Ethereal | (X-Men: First Class)

1. Vellichor

The wistfulness of a used bookshop.

  ⭇⭁  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one can never read all of the books a bookstore has to offer. No matter how small the store is, nor how thin the books, there will always be new books to add to the shelves. There will always be old books you wish to reread, whether in small sections or the entire tome. There will always be books you cannot read, if they come in languages you do not know, or if you simply do not have the patience to go through a particularly boring book. There will always be books sold before you have a chance to even look at the title. You can never read all of the books in a bookstore.

It's a sad sort of realization that all lovers of books must come too; especially if you are the owner of a bookstore. But Marianne had long since made peace with this, and did not allow herself to grieve too much for the books she would never read. She instead focused on reading what she could, and owning a bookstore certainly allowed one time to do so.

In other forms of distraction, she focused on getting other people to read, especially the younger generation. The adults who didn't read were useless and she had no patience for them. The little ones, she loved. They were always eager and ready to learn what they could, to know more of the world they lived in. Her husband had once teasingly called her a siren, the way she called the children of their neighbourhood into her bookstore with her intriguing French accent and French pastries fresh from the oven. She had always lightly smacked him in the arm with the newspaper.

While it was true that might have been why the children came, she knew the reason they kept coming back was because they believed she had magic.

A belief which was not completely wrong.

But really, it all depended on how a person defined 'magic'.