The girl walks down the street before stopping in front of a used bookshop. She wistfully looks inside before looking around, checking to make sure that no one is stopping her. She then opens the blue vintage door and steps through the entrance.
As the door closes behind her, she is overwhelmed with joy that there is no one else in the shop. She inhales that ineffable scent that can only be made by books, and is filled with a sense of vellichor.
Though she has been there hundreds of times before, she looks around with a renewed sense of wonder. She sees a row of bookshelves on the wall to her left, full of children’s books. On the wall to her right, she sees a bookshelf full of YA books. To the left of a staircase, in the back of the shop, are the adult books.
The shop is small, but that’s how she likes it, unless there are other people there.
She slowly heads toward the back. As she walks, her fingers reach out to touch the worn spines, but she is completely unaware of it, with her eyes locked on the books in front of her. Though there is no one else in the store, if one had seen her face, they would notice her two different colored eyes (one blue-green and the other blue-violet) glossed over and shimmering with unshed tears.
Her smile, vastly immense, seemed as if it would never leave when in reality, it would leave, all too soon.
She stared at the books, in awe and wonder. She stared at the books with their many colors, pages, characters, and histories. There was a silence, so beautiful and mellifluous, that it was a sound in its self.
Bookshop