Veni Vidi Vici

Aeon was determined, though perhaps that much was obvious since she was here in the first place, with her arms aching and her nose filled to clotting with dust. She sneezed, setting another old book into the crook of her arm and reaching for another. She held them like one would hold a small child, cradling it carefully and supporting the spine.

She came here a lot lately. She'd been troubled, not by nightmares or spriggen, which is what she was used to, but by thoughts of philosophy and truth. Her older sister said that what set humans aside from unicorns--aside from their obviously different physiology--were their matters of morality. Unicorns were capable of good, but also capable of wrongdoing, yet to a unicorn, there was nothing inherently bad about doing something wrong to someone else.

A unicorn may steal a meal from another, but that meal was going to be eaten anyway, so what was the problem? She remembered very vividly that an outsider had killed one of the members of her herd when she was young, and her father had simply said, "Well, he would have died anyway." and continued about his day.

Rather than black and white, had white-white philosophy. Nothing was technically "wrong".

Humans were different. Far different. And she understood. Somehow, she could understand why killing another person caused moral outrage, and why killing a unicorn did not. On some deep, simple level, there was a distinction between the two that just didn't sit right. She took another book off the shelf, read the spine, and put it back.

And that not knowing gnawed at her.

How could it not? Even though the actions were the same, and had basically the same cause-and-effect, the reactions were entirely different. What was the change? What did it mean? Why didn't she know?

She turned from the shelves to the cash register. "Just these today, please."

Aeon liked this book store. It wasn't the biggest in town, nor the most modern, but as someone who wasn't the most current in terms of pop culture ideas, knowledge or fun, It was right up her alley. She'd come here often enough that the woman behind the counter knew her by name, and recommended books to her. Usually reference botanical books or horrible monster compendiums by people whose names weren't actually meant to be pronounced.

She let herself be rung up by the woman, reaching into her pocket to for her wallet, before the doors opened and Cabel walked in.

What was he doing here? He wasn't a reader, at least, Aeon had never seen him read. Actually the more she thought about it, she didn't have the best grasp of what he did for fun. She knew that he studied Chemistry and the like, knew that he drank a lot of coffee and had at least a basic idea of playing instruments, but the more she thought about it in the moment, she realized that she didn't actually know what he enjoyed.

Well, other than being goofy, but sometimes that was its own reward.

"Yes," She said softly, tucking a strand of black hair behind one of her ears. "I'm buying books. I tend to do that."

It was true. She had a person library that seemed to grow by the day. "And you? Are you here to buy books as well?"

Ah. Right. Work.

Cabel's work was something she knew of but didn't really... know. In the beginning of their relationship he'd been a bit secretive, not sketchy or anything, but worried about how she would react. She made no secret of loving justice served, and people doing the right thing. Perhaps he'd hidden because of that.There was also the rather awkward fact that some of his more potent drugs used... Unicorn parts.

Some were fairly benign: Hair, blood, tears, and bits of horn weren't too bad--all of those things could and would be replaced over time, and gotten without harming them in any way.

But then there were worse ones, that called for unicorn hearts, eyes, teeth or tongues, and those made her feel a little nauseous. She didn't tell him this though. For one, its not like he personally was procuring the ingredients, though she had caught him picking hairs from her hairbrush once, and for another, he had to make a living with the skills he had, and that happened to be his set of skills.

His set of... somewhat gruesome skills.

"Yes. Work."

Something about his smile made her squirm. It felt strange. Not normal. Fake. Had his smiles always looked like that?

She paid for her books and watched as they were bagged. She was curious. She'd never seen him actually work. She wanted to. "I have had a taste for dolma, lately." She said, following his gaze as people came in, including a rather tall mane that reminded her of a vine. Was this Cabel's customer?

Oh shit.

Aeon realized, belately, that she probably shouldn't still be here. She'd bought her books and held them against her chest, like a barrier against confusion and the outside world where people's behaviors and moods likely made no sense. she wanted things to fit neatly into a simple binary, but such things weren't possible in reality. People were rarely so simple that you could boil them down to their nib and find only a binary there or not.

It was something she'd learned listening to Cabel. He didn't talk about his work much, not about his clients and not about what kind of concoction he was working on, nor could she stomach herself enough to ask out of her own burning curiosity. Aeon got the feeling that if she did end up asking, she wouldn't like the answer.

She rarely liked the answers to the questions she asked.

Her stomach was doing somersaults, backflips, some other acrobatic show within her as she watched the man turn to Cabel and Cabel underwent some sort of metamorphosis. Cabel... well, she described him to herself as a dandelion. He was whimsical and he swayed, and when the wind blew him hard enough he went careening in that direction without a care in the world, leaving Aeon to chase after him with the promise of a wish if She could only hold him still for a moment and clasp her hands around him, like a protective bubble.

But this was different.

He stood up straight, and their miniscule height difference (she had a vague memory of him laughing about having an inch on her) felt like he was a foot taller than her. She noticed, for the first time, the cigarette in his hand. Cabel didn't smoke. He'd never smoked. He had asthma, as much as he tried to hide that from her in the beginning, resulting in him wheezing like he was a moment off from dying on their floor.

Or did Cabel smoke? He had such strange smells on him that she couldn't tell cigarettes from Wolf's Bane, or weed from honeysuckle. She didn't know.

She'd jumped from his question, and didn't know how to answer. She was more stable than this. Damn it, she was better than this. "Ah, no, I..."

'I'm his girlfriend,' she wanted to say, but that felt wrong. Lying was wrong too, but, as she was learning, sometimes lies kept people safe, like duct tape on something broken.

"...I'm a classmate." She finished, lamely. "From school."

To be fair, she wasn't entirely lying. They were both still in school, both about the same year. She gave Cabel a nod curt and impersonal. "I'll leave you with your friend." She walked around the two and pushed out of the musty bookshop into the warm air.