As I roll my suitcase bouncing on the sidewalk cracks I finally arrive to the foreboding facade of the hotel. Once a library to the local patrons of the wharf, Limehouse was dormant for decades awaiting a remodel and repurpose. I was excited by the idea of bedding amongst the home of books as if their very pages would be my sheets and blankets.

Out front the hotel sat a girl about eleven. She seemed alone but content and more unaware then brave. She was reading a book no less and humming while swinging her dangling legs back and forth. I felt calmer watching her stim to focus. She likely was elsewhere until I abruptly rolled up louder and louder. She stopped humming and looked up and sized me up.

“Hello. Are you coming to stay with us,” she queried. She said us like the whole of the building was one with her.

“Yes, I suppose,” I replied, “you and your book and the books here.”

She liked the notion I gave her back like she herself was destined for a shelf and great reads of epic journeys.

“My mother is a writer. She takes me here to thinks or so she says but I only see her write,” the little girl pondered.

She began to realize my clumsy tug at my bag and my suitcase with the front door of the hotel closing in on me over and over. She leaped up to open the door for me jamming her book under her chin and shoving my suitcase up the ramp with her tiny hand. She looked like a cattle herder and I a cow in the field to be caroused. I thanked her for her polite gesture and strong arms.

She left proud and on to three other tasks to do simultaneously.