The Failings of the Sphinx

7 A Brown Like Warmth

Nina's hair streamed out behind her, a red flag waving around the corner as she went to go find something to play with. I'll dye it when she's older. Its not as bright as it even was last year, her eyes have begun to darken as well. 

It might be a side effect of repressing her magic, I'm not sure. Some spells can bleach or darken one's coloring as I side effect, even make it unnatural.

I need to focus, I continue to check inventory but the task is mind numbing and I hope fervently that a customer will come in. Though the online business is really what keeps this place afloat I hang on to the building and the side business. 

The front of the store caters to the magically curious, the back caters to magical adepts and awares. These two lines of business also keep me well informed on the goings on in the world both this one and others.

I try to seem like a human most of the time, one with the old blood, so I seem like I was never from anywhere else, I try to keep the shop cozy, welcoming. There is a fire in the back that gives off a sent that's warm and seductive.

A costumer charmed it for me a month back and since then I've kept the fire going as a helpful way to get people buying.

I organize and wait and wait and wait. 

I give Nina a couple things to do, read this volume of herbal remedies, draw these pentagrams, identify these stones and their properties. Most of it she doesn't remember but she begins the process of learning the human side of the shop. She knows the back is different but I don't let her go back there.

We wait together. I begin working on her crown for this year, using wire and small cast away stones. She became obsessed with fairies and wanted a "fairy princess" crown this year. I'll weave in ribbons later.

I hear the door screech like a dying cat as a blast of cold air is let in from the grey east coast weather.

In fall a tangle of girls, looking for voodoo and hoodoo and the like probably, even though this is a witching shop not a Wiccan or any other kind of religious preaching place.

Behind them however is a regular, and not a regular front shopper. She strolls through the trinkets and herbs to where I stand near a display of ceramic mixing bowls painted in colors of purple brown and black.

"How's it going Sasha?" Izso came in more often then most of my customers, I never asked her why or how she could afford all the things she buys from me, I didn't think I would like the answer. I liked it that way, better not knowing, to dive into her moral compass would not help me with my own. 

"Where would you like to go today Izso." I already knew, it was the third Sunday of the month, she always went back to her home realm. 

"Some order as usual. Anything exciting happen." She eyed the girls at the other end of the store as they got less and less discreet about starring at Izso's well, just plain staring at her, She was something to behold with her natural pleasant looks only overshadowed by the amount of body art she had on. Izso had flowers tattooed all over her body and she didn't try to cover them even with the cold weather, her stomach and back where displayed in all their inky glory. They even rapped around her neck and down her fingers. Since I had met her she had added from what a could tell five flowers but I guessed there were more I didn't notice or see.

Other then her ink Izso didn't have to many alterations herself. The ink was stunning enough. 

"Wait here a minute while I go make sure these girls find what their looking for." 

"Aunty Izzy." I hear Nina exclaim.

"Is there anything I can help you ladies with?" I asked, what I now count to be three girls, where was the fourth probably rummaging around, as long as she didn't steal anything, that would make my day shitty.

"No." one girl said with a strait face while the others broke down laughing. They were probably high on something, I swear living in a town with a college near by making the number of sober people take a down turn.

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The shop from the outside didn't attract a lot of attention, there was a sign that read no broomsticks. Under a larger one declaring the place a pet friendly shop. 

After a healthy amount of time since the group of girls went in I slipped behind the man who I easily sent in the shops direction. Sticking to the shadows letting the small space be overwhelmed by the mind dazed people.

 I watched from the corner. The other women in the shop had gone in after the girls wasn't one of the people I convinced to make a distraction watched me, having keyed in on me quickly.

In her arms fighting for her attention was a little redheaded girl, I could feel from here the magic leaching from the pendant round her neck. I didn't wonder at her long looking for the shop's owner. I was sent with an answer to her own secretly sent message.

I crept towards the counter as I pursued the shop, they might want a report on how she was doing. The shop was a brown color in most places and I could feel the charms that helped people relax. They didn't scream buy me but I could see the appeal, try to bring a little of that warmth home. I pulled a little bronzed figure the size of a thumbnail from a bowl of similarly sized other figurines and then snatched up a scarf made of some kind of thick wool.

I pushed the man to find something from the shop to buy as well so he would go before me. Then pushed the girls to also find things around the shop sending two to keep browsing so her attentions where divided. 

"Sorry Izso, it will just be a moment." the shop keeper told the women holding the child.

"No problem." came the women reply. I watched the child as well now looking at her red hair. A different shade but she looked a little like the shop keeper and what where the chances that the child belonged to the women holding her. They looked nothing alike, that didn't mean the child wasn't hers but.

 The shop keeper never interacted with the child as she worked and as she rung me up she smile professional. Was the girl the shop keeper's daughter.

"Such a nice scarf, made it myself. Saw the yarn and thought well, that brown is a really different kind of brown, that brown's a brown like pure warmth. Snuggle me up on a cold winters day. Should keep you nice and cozy." She explained as she looked at my purchases. Before handing me my things. "Have a nice day." Her maternal smile shone like a beacon, I know why they missed her.

I took what she handed me and walked out of the shop in a daze barley noticing that she had rapped the scarf around my neck. I quickly unwrapped it, immediately missing the warmth it had brought like a mother's hug. There was no charm on it but I checked non the less, I knew she made it thinking of them and they deserved it more then anyone in the world. Her sons got her out of their realm so she could smile like she just did at me. It was time to tell them they did the right thing. 

I hoped she read the message for what it was. That tidbit of a poem and that love they embossed in the stolen communication. I left it under the bills I handed her hoping she won't notice it was me that left it.

I hope she cherishes the scrap of paper as they cherish their scrap of her.