Eliot wandered without direction through the Annandale University library. It wasn't that he was unfamiliar or unaccustomed to libraries. He used to work at one back home and still did during the summers when he needed cash. He merely felt unused to libraries that towered five stories high that seemed to have been constructed by M.C. Escher.
The girl at the counter - Jasmine, he thought her name might be -- had been sweet but unhelpful. He had the feeling that she didn't need to much be helpful, just attractive. Some people could coast by in life on just their looks, though he was not one of them. She succeeded at this admirably, however, and he couldn't help but look a little too long until she noticed and unsubtly alerted her portly but confused coworker.
Eliot found his way up the staircase, struggling futilely not to get too distracted by other topics. There were so many books and periodicals just begging for his attention, but he couldn't give it to them just yet. He was not sure how, but he ended up in an aisle full of collections of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm, two very opposing ends of the childhood spectrum.
"Can I help you?" asked a lovely girl from the floor. She sat against a cream wall and nested among books that looked to have been thumbed through and carefully dog-eared for future reference. Jasmine occupied his eyes for a few moments, but this sylph stole them from his head and hid them down her dress.
"Do you work here?" he asked, though he couldn't imagine that any library clerk would allow themselves to cause this much of a mess. The old bats with whom Eliot had worked would positively have had conniption fits at anyone who had created this layer of books.
"No, but I know my way around pretty well by now." She rose confidently from the floor in one fluid motion that seemed to defy gravity. Gravity, in fact, seemed to encourage her graceful defiance. She was at least as tall as him with hair the color of spun gold and topaz blue eyes. The way she wore her purple sundress, the way is held to curves it could only imply she possessed, nudged his endocrine system into frenzy of generation.
"I'm looking on books of fairy tales." He squeaked and then, looking abashed, added, "It's for a project." This wasn't even slightly true, but she bit her lip so enticingly that he needed to lie to keep talking to her. Ashlei, his just slightly erstwhile girlfriend, would be more than just slightly vexed at the thoughts running through his head but there was no reason she need ever know.
She pushed a stray bit of hair out of her face and asked in a violet velvet voice. "What's the project?"
"I'm supposed to explicate what the qualities of princesses in old stories said about the culture into which they were written. It's for my Sociology of Lit class."
The girl looked at him as he never remembered being looked at before, like she could see directly into his head through his glasses. Like she knew him and loved him despite knowing him.
"You got very lucky then, mister...?"
"Eliot. Just Eliot."
The girl smiled at him fondly, "Well, Mr. Just Eliot, I happen to be an expert on these things. I'd be happy to tell you more. How about over dinner tonight?" Eliot was about to suggest going to The Stable when she cut him off, "Not at The Stable. How about a picnic at Blythewood? Tonight? Eight?"
He could do nothing but giddily accept. "Wait, what should I call you… I mean, what's your name?"
The girl looked concerned for a moment and finally smiled. "Shane. Just Shane."
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