[b]

Here you go my loves!

16. Christine, Bby.[/b]

Ashley led me back to the room that she’d pointed as Christine’s office. She paused outside the door for a moment. 

"Come in," Christine’s voice invited.

Ashley opened the door to a high-ceilinged room with tall, rectangular windows facing the ocean. The walls were painted a bright green, with dark wooden floors like the rest of the house. Most of the wall space, though, was taken up by towering bookshelves that reached high above my head and held more books than I’d ever seen outside a library.

Wow.

I could live here.

Seriously.

Hey. 

I love to read, thank you very much.

Christine sat behind a huge mahogany desk in a leather chair. She was just putting a pencil down as a bookmark in the pages of the thick volume she held. The room was how I’d always imagined a college dean’s would look, only Christine looked too young to fit the part.

"What can I do for you?" she asked us pleasantly, rising from her seat.

"I wanted to show Spencer some of our history," Ashley said. "Well, your history, actually."

"We didn’t mean to disturb you," I apologized.

Keep it good, Spence, and they’ll love ya.

"Not at all. Where are you going to start?"

"The Tullagith," Ashley replied, placing one hand lightly on my shoulder and spinning me around to look back toward the door we’d just come through. Every timeshe touched me, in even the most casual way, my heart had an audible reaction. It was more embarrassing with Christine there.

The wall we faced now was different from the others. Instead of bookshelves, this wall was crowded with framed pictures of all sizes, some in vibrant colors, others dull monochromes. I searched for some logic, some binding motif the collection had in common, but I found nothing in my hasty examination.

Ashley pulled me toward the far left side, standing me in front of a small square oil painting in a plain wooden frame. This one did not stand out among the bigger and brighter pieces; painted in varying tones of sepia, it depicted a miniature village full of tiny, little cottages, with thin spires atop a few scattered buildings. A wide river filled the foreground, crossed by a bridge covered with structures that looked like tiny monasteries.