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Working in a library meant that Michelle's schedule was strange. Given they were open nighttime hours as well, they each had certain nights they worked and certain days they worked. Today? Today was a day off, letting her dress more casually in jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater that rested on her shoulders, leaving a good bit of t-shirt visible.

She didn't do well with cool, needing sweaters long before others did.

Thus it was she was out running errands on her day off, enjoying herself a bit window shopping and not really grabbing much in the area, until she spotted something unusual. A man with cat ears...? Granted, she'd seen some other odd things, including a guy in a costume of some sort playing a violin on the roof of the library, but it wasn't the unusualness that caught her attention.

It was the cat ears.

Her fingers twitched as she moved closer, clearing her throat to get the man's attention. "....can I feel the fur on your ears?" Her voice was soft, but earnest. Even if it was just a headband, she would love to see what they felt like. No two sets felt the same, after all.

"Attached? Like, did you glue them in?" She didn't hesitate -- the moment the man had knelt down, her fingers were gently stroking the ears, going from the tip down, making sure not to rub it the wrong way as she thought carefully.

"I'm being gentle, I promise. How did you end up with cat ears on your head, though? Humans don't tend to have them...?" Confusion tinged her voice as she kept petting, enjoying the sensation before taking a careful step back, not wanting to keep the man kneeling there for too long.

While her graduate degree was in library science, her undergrad had been double major between theatre and English. As such, she knew about different things that could be done, and...honestly, it sounded doable.

"That sounds like fun! We can't have anything semi-permanent like that where I work. We have to do wigs if we want wild colors for a day for some special event, that sort of thing. I'd really like to know where this material came from -- I hope it's cruelty free..." The ears really felt like cat ears, shaped like cat ears, just bigger.

At the question about being a student, Michelle actually snorted. "Oh, goodness no. I'm past that, though I might pursue a PhD at some point. Right now, I'm just a humble librarian, nothing special. What exactly do you do?"

"I get that, that's why I let other people dye my hair. Hard to be sure you got everything when you can't see it yourself. Can't even say I wish I had eyes there because then they'd get burned by the dye." Michelle snorted.

"It's good that it's animal safe, though. I'd hate to think I was petting actual cat ears, even though they really felt like them. It'd be cruel to do that, when the animals did nothing wrong." She cleared her throat and looked away. "Sorry, I promise I'm not a crazy person, I just...feel a little strongly on some things."

Then he was standing and well, wow, he was tall. Which she'd known but now she was reminded of it after being excited about cat ears on a person.

"Oh? Well, making a personal library is only as difficult as you want it to be! Collecting books is the main thing, but there are various ways you can sort said books and that's where it gets complicated." Michelle almost immediately fell into teaching mode -- not that she was a teacher, but she'd had to teach student assistants about library sorting methods back in grad school.

"There's sorting by subject and author name, sorting just by author name, or sorting just by subject. And if the books are published, there's the benefit of having call numbers for your books already assigned so you'll know where it should go in relation to the other books in your collection. If they're not, then it's still not too hard to do yourself, just time consuming depending on how many books you already have. I could always help, if you needed it? I'm Michelle, by the way. Reference Librarian at the Downtown branch of the Destiny City Library." She smiled.

"Everyone can be a student, but only some stay that way. We're all always learning and growing, even after attaining degrees for our knowledge," Michelle hummed with a smile. "And computers are quickly augmenting what we do in libraries, it's astounding how much easier things have gotten to be thanks to programming that lets us easily track down a book's location."

At the mention of coffee, she actually grimaced slightly. "I'm more of a tea gal than a coffee gal, but I know a nice little cafe that does both if that sounds agreeable to you? And during the day, it's nice and quiet. It only gets overrun by students at night when they have open mic night."

Then she had to sit and ponder for a long moment before shrugging. "Not everyone wants to be in the spotlight. Some people just...well. I just want to be able to enjoy my books and help others enjoy books. Even with computers quickly replacing and augmenting so much of what we do, there's still a place for the written word on a physical page -- and so many books aren't available digitally yet, either. It's just the right amount of passion and lack of stress for me. I did briefly consider learning music performance, but that was...it's best that I left that behind."

Her head tilted to the side a bit. "You don't really look all that much older than myself, though..."

"I would love to," Michelle grinned, shifting how she was standing for a moment. "And I can't personally attest but I'm sure the coffee is good as well, it always smells nice," she added -- having caught the grimace. She could tell when she was with a coffee drinker, and it always amused her when they disliked tea.

"I don't know, you must have aged well. I find it hard to find anyone my age that would don animal ears for any period of time other than a costume party, and even that is rare -- let alone anyone older! I think some people just...just because your body doesn't like you, doesn't mean you're getting old. Sometimes, things just mess up, and well. You've got a point, because all we can do is make the best of what we've got and continue on."

She hummed softly, quickly turning into a small door that was pressed into a nook just past the hustle and bustle of the street, opening and holding the door open for him.

"Come on in, I promise no one will bite!"

"Yeah, outside of like Halloween or something, that would be pushing it, definitely," Michelle nodded. "Even if it'd look good, people are weird about that sort of thing."

She hummed for a moment before shaking her head. "I've tried it a couple times. Both times made my stomach roll bad. I'm just not meant for coffee, it seems. It sure does smell nice, though. I have liked this one drink my friend taught me, where you substitute vanilla base for the coffee like component in the frozen drinks, but that's as close to coffee as I can get."

Quickly, she turned to the man at the counter, ordering iced sweet tea. It was still hot out, and tea was refreshing in that way.

"Fun that's not for my age? Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't do the typical twenty-something thing of partying all the time, that's for sure. I don't think I've ever even been to a party short of casual dinner birthday parties." She laughed. "I stay home and read, or bake, or go to choir rehearsal when the choir is meeting. I'm the youngest in the community choir so that counts I guess. Maybe I'm just an old soul or something."