#thcriptidc

She’s barely got time to register what happened before she’s on the floor, the sketchbooks she ws holding in her hands scattered across the Venicean cobblestones. She’s knocked over the young man, too, and she scrambles to her feet so that she can help him up. “Scusi, scusi,” she starts, the Italian coming out reflexively, before she realises that he’s probably a tourist, and she switches to English. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright sir?”

Portia can’t help but stare. He’s holding one of her favourite books, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, and she so wants to start gushing about it to him. Still, she’s aware of how odd that may look, so she decides instead to move next to him on the bookshelf, and hope they start talking. She takes a closer look at the edition of the book; it’s the English translation. Portia’s read both the English and the Italian, her father having read the latter to her when she was a child. “It’s even more beautiful in Italian.” She can’t help speaking to him. “Good taste, though. It’s one of my favourites.”

“That would be lovely,” Marie says. She loved the roof, even more perhaps than she loved the library. While she never really adored reading, never having the patience to read a novel all the way through, she loved the books themselves, thinking them absolutely gorgeous.

More than the books or the library, she loved spending time with Hugo. It didn’t particularly matter what they were doing, Marie just liked his company. “I could bake something. I make a really nice lemon cake, actually.”

CHARACTER AESTHETICS.

Marie blushed; she hadn’t expected anyone to catch her dancing, so when Hugo walked in on her, Taylor Swift blaring from her loudspeakers, she’d jumped up with a squeal. “Oh! I didn’t see you there,” She said, jumping down from her bed and grabbing his hand - she wasn’t going to dance alone, was she? “Dance with me?” She asked.