Flint was master of his own domain! A domain much less full of ugly, overly carved furniture now. (But he'd kept the reading chair. And mattresses had come a long way in three hundred years.)

The bookshop portion of the building had gotten slightly tidier (now that he had space to horde them upstairs), with a very small bookshelf next to the checkout area that contained the five books he'd finished and didn't like. He might be convinced to sell those to you. Perhaps. On the counter tiny flags of the Seychelles and Somalia had replaced Kuwait's. Their independence days from the United Kingdom were celebrated this week, so Flint was celebrating, too.

He was in a chair by the window with a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost. The door to the shop was open because he'd never been taught about keeping all the cold air inside.