ArchivedLogs:Depressing

Depressing
Dramatis Personae Rasheed, Sage
In Absentia	2014-03-12 '
Location <NYC> Strand Books - East Village
The Strand manages to pack a whole lot of character into one bookstore, but they have a lot of space to fit it in. They advertise themselves as having eighteen miles of books, and whether or not that is true, it certainly is true that they have an enormous number of shelves packed into their rows and rows and rows of books. A book-lover's haven, this East Village landmark boasts an enormous collection of volumes of all types among their stacks, crammed into the narrow aisles. Well-known for their rare and out-of-print collection, they have many hard to find volumes tucked away in their labyrinth of shelves as well. The mild weather is continuing, not quite as warm as the previous day but even so Rasheed is hardly /bundled/ as he slips into the Strand. Neat dark slacks, pale blue dress shirt, matching dark suit jacket, there's a lightweight tan jacket he has draped over one arm, not actually worn. He doesn't seem to be here on any particularly /urgent/ quest, steps meandering as he wanders through the aisled. It's in a foreign-language section that he actually stops, by a large section of books in Arabic, spindly-long fingers running over the spines with almost affectionate care. Eventually he pulls one large tome off the shelf, starting to page through it with absent interest. Sage has been in the bookstore for maybe five minutes at this point, numbing through the aisles. Clad in a gray t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of boots, her red tinted glasses resting on her face, as she begins heading over to a small cluster of Russian books in the foreign section. She seemingly pays no attention to Rasheed at first /at all/, before she speaks, in her emotionless voice. "I find Arabic a fascinating language. Not only is it one of the oldest common modern languages, but it also has split into many variants of itself." "Most languages do, over time." Rasheed's eyes tick up from his book, quickly, a curt appraising glance slid over Sage. He looks back down to the pages almost immediately after, though. "Arabic has just had quite a long /time/ to fragment. Do you," he inquires mildly, long finger tracing down over the page, "speak it?" "I do not, though I have had an interest in the past seeing the large number of uses for Arabic.". Sage hasn't actually turned up from her book. She's rather weird, as she is picking up a book, flipping through the pages rather quickly, and then setting it down to look for another. "I admire your work." "Mmm?" Rasheed's gaze slides up from his pages again, though once more only briefly. A very small smile tugs at his lips, his eyes lowering back to the book he holds. He turns his page rather more slowly, eyes scanning down leisurely over the page. "Thank you." His answer comes gravely polite, though there's a small note of amusement in his dark eyes. "So do most people around here, I think. The ones who don't much care for becoming undead." "I do not believe anyone would like to be undead. It is quite a depressing phenomenon.". Sage says this as she's grabbing a book, reading about..the first chapter, and putting it under her arm. "I most certainly would attempt to avoid it myself." "I don't believe the undead mind it all that much, actually." Rasheed's tone has skewed dry, here; he exhales a heavy breath through his nose, slouching a shoulder up against the stacks of books. "It's the /living/ who find themselves disturbed by the phenomenon. The dead are rather single-minded." "And that is what makes it depressing.". Sage tips her head towards him, before walking off, book in tow. Rasheed just inclines his head in response, attention turning back down to his book.