Bruce made his small planned purchase on the way.
The stall was one he had passed three times without stopping. A small quiet stall in the middle section of the market, the section that sold more specialized goods, run by an older awakened soul in a pale grey robe. The stall's display was almost empty. Three items on the cloth. Bruce had noticed it because emptiness on a market stall usually meant either a very poor merchant or a very selective one, and this merchant did not have the tired look of poverty.
He was a selective merchant.
The three items on his cloth were books.
Not soul-paper, actual bound books. Small volumes with cured beast-leather covers and pages of pressed soul-fiber. They were what the old soul had mentioned last night, the closest thing to books the soul realm produced, made by scribes who compiled the collected knowledge of specific fields into permanent bound records that could be studied.
Bruce stopped in front of the stall.
