Book Swap

[Pepper]

Pepper usually cycled out her overabundance of books by donating all the ones she wanted to share to local school libraries. It worked out pretty well, Schools get more books, kids get exposed to cool ideas, Pepper got more room to fill up again.

Sometimes, there were hitches though. Banned books, duplicates, or the occasional desire to burn some particularly terrible piece of fiction that she regretted ever touching.

Thus, when the piles of books she wouldn't or couldn't donate got too much, She hit up a book swap. Which is why she was here. Books. Swapping. Russian roulette. She really hoped someone didn't dump more badlit on her. She might actually have to burn it.

Though, that might be why her badlit box had the words "Will give you three for one" neatly printed on it.

Please god, let some irreverent camper decide that that would like a box of kindling.

[Cabochard]

One always found the strangest things lying around the house when packing, and doubly so when unpacking. Strange, useless things would suddenly appear out of nowhere and make the unpacker wonder "Why in hell would I pack this?". Samuel, however, didn't have to ask that question. He liked things, and even bad things were still things. He liked having them around, he liked touching them, cleaning them, organizing them. It made him feel free. But, sometimes even he was willing to relinquish his things, when they had no value to him anymore. Bad books were one of the few objects he would come into possession of that were on that list.

That was why Samuel was showing up to a book swap with a box notably more empty than most people. To him, the small, really insignificant number of novels and poorly written non-fiction in there might as well have been a million, it tugged on his heart so much to let them go. But occasionally, he had to let them go. Since this was a special occasion, he had decided to wear his mourning suit today. Completely black, from the shoes and socks all the way up to the hat. Not a single glimpse of white appeared on this particular suit, not even on the cuffs. Even the cufflinks were colored black.

The man stopped and looked at Pepper, frowning slightly and looking at her box. "Are they really that bad?" He used his free had to indicate the "3 for 1" writing. "I didn't believe anything could be -that- bad."

[Pepper]

Pepper raised an eyebrow, then snorted. "They're smut novels, most of them. Well, Marked is technically YA but I wanted to set fire to it before the end of the first chapter. But, if you think it can't be that bad, you don't know the horrors of people with no idea how anatomy works, or shape-shifting gay cuttlefish. Now, I can do shape-shifting, and gay... but I draw the line at cuttlefish." She tapped the cover of the book to make a point.

It existed. "Or haunted Vaginas." She shook her head despondently. "I bought all of them under the assumption that they couldn't possibly be that bad. They're published works after all, right? They've been through editors and someone had to think it was worth putting on the shelves." A haunted look crossed her eyes, and she shuddered. "These never should have been published."

[Cabochard]

Samuel nods darkly. "Quite right. Cuttlefish? That's...that's awful? I can see why you'd want to get rid of them." He looks at the meager amount of books in his box. "I am very, very happy not to have come across any of that. I just have a whole lot of boring and a few very poorly written books. Did you know that someone decided to make a romance novel with Cthulhu? Cthulhu. After vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, comes Cthulhu, apparently. It might be related to your...cuttlefish.

[Pepper]

"It wouldn't surprise me that much." Pepper shrugged, then gestured to some other books spread out. "I've got some decent books that I somehow managed to get duplicates of, if you want too peruse those for swapping purposes." She smiled there

"My place is a little too small to have duplicates taking over the shelves, ya know? So I'm hoping to get some new reading material out of all this."

[Cabochard]

Samuel smiles understandingly. "Oh, yes, I completely understand. I have a similar issue, actually. I even ended up with a copy of Le Morte D'Arthur in here," he indicates the box, "Simply because it's far too large to go on the shelves with my hardcover copy."

He nods at her box, laying his own down on the ground. "Do you, ahem, mind if I take a look? I'm sure my mind and soul can take the impact of a few seconds reviewing those."

[Pepper]

Pepper nodded at both his statement and his question. "Yeah, sure, take a look. Laughing help keep the horrors at bay. Though, uh, I'd recommend avoiding the tree one."

[Cabochard]

Samuel smiles and steps forward, his hands poised to dig through the books arrayed before him, twitching eagerly, before her sentence actually hits him. "Wait, what? Tree one?"

[Pepper]

Pepper shrugged. "You'll know it when you see it." She wasn't going to give him more than that.

[Cabochard]

Samuel smiles dryly. "I assume you realize that saying that just makes me want to find it and subject my mind to that atrocity even more."

He doesn't wait for much longer and simply dives in, digging through the books one after the other. He picks one up, examines the title, occasionally takes a quick look at the back cover when he simply cannot believe it's what it seems to be, but never, never does he replace a book unceremoniously, no matter how horrifying and mind-destroying it might seem. He always replaces them respectfully, careful not to let a cover be bent against another book, or a single page be torn by being dropped at a funky angle. After a few moments, he looks back up, holding the book in question in his hands.

"Sooooo...this is a thing?" He indicates the book, an amused look on his face.