There was something about a bookstore that brought Brin straight back to his memories of Mark. It wasn’t even that he could say that bookstores had been a big part of his life back then because he’d gone straight from school libraries to e-books so trips to physical bookstores had been a rare occasion. And yet, there was something mystical about the act of walking into a room full of more books than you could read in a lifetime.The bookstore held rows upon rows in every subject. It had that clean and slightly chemical smell of brand new printed books as probably three-quarters of the books here were copied by machine, having never been opened by human hands. The rest brought on that old book smell of parchment and leather and spoke of esoteric secrets written painstakingly by ink and quill. Or copied quickly by a [Scribe], as the case may be.Unlike many of the stores he'd seen in other cities, where an anxious shopkeeper would personally keep an eye on every single person in a small one-room shop, the bookstore was the size of a big department store back on Mark's Earth, which might have been another reason for his sudden feeling of belonging. In fact, Brin didn't know who ran this place at all, and the staff completely left him alone. There were men posted at the door to discourage any disreputable sorts, though of course both had bowed and not said a word to Lumina as they strode through.Marksi made a beeline straight for the monster bestiaries, finding them based on the pictures on their covers. Lumina was noticeably nervous when he pulled several books off the shelves and opened them straight there on the floor. But Marksi turned the pages carefully and delicately, and after observing for a moment, she was satisfied that he could be left alone. Brin walked aisle by aisle picking things up and setting them down again. He'd spend a whole day here if he could. Simply skimming the titles was informative; he was getting a good feeling (...)