Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had been a long week for Mary, Lucy had seemed to relapse into a state of constant fear and suspicion, where everything and anything was a monster or a witch determined to do her in. And for god’s sake, what was so frightening about canned tomatoes?! And of course now, to top her bad week, it was now raining so hard that Mary was starting to wonder if she should start building an ark. She surely had a book that would tell her how somewhere in the stacks of books.

The only thing that made the day a little better was that Lucy was quietly sitting in the back corner where the was several comfy chairs and a small bar where Mary sold coffee, hot chocolate and various other snacks and drinks. Also, Peter, her only employee was actually at the counter helping people instead of doing whatever else he does when he’s at work, but not actually working.

There were a few people milling about the stacks of eclectic books. All bookstores did mainstream, and Mary just wasn’t one for mainstream. She of course had a classics section (‘cause hello! Classics are called classics for a reason! They’re good!), and a fairly decent new release section where she put most of the popular books. But other than that, she preferred the more eccentric subjects. Her personal favorite section was the alternative religion section as well as the alternative medicines. Basically anything alternative was her favorite, cultures, books and music.

Mary took one more forlorn look at the miserable day outside her window before checking in on her daughter.

“Muma, Muma! Lookit! Lookit! A baby! Babies are my favorite.” Lucy excitedly showed Mary the picture of a baby she had stumbled across while flipping through a book. Not surprising to Mary, it was the picture book of babies that Lucy had been obsessively looking through ever since she discovered it three days ago.

Mary leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of Lucy’s head. “Cute,” she said, she watched Lucy turn a few more pages before giving Lucy another kiss and saying, “So, I’m just going to be stacking books, call me if you need anything, but remember, your safe here, so you don’t have to worry about monsters or anything, I’ve got the monster alarm up and running, sound good?”

Lucy nodded, but didn’t look up from her book. Mary simply sighed and went to stack her new shipment of books.

As the door opened, the bells gave a cheerful jingle, causing Mary to look up from her pile of books that she had been alphabetizing. It took her a moment to take in the sight of the pair that had just entered, the wings on the back of the man certainly made a statement, especially with a young girl accompanying him. Mary simply let another sigh and told herself to simply get used to all the strange and wondrous things that were out in the world. She wasn’t at home where her parents could shield her from all the things they had deemed strange. So she got up from her position on the floor to go greet her new customers.

“Good afternoon, sir, ma'am" She smiled down at the little girl for that, "I’m Mary, can I help you find anything in particular? Get you a towel?” She gave them both a quick smile, it looked like the rain had soaked them both down to the bone and Mary for one, hating behind wet for long periods of long time. “Talk about horrible weather right?”

“Yeah, well, you know rain, it’s just one of those things!” Mary gave a wiry chuckle before turning to look at her employee who was currently flipping through the latest guitar magazine. She rolled her eyes before calling him, “Peter! Put the magazine and go get a towel from upstairs. You shouldn’t be reading that on shift either!” She shook her head before sheepishly looking back over to her customers.

“So he’ll be right back.” There was a clanging and the sound of things falling to inform Mary that Peter was indeed getting the requested towel, but taking his sweet time with it. “Can I assist you with anything else? Help finding a book? Beverage? Snack?” It was a good thing Mary really hated stacking books; she didn’t normally get this involved with customers. Part of Mary really wanted them to look for a book, Lucy was in the food area and she wasn’t quite sure how she would handle a man with wings. It was a recipe for disaster. She looked at the girl, she looked normal enough, maybe she could get them together and that would distract Lucy from the man.

She leaned down to talk directly to the girl, “My daughter is just over there sitting in the comfy chairs reading a book, or something, I’m never really sure, would you like to meet her?”

“Of course! I’ll show in just one moment.” Mary said, before turning to Zoe, she kind of wanted the other girl to distract Lucy from even seeing Tal. “She loves plays, but why don’t you go ask her your self…” Mary trailed off as she saw movement in the corner of her eye.
Mary would later look at the next few moments and laugh, but that day was very far off in the future seeing that Lucy had just taken this moment to appear from her chair in the corner and take one look at Tal before all the color drained from her face. She dropped her book and stared at the man for a good couple seconds in complete shock and terror.

“Oh s**t,” Mary said moving to take Lucy back to her chair, but it was too late. Lucy let out a bone-chilling scream that echoed through the bookstore. “M-m-m-m-m-m-m-monster!” She stuttered out. “Muma! Monster!” She found her self at a loss for words, so she resorted to crying as she ran to hide behind the chair.

“Sir, I’m sorry for that, she frightens easily,” She said trying to smooth any ruffled feathers if you can excuse the pun. “Maybe you, Zoe, can show that your father is not a monster? Do you want to try? Please?” There was a note of desperation to Mary’s voice.

Lucy couldn't help but shy away from the girl who had approached her. She had never really spoken to another girl before, and she was yelling at her. But some how Zoe's words were heard over the tears. "A-a-anti-mon-monster? There are anti-monsters? Muma says she keeps the monsters away, but she, she, she isn't an anti-monster!" Her sobs had stopped, but she still hiccuped as she composed herself. "Who's Allen? 'Cause if he's a monster and he loves another monster then that still means he's a monster and monsters are scary and they want to eat me and I don't eated."

Peter had finally come down from upstairs with the towel that he was sent to get only to hear Lucy's breakdown. "Lucy's crying again," he said as he tossed a fluffy white towel at Mary. "I'll be at the cash register." And with that he left to sort of do his job.

"Thanks Pete, I couldn't tell," Mary sarcastically bit back as she caught the towel. "Sorry about all this, but at least have a towel. My daughter Lucy is just very....sensitive, to things, that may be slightly strange. Please don't be at all offended by it."

Lucy's forehead furrowed for a minute and her lips pursed. "Lots of things want to eat me, like the tomato cans in the supermarket, they're evil!" She said with a smidgen of defiance mixed in with the shakiness of her voice. "Witches even bake people into pies, and dun wanna be a pie." She then turned to look at Zoe with a what could only be described as the evil eye. "You're not a witch are you? 'Cause a monster is a monster, but a witch is a witch and witches bake the pies after the monster is done and witches are tricky and evil and they protect the monsters with spells and magics that are evil!" After her rant, Lucy was left panting for air and was slowly trying to make her self seem smaller than she already was.

Unbridled laughter poured from Mary's mouth at Tal's words. It took her a few moments to curb it before choking out a "You have no idea!" She shook her head a few more times before sighing, "It's that damn play she came out of, I've been slowly trying to get past her fears, but we've had a recent set back, canned tomatoes, who would have guessed?"