Work Text:
Nathalie Sancoeur loved the city library. Many a day off she had taken here during her youth, thumbing through pages, taking wind-down time sitting in armchairs and living in the story, forgetting the pain she went through every time she became Mayura, taking out more books than she could carry that she would read in bed by lamplight.
She loved all libraries, really. She’d always had a large passion for reading, books about everything. Romance was her favourite, but she also read anything recommended to her (the librarians she had met growing up were some of the people who knew her the most. Even though she had been a quiet child, they had managed to build up a comfortable atmosphere with her). She also enjoyed historical fiction and crime thrillers, having built up quite the collection over the years; her shelves were stacked with books of all sorts. Shelves at both her own apartment and her room at Gabriel’s house, that was.
Now of course they lived together, so her collection had been moved to a ceiling-high shelving unit in their room.
Being a conservative woman, she didn’t think many others had known of her love for books. Then again, she didn’t know many people that closely, even though she had interacted with dozens of clients a day. Her father had lived in a different part of the country, her mother had been lost to cancer seven years prior to her starting her job at Gabriel , and she hadn’t been in contact with her sister, who reminded her of Audrey Bourgeois.
As well as libraries, she also frequented bookshops. Both old and new, but mostly old. There was something so enticing about the feel of worn books, cracked spines that needed meticulous caring for. Torn, yellowed pages that had to be turned with ease. The cursive script of hand-written notes from authors, that had been copied millions of times. Bestsellers, and less populars. She didn’t care, she read.
Nathalie Sancoeur had seen much in her life.
Reading was the key to renewing the mind. And after almost dying through the whole ‘We’re gonna get the miraculouses’ ordeal, she had a lot of renewing to do.