3It's that time again, happy Pride to all queers and allies! I'd like to give a shoutout to GirlPower54 for organizing this challenge for the third year now, as well as Space Zodiac and KadachiNova for joining in!
I know I'm still working on last year's stories, so I'm going to keep things a bit more simple this year because I've been wanting to practice more short-form fiction. Hopefully this means I'll actually finish it on time.
Brick-and-mortar bookstores were a dying breed, but one that Tala would stay with until the bitter end. She spent most of her time in the back, diligently sorting, shelving and organizing books, so setting up the Pride display in the front window was far out of her comfort zone. But when she reluctantly left her happy place with its dim lighting and floor-to-ceiling stacks of boxes, the books had all been laid out on the table already.
Scout looked up and waved her over. "Oh, were you going to put up the display? Sorry, I just saw all these pretty books and I thought I would set this thing up."
"I appreciate it. You're far more aesthetic- I mean, inclined to aesthetics, than I am."
Thankfully, Scout didn't seem to catch the slip-up. "Sooo, what do you think?"
Tala's gaze swept across the display and her gratitude quickly morphed into confusion. "What did you do? Is there a structure to this arrangement?" She went through the statistics in her head: title, author, publisher, genre, even the Dewey decimal system, but none of it made any logical sense. Scout hadn't even thought to group together the different books in the same Elite Rangers series.
"You don't see it?" Scout asked, and Tala hated to disappoint her, but she nodded.
Tala noticed everything. What could Scout, with her lopsided baseball cap and endless tangents, possibly see that she couldn't?
Scout gestured for Tala to step back. "C'mon, just go… right here, squint your eyes a little, and…"
Tala didn't notice it at first, straining to see the titles from a distance, but after she unfocused her vision, she finally understood, and she was shocked she hadn't seen it earlier. Scout had arranged the books by color, creating a beautiful patterned rainbow.
Prompt 1: Coworkers
Song: "Blew My Mind" by Dresses
Yes, it's a tradition now, they get day 1 every year.