Page 33 of Thor

“Does it involve more fish?”

Thor laughed. “The next place will make up for the raw fish. Promise.”

CHAPTER10

“The Odyssey?”

Thor helped Elle with her helmet and set both helmets on his bike.

“Don’t judge this place by the outside, trust me, you are going to love it.”

Thor led her to the deep blue door and pulled it open. It had been a while since he’d been there and it was obvious the place had been busy since his last venture there.

He took Elle’s hand and led her through a crowded aisle of shelves lined with books. He steered her away from a pile teetering on the floor and had to actually push a cart out of the way to reach the front desk.

He stood for a moment on the hard wooden floor and placed Elle in the center of the shop. Elle’s mouth dropped open as she turned in a circle.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“A used bookstore.”

Elle looked upward and Thor followed her gaze to where the tops of the shelves reached the ceiling.

“Don’t worry, they have rolling ladders if you want to climb up there. I thought about taking you to a regular bookstore but why waste money going there when I could bring you here. The books here are a fraction of the price of new ones.”

Elle’s eyes sparkled. “That means I can buy substantially more books.”

Thor scratched his head. “Well, that’s not exactly what I was going for but I guess it’s true.”

Elle squealed with delight and kissed him on the cheek before running off to the nearest aisle and starting at the bottom began to scan the books. She pulled one off the shelf and flipped through the pages while inhaling deeply.

“Oh boy.” Thor sighed. Maybe he should have brought her on her day off.

* * *

After followingElle for close to an hour, with his arms full of books, Thor walked to the lounge area and sat the books on a table while he dropped into a plush blue velvet chair. He sat there for a moment trying to calculate how long it would take Elle to go through the whole store. At the rate she was moving, they might be done by his three thousandth birthday. But then she would want to start over because there would be so many new books.

Thor smiled; glad he’d done something for her that she truly loved. It did bum him out about sushi though.

He scanned the stack of books Elle had picked. They were all non-fiction books about gems and jewelry making and geology.

“Hi.” Elle walked up beaming, arms full of another stack of books. “I’ve finished the first row.”

“Did you leave books for anyone else?”

Elle’s eyes narrowed. “Ha-ha.”

She set the second stack next to the first and began looking through them.

Thor picked up a book. “Do you really want all these books?”

She shrugged. “I want to read them. I’m not necessarily sure I want to keep them all but learning about geology and rocks and metals Midgard has is fascinating to me.”

“Then why buy them if you aren’t going to keep them all?”

Her brow knit. “I’m not going to steal them.”

Thor shook his head. “I should have taken you to the public library.”

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