Welcome to Gaia! ::

Early mornings weren't fun. Gloom Heart was still getting used to this whole employment thing. He supposed working somewhere with lots of books would be good for a few reasons, most importantly that most customers stayed quiet as if it were a library. It was one of those classier bookstores in Phony City with a couple floors, an indoor cafe, and a section for digital media like music, books on tape, and films. It was part of the tourist trap souvenir shops, but at least this place tended to attract a certain type of customer and usually the only boisterous patrons were foals or children.

His job in this place was simple; stock, occasionally managing the register, and... customer service. Gloom still couldn't figure out why they decided that was a good idea. Luckily, any interaction he was forced to have with them was short. They didn't bother asking him opinions on books, just whether or not they had them and where they might be. Overall, he figured it was safe to say he was content here. He would be content today, too, if not for one very simple thing.

He couldn't find his glasses.

In the midst of restocking, Gloom had been bumped and the frames fell off. Immediately his vision became flawed, blurry. Everything looked like dull blobs as the colors all mixed together. "Watch it!" he hissed at anyone who was near him, though the offender was probably long gone. Lightly, carefully, he attempted to navigate through the rows of books nearly blind. His hooves shuffled forward rather than lifting, not wanting to accidentally smash his only pair. "Look out, I dropped my glasses." The longer he looked, the more pitiful he sounded. Without them, he felt completely helpless.

All around, Gloom Heart shuffled. His tired eyes squinted tight to try and clear his vision but to no avail. Black hooves clacked against the tiled floor, occasionally knocking against the edges of shelves or wheels on the book cart he had been pushing before all of this started. His breathing was beginning to pick up as his fretting reached an all time high.

And then, just at its peak when his chest felt tight, a small voice cracked through his anxious walls. "Ex-excuse me?" So quiet, at first he was certain he hadn't heard a thing but Gloom instinctively turned toward the source before he could catch himself and there stood a -- well, a petite brown blob.

"Excuse you," he repeated flatly, staring at her with an expression that read both worry and irritation. She was taking up his time that could be spent finding his glasses! Pity he was too blind to see she had safely collected them already. One hoof tapped impatiently at the floor, trying to hurry her along.

At the hoof shuffling and slight delay on her point, Gloom's eyes narrowed. He couldn't quite make out her face but he could see the vague shape of her head and make a guess as to where her eyes were from that. As soon as the word 'glasses' passed her lips, proceeded of course by 'yours' and 'found', his expression changed to one of confusion and then softened entirely.

"Oh..." he breathed, momentarily awestruck. The stallion quickly righted himself and brought a hoof to his temple, rubbing gently. "Yes. Could you?" With that, he shut his eyes and stuck his head out, brows knit as if bracing for some sort of impact. "Can't get my work done. I'm blind as a bat without 'em." His tone was much less agitated now, though it wasn't quite to the point of being friendly. Hard to say if that was even possible for him. Maybe once his glasses were back in order.

One of his eyebrows twitched in response to the slight tap. That was all. Once the glasses were firmly set on his face, Gloom Heart nudged the rim with the tip of a hoof. His vision came into focus almost instantly, though he blinked the minor blurriness away for good measure. All the while, he was staring silently at the mare in front of him who had so graciously returned his glasses without being prompted. She might have been an annoying customer, but she had proven all the others doubly worthless by comparison -- that meant she wasn't even half as bad as anyone else in the entire building.

There was only one thing off about this whole situation. Gloom's brows knit and his eyes narrowed with scrutiny as the quiet mare fidgeted anxiously. To him, it looked exactly as described, and after a few seconds of awkward silence filled with a girl peepee dancing in front of him, Gloom Heart cleared his throat. "Do you need help with something?" His tone was still gruff, but it didn't sound nearly as annoyed as when he was crawling around the floor, blind. The question was, in fact, genuine, though it only partially pertained to him wanting to return the favor. The other half was him wanting to remove himself from their interaction and get back to work.

Once more, his brows lifted in mild surprise. He wouldn't quite say it was a pleasant surprise, but it wasn't unpleasant either -- that was a plus. Gloom didn't catch her tiny squeak, or rather couldn't discern the words contained within the tiny sound, but already he had turned back to the book cart he was pushing and glancing at the collection to see if there was anything within immediate reach. One title caught his eye, just the one, and he gently took hold of the book's spine in both hooves to pull it out. Normally he would use his mouth but, since she gave him a helping hand, he wanted to make a somewhat decent impression so she didn't feel like her efforts were wasted.

"This is a good one, actually. The Riddle of the Wings. It's mostly poetry on pegasus, but they aren't afraid to get dark about it." Judging from her timid nature, dark probably wasn't her thing. Unfortunately for Hidden Hearts, dark was definitely his thing and would be entangled within all of his poetry choices. "Then there's The Moon Also Rises, which is just a collection of various poems and the title's short story. That's not here, though, we'll have to go find it on the shelves in the poetry section." Was she even up for a journey across the hall, or did she need to stop for a bathroom break?

At first, after the book was taken from him, Gloom Heart resumed going through the motions. He gave a nod of acknowledgement to her thanks but skimped on the "welcome", then continued thinking of other titles to suggest and sort through the books on the nearby cart in case he missed any. The sound of her small voice, heard easily in the quiet din of the library and thanks to her close proximity, went in one ear and out the other until that sigh -- oh, what a strangely pleasant sigh -- and she asked ever so politely to take that one too.

The gears in his mind immediately spun in reverse. His brain tried to back peddle to register exactly what she had said prior to that moment. She wanted... his genuine opinion? Not a question of "is it good?", like most simpletons coming in looking for stories, but an actual analysis? And she liked it? She liked something he did? That in itself wasn't unusual but, paired with that sigh, it definitely went deeper than just a mild appreciation.

"I--" he started slowly, gathering his thoughts before adjusting his glasses and turning back to face her, "--thought it was spectacular. The way his prose flowed, I felt lost in the moon's sadness. How she was always ignored in favor of the sun. It was beautiful and tragic." Before he could stop himself, he had actually gushed to a customer over a story... and he wasn't stopping, either. "The poems follow similar themes; tragic beauty. They take something sad, devastating, even loathsome, and they find a way to see the beauty in it. What's best about it, though, is they don't sugarcoat anything. It's not just a collection of poems and stories about how sadness has to be overcome, but how sadness and tragedy in itself is alluring and needs to be appreciated. That's something a lot of people forget."

Hopefully he wasn't making a fool of himself. Suddenly, the stallion was quite aware of his surroundings and how he was presenting himself and he wasn't even fully sure why. "But um -- like I said, that's not here. Just follow me. I'll show you the poetry section and we'll find it." With that, he straightened a few stray books on the cart and readied it to be pushed through the aisle once Hidden Hearts was ready.

As they started moving, the stuttering mare began to gush. Her words alone were poetic, her descriptions admirable, and the depth of her meaning nearly made Gloom Heart stop in his tracks while wheeling the cart. This was more than just highly unusual -- it was downright uncomfortable. But, somehow, it was welcomed and though their exchange was making him feel strange in ways he wasn't sure he appreciated, it was decidedly better than feeling petulant towards everyone that walked through those doors.

Sometimes he wondered if that feeling would be better or worse if he worked at a book store rather than a library.

"Yes," he managed to say after a few moments silence following her declaration of sadness toward people who didn't find death familiar. "Sad, but not pitiable." In his opinion, it was "sad" in the same way that a person might starve to death if they were too lazy to eat. Which was to say that he found it pathetic, not tragic. "One's familiarity with death is inevitable. Ignoring death as an eventuality won't make it stop coming, so they'll be familiar with it even if they don't want to, in time." This line of conversation was a bit more comfortable, sobering even, compared to the one that just tapered off which he would tentatively refer to as "pleasant" (oh what an alien word...).

It didn't take them terribly long to reach the poetry section of the library, not even needing to go up another floor which was a big help to him since having to pull a cart up a flight of stairs in front of anyone was embarrassing enough. "Here we go... I'll look for The Moon but you mentioned you had another book in mind? If you can't remember the title I might know it by content." To most it would just look like he was doing his job. In actuality, he was going above and beyond his usual bare minimum and it was so very, very strange.

"Right," Gloom responded absently. He was listening, quite intently as a matter of fact, through her quiet stuttering, but the stallion's mind was still buzzing with analysis of their previous discussions.

Dare he say, this mare was an interesting customer.

Dickinson's book was much easier to locate than The Moon so Gloom Heart took care of that first. He pushed the cart forward just a little while scanning the shelves while Hidden Hearts followed behind and continued her rambling. Once it was located, he set it atop the cart and resumed his search for the remaining book.

"I don't think it's important to have experienced those things yourself to be able to understand them on the page," Gloom Heart returned, eyes scanning the bookshelves with precision, "but it certainly would make the feelings resonate more strongly." Loss in particular, he imagined. Gloom felt hard pressed to think anyone in this world hadn't lost something and felt the crushing ache of it. Despite that, so many phonies refused to show their despair in favor of blind optimism and unyielding positivity.

This one, though... if nothing else, she acknowledged negativity. That was a step in the right direction.

"Ah. Here." Finally, The Moon was within reach. Gloom stood and leaned against the shelf to reach it but the blasted book was just a bit too high. "Mm. Would you mind?" He glanced down to Hidden and nodded to her horn.