it's the only good tie to her childhood.

When she was six, she'd found a copy in the library. It was a wretched old thing, with a broken spine and dog-eared pages, but the copy was practically glued to her hands.

The Fall of the Wicked, it's called. The story of an orphan. One of those terribly cliche tales — of loss and growth and wonder — that Lilia seemed to cling to. Just a child, alone to the world, just like the main character in the book. She'd flick through its pages, pulling at each little detail, each word printed onto the ageing pages.

It's Rina's favourite, too.

There's an old copy in the nightstand by her bed.

Somehow, it calls out to her. Like it's meant to be there, like she's meant to be there.

She pushes her way into the shop, through the closed door with the 'OPEN' sign hanging in the window. The bell behind the door chimes brightly.

The shop is dimly lit, illuminated by lamplight, just enough to make out the covers of each book; red, green and blue books lined up one-by-one along the bookshelves, gold, silver and bronze lettering prominent against the leather bindings. There are hundreds of them, no two editions the same, and - if she were still that six-year-old wide-eyed girl in the pretty dresses - she'd be utterly enchanted by each and every title on the shelves.

The bookseller greets her when she enters. "Can I help you?" He questions as she stutters by the doorway, glancing around in the soft gold light, in search of another edition of The Fall of the Wicked.

If the shelves are anything to go by, the one in the window is the only one in the store.

Lilia hums. "The book in the window, can I see it?"

"Ah-" He claps his hands together. "Of course."

The man rounds the counter and reaches over the window display to fish out the focus of her attention. He settles it into her welcome hands, so delicate as if it were priceless - and, perhaps, it is; she has no idea how much something like this could possibly cost - and grins at her, wide. "It's a first edition." He proclaims, proudly.