@islandiis
The question catches him off guard entirely, and it's evident in the way Fannar's shoulders tighten and he almost drops the book he is holding. He turns to face Arthur hastily, a flash of panic in his eyes, and he quickly closes the book before setting it back in it's rightful place on the bookshelf, and then turning to face him.
"I-I am sorry," He says, much too quickly. "I should have asked. I was..."
He was admiring the many books that line the shelves here, all old leather spines that are worn and well-read. It is certainly rude of him to get up and look without asking for permission, but he had been left to his own devices and had quite honestly not thought it through too much before now. The majority of his books are in Icelandic, naturally, and he has gone through most of the English section at the library. He had simply gotten excited. He stifles a cough into the back of his hand, and holds his hands up apologetically.
"I was just... reading. I'm sorry — I just recognised the name of a book, and... I have not read it in a long, long time. I'm sorry for being rude."
Rows upon rows of books line the ebony shelves built into the walls of his library; squeezed tight, almost overflowing, some of the books piled up horizontally while an unlucky few slant diagonally against each other. Arthur can’t blame anyone for being curious about the rows of colorful spines and distinct scripts that bedeck each shelf, but he has always been terribly protective of his library: of the books as objects in themselves, and what one might find in them.
He strides over to Fannar, his warning glance relaxing into something more lenient as he explains and Arthur gets a glance of what he’s holding. “It’s fine,” he says. “I was discourteous myself, I apologize.” It strikes him that Fannar is simply curious about the books themselves, not trying to be a pesky spy. He glances in the general direction of the shelf where Fannar had placed the book. “Some of these are very old and rare. I suppose I’m a bit protective of them,” he explains, glancing up at some of the shelves. It was his mistake, perhaps, for keeping everything—rare and common, old and new—all together. He was protective, but not necessarily organized. “What was it that you were looking at?”
