The stiff straw scratched the wood of the floor as the bundle pushed dust along the way. Under her swift hands, Dalia's broom did good work, cleaning the hardwood of the bookstore. With each hour of the morning, the chimes rang more and more frequently at the arrival of each customer, window-shopper, or what have you—a good sign of a steady business. She wiped the sweat from her brow and stowed the broom behind the counter next to a straight, pyramidal stack of books. They came the day before, themselves the product of a day of bookstore business, of customers buying and selling books to her and her store. She kept some that interested her in her office, the rest she left for the pile behind the counter...

	Dalia Harker straightened herself out, pulling a stray, cocoa-brown hair out of her face and slapping the dust off her skirt. She leaned forward on the counter and rested her chin in one palm as she watched the door and waited. Soon another customer would enter, and if necessary, she'd tend to them as per usual, albeit with her eccentric mannerisms and flighty movements. In the meantime, the wait involved periods of watching the door, watching the clock, looking up and down the shelves. Her eyes wandered to the stack of books next to her, and she wondered to herself if there were any more books that would fancy that nephew of hers, that nephew she loved to pieces. She wanted to give him an adventure, a romance, a drama, a fairy tale. Or a biography, a war novel, a history book, a memoir, a philosophy. Most of all, she wanted to give him something real, for him to live the life that his parents could not. The dust in the room settled, the building settled, and all was still while her mind stirred.