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."
@ReD