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The brunette librarian looks up from her stack of books on the shelving cart. Her brows knit as she watches the brother-sister duo dart down the main aisleway between the many shelves of the Sciences section. This broad expanse is more commonly occupied by scholars and college students, not raggle-taggle elementary-aged…hooligans.
Stepping out, she waits until they turn back around to head the other direction, back towards her, and then holds out a sharp finger pointed up. "Excuse me." The finely-honed art of the offended hiss comes into play here and both children pull up short, looking startled. "We do not run in the library. Where are your parents?"
After a guilty few seconds, the youngest, the sister, pipes up forlornly, "Gettin' books up front. He made me do it." Of course, the immediate affront from the older brother, though not by much, perhaps a year at most.
"Nuh-uh!" Of course, also loudly.
Rosemarie holds up the finger again and both fall silent, eyeing her cautiously. "We're going to go find your parents, okay? Take my hands, please." Towing a youngling by each hand, she leads them back up front and the mother is pleased to find her offspring returned without harm — what harm a library can cause. Rosemarie's smile is polite enough; she indulges in an eyeroll once she's in the shadows of the shelves once more. Her travels take her back to her shelving cart, in no particular hurry.
Hooligans, is it? Welcome to the blond's world, where everyone including his own brothers and technically sisters constitute a vastly younger generation. As the eldest of the elders, minus Dad, his viewpoint probably revolves around irritation with everyone not him in a similar frame. It starts bad and descends to utmost awful.
Which means the day is a normal day. Lucian strides out of the fire exit connecting a flight of stairs to higher and lower levels of the library. No doubt he originates from some kind of back archival spot where only the really battered or rare books tend to be located, and his smug cat-got-the-cream expression suggests whatever sad little green-covered volume he obtained is less Voynich Manuscript and more on par with 'it's lost and you owe us $1.25.'
Crabby children and happy mother, important. He breezes crosswise to them and says, quite frankly, "They aren't mine. Stop looking at me like I had anything to do with it." No conspiratorial smiles are necessary. He paid them in premium Belgian chocolates. Those tykes know what's good for them, they'll keep their traps shut for the next forty years.
The mother in question pauses, if to look astonished that she was caught staring and then indulge in this more, before scuttling away. The kiddos follow behind her while the brother looks back inquisitively at Lucian. He tugs on his mother's hand for answers to his mumbled questions, but nope — they gone.
The familiar voice, however, is enough to make Rosemarie turn on a dime and go rather wide-eyed herself. At least, at first. She cracks a huge smile and laughs behind her hand, only for a moment. "Lucifer…" Her tone is both fond and chiding and her doe-eyes do their best to twinkle in the wane light shining between shelves.
Not a chance he could be their parents unless shenanigans happened on the high school side of things. Lucian is all blithe smiles and 'who, me?' ease, shrugging under his questionably patterned indigo and jade Pucci-style tunic that defies the convention of 'shirt' and runs straight, open-armed, into Indian tastes. The high collar does wonders for a man of his particular height and panache, notably by bearing on its own. "Who lets such things into a library? I mean, really. Do you expect them to learn something in here?"
Idle questions pave the road to academic Hell, and whatever his intentions, they languish while he flicks open the purloined book rescued from the abyss of forgetfulness between subbasement C sorting shelves. Satisfaction lingers there, for all the use of his actual name wakens the beast somewhat. A spark of the endless depths of his star-field eyes, perhaps. "Spaketh of He, and He shalt hear thee. Have a care with thy thoughts, for nothing be sacred unto Him."
Cue the myriad little goosebumps that tend to spread like fine pointlets of fire-ice across her skin and, of course, the notice of the Otherness within her psyche. Blood dances to the wavelengths of what sparkle may be; oh yes, hello, fellow winged being, greetings and all that. The idea of a suspicious squint still may be interpreted, though the Shi'ar War-Blood tends to think of the Devil more as flock than foe.
She wanders to meet him, just beyond the forest of shelvings, and risks reaching out to brush a fingertip at one of those high-high collars. "You wear the most…singular things. Milan must envy you," she murmurs, looking him down and up once more. Her pert lips hold that mildly-shy cast even as she takes note of the book in his hand. "What brings you the library then, Lucifer?" Oh yeah, she's having a little bit of fun saying that name aloud, especially in light of the formalized warning, prose as it was. "That book there? I could've picked it up for you," she says over her shoulder as she makes her way into the shelves once more.
Otherness in her nest of trashy novels and saccharine pop might take notice to the questionable patterns and diversions of a cultural norm. Rolling his shoulders back, the Devil adopts that insouciant carefree attitude affiliated with his old job and title. None of the finely etched feathers reveal themselves, occluded out of the view of all but the most powerfully attuned senses or mystic abilities. Surely they bestir motes dancing on shafts of light thrown by the electric lamps mounted to the ceiling, and incapable of dispelling the darkness incumbent upon such hoary literary perches. "Let there be no illumination but that of the page, no?" He curls his fingers out.
More could be the pity for the surface of the cloth acts a little like velvet, crushed and tight on the nap, plush to every extent. "Milanesi are singular creatures in the world. Industrial and artistic, rushed and diligent, everything you'd associate with the Germans and never Italy. Poisoned by the Po, if you ask anyone not from there." A careless bit of fact at the expense of the central slice of the European continent; next up, mocking the Danes. "You might have picked this up, but you might not have realized the epigraph written on page forty-nine. Some naughty boy with his pen."
Rosemarie's fingers alight upon the offered hand lightly, a bird upon a branch finding shelter there in the dark-light shadow cast by the First-Born. She loosens her gentle hold to push fingertips up and to his wrist, to touch at the kimono-like fashion draped over there. She imagines that it must be very soft over the entire body and rather light to wear, for all that it looks archaic.
"I'll keep this in mind if I ever visit Milan," she replies with a deepening of her smile. Her expression of appreciation fades however at the revelation of markings on pages that do not belong. A moue of long-suffering and a faint furrow between her brows becomes apparent. "Show me, please. The book is old. The Archival team might be able to do something to save the page."
Odd draping indeed caught around the waistline, designed for another variety of movement and weather entirely. Anyone else swanning around in New York might be a tad chilly. Lucian ignores such things altogether. He flicks his fingers against his collar, brushing away his golden curls from his shoulder. Rosemarie can draw all she likes without any particular trouble or interference from him, easy as he is about such examination from a select few.
All creation and they number about four.
"You should. Fine crepes, lovely cats in their castle, and much improved after the war, I'm told." By the dead souls? Possibly. Best not ask how he knows such things. Easily he lays the book flat on the desk, such as that may possess. "No need to complain about saving it. I would think it adds a certain character to the charm."
"No need to complain? Lucifer, that's vandalism,," the librarian insists quietly as she reaches for the book itself with her free hand. She keeps her other palm upon his wrist, as light as a bird upon a branch. "This is a place of knowledge, and this? Not some sheet of notebook paper for some enterprising artist to draw on."
Rosemarie lifts her dark brows to accent her point before frowning down at the tome. Even as she considers its aged outer cover, she side-steps further into his space. The bare skin of her forearm brushes against and then remains against the flowing material of his shirt. Ooh. Ooh, soft. "You said page forty-four? Or was it forty-nine?"