The Café was one of my usual haunts during the winter months, the warm smell of roasted coffee beans and the foggy windows were warm contrast to the bleak cold snowstorms that raged outside at this time of year. It was there that I met him, perpetually huddled over his stack of notes and always scribbling away at something. Every now and then he would nervously glance out at the street stuck in deep thought only to return, a few moments later, to his constant writing. He was perhaps the only other person who came to the café more regularly than me.

One Monday, as I was reading my book sitting closest to the fireplace he walked in with his tassel. Shivering slightly from the cold outside, he moved in closer towards the fire. He was warming his hands by the bright flames when he noticed what I was reading. “Good book?,” he inquired casually. I was surprised at the question; I had never heard him talk before except perhaps to ask for his bill in a low whisper at the end of his visits, his voice was a low deep language, possibly because it was used so very little. “I’m really enjoying this series”, I replied. He nodded his head and seemed to consider my answer before asking, “What do you like about it?”. “I think Jacob Smith is really good at forming complex storylines that resolve together nicely at the end,” I said. “Hmm,” he said and mumbled something about needing to get on with his work for the day and shuffled away to collect his beverage from the counter.

As he sat down at his seat on the adjacent table and arranged his sheaf of papers, he muttered a sigh of disbelief and looked up at me, “I seem to have forgotten my pens, will you look after my bag and papers so I can run to the shop nearby and get one?,” he asked. I nodded my head in affirmation and moved over to sit by his belongings as he left the shop. “He must have been working on this story for a while,” I surmised from the old and weathered pages. Dozens of them lay in neat stacks along the table next to his open leather tassel that looked expensive and used. As I moved to look at it more closely, I noticed it was a plain brown soft leather with signs of use except at the top right where there were two simple words embossed in bold golden lettering “J Smith”.