"We always want to get lost in nice stories. This library is a little special. We consider our customers like travelers, you see. And... reading a book is like traveling from one place to another."
What would you do if you could live in a different...
I have thought about it for the past three days, not sure if it was a good idea to go through a living book. Or maybe it would be living in a book? I don't actually know how to call it. The librarian said travel, so that must be it.
Being a book lover doesn't make it any easier. Which of us wouldn't be craving this opportunity?
I glanced at A Court of Thorns and Roses again.
Well, whatever. What could go wrong, right?
I take it and lie in bed. Opening the book, I let myself get drawn to the story.
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I open my eyes, looking down from the crook of a tree branch I'm on top of and wiping my numb fingers over my eyes, brushing away the flakes clinging to my lashes. I focused on my surroundings, on the task ahead.
As I remember, there would be a doe in the forest being sought by a giant wolf.
Stifling a groan as my stiff limbs protested at the movement, I unstrung my bow before easing off the tree. The icy snow crunched under my fraying boots, and I ground my teeth. This is harder than I thought. I can barely feel my legs right now.
This author is sadic.
I take a deep breath and look around me. Endless forest. The sun was probably almost setting, and something was telling me I would not like to navigate my way home in the dark.
Moving as nimbly and quietly as I could between the trees, I pushed a hand against my hollow and aching stomach. How would I find the exact place I need to be? No one knows. I hoped the instincts of Feyre would be enough.
After a few minutes of careful searching, I crouched in a cluster of snow-heavy brambles. Through the thorns, I had a half-decent view of a clearing and the small brook flowing through it.
The snow fell and fell, dancing and curling like sparkling spindrifts, the white fresh and clean against the brown and gray of the world. The way it looked, though, was so... artistic. I wasn't expecting to savor the contrast of new grass against dark, tilled soil, or an amethyst brooch nestled in folds of emerald silk; dreaming and breathing and thinking in color and light and shape.
The howling wind calmed into a soft sighing. The snow fell lazily now, in big, fat clumps that gathered along every nook and bump of the trees. Mesmerizing—the lethal, gentle beauty of the snow.
Bushes rustled across the clearing.
Drawing my bow was a matter of instinct. I peered through the thorns, and my breath caught.
Less than thirty paces away stood a small doe, not yet too scrawny from winter but desperate enough to wrench bark from a tree in the clearing.
I noticed that this was the worst moment to be a vegetarian, but I supposed I wouldn't be alive to see Prythian if I had nothing to eat.
