Sairis's POV
The bookshop was at the end of the market's covered walkway, set slightly apart from the other stalls in a way that made it feel like it had always been there and everything else had been built around it.
It was an old building, narrow at the front but deeper than it looked, with a wooden sign above the door that had been painted over so many times the original words underneath were impossible to guess at.
The current ones read Holben's Books in dark green letters.
Sairis pushed the door open and the smell came first.
Old paper and wood and something dry and warm underneath it all, the smell of a room that had been full of books for a very long time. He stood in the doorway for half a second and just breathed it in.
Something moved in his stomach.
Not discomfort. The other thing. The small firm push from the inside that had started a few days ago and still caught him off guard every time.
