fandomtownies | The Magic Box, Thursday

Entry tags:

The Magic Box, Thursday

The pollen had dissipated as quickly as it had spread, but the dog Jenkins had been working with to make his cure was still hanging out in the Magic Box a week later. It was a much more polite creature now, and no matter how many times Jenkins reminded himself that he really ought to take the poor fellow back to the charity he had borrowed it from, he still hadn't quite gotten around to it.

It turned out he rather liked having the animal around.

"I suppose at some point you'll be wanting an official name," Jenkins observed. The dog sat at heel, staring up at him and wagging its tail. "How do you feel about 'Gawain'?"

[open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The job hunt continued, sort of. Norman, now armed with too-much-caffeine in his system and not much else, was wandering down the street considering the different businesses. Up one side of the street - he'd ruled out Wonka's entirely because he knew he'd spend all his earnings just buying the stock - and back the other - he was hardly qualified to work at the bank or for town hall - before stopping in front of the Magic Box and tilting his head a little as he peered through the window.

And then, on a whim, he stepped inside. He wasn't expecting much. If it was anything like the businesses back in Blithe Hollow it was probably just some sort of kitschy hole in the wall selling brooms with stuffed witches on them made out of pantyhose, that sort of thing. But then, this was Fandom...

He tilted his head a little, noticing the dog, first.

Well, it wasn't kitschy witches.

Of course not! This was a dignified magical supply store!

. . . Actually there was kitschy witchy stuff in here, too. Some magic supplies just tended to go that way, okay? But mostly it was a very dignified magical supply store.

The dog turned to see who had come in half a second before Jenkins did, and greeted Norman with a cheerful little bark. Jenkins went with a nod and a raised eyebrow.

"Hello, young man. Is there something I could assist you with?"

There was something about the man with the dog that Norman just couldn't put a finger on. His senses wanted to... not slide by him, necessarily, or even look through him, but there was something missing, maybe, that most other people had. Or something more, that he just didn't entirely want to process. So once he locked his eyes on him, he didn't want to look away, lest he find himself not quite able to look back again.

Even if the dog was friendly and distracting and...

"Uhh... hi," he said, offering the man a polite smile. "I was wondering if there's any chance you were hiring."

"Hiring?" Right, that was a thing he'd been trying to do for awhile, wasn't it. "Yes, absolutely." How did one hire people? Jenkins had never actually done that before. "Do you . . . have any particular credentials?"

"I... don't know what a lot of this stuff is," Norman said, and it was all too easy to look away from the man to glance around the room. "But I'm completely willing to learn. And..."

Oof, no, look back at the person you were talking to, Babcock.

"... And..."

He shook his head a little, hauling his head back into it. There. Eye contact. Sure, this was going well.

"Sorry, are there any, uh, special credentials you were looking for?"

"I have absolutely no idea," Jenkins said cheerfully. "I've never actually hired anyone before."

He noticed the boy's apparent difficulty with eye contact without comment. He'd worked with any number of eccentrics in his time, after all, and a lack of eye contact was the least of what he'd had to deal with over the years.

"Well, that works out nicely," Norman replied, smiling wryly. "I've never actually had a job."

He was doing a great job of selling himself, here. He paused for a moment, and then pulled in a breath and added, "Just how much actual magic do you work with, here?"

Anywhere else, he'd be skeptical. Here? Well. He hadn't experienced much weirdness, ghosts aside, but he'd experienced enough that he was convinced it was a question worth asking.

"Well. Not every item here is actively magical. But all of it can be used functionally in a magic working. Have you used magic before?"

Norman shook his head a little.

"I don't think so. Not deliberately, or directly." Reading a princess story didn't count. Anyway, he never did get past the first page. He pulled in a breath, and then added, "I think I could, if I tried. I've known people like me who were able to. They were just already dead."

There, that didn't sound weird at all.

Jenkins didn't even blink. "Oh? Do you come from a line of genetic witches, perhaphs?"

"Seers," Norman said quickly. "Seers. 'Witch' was an excuse to hang us ages ago, but that's not what we..."

He frowned a little. Okay, that question had come so naturally from the man that he'd answered before even really thinking.

"I mean. Yes, I guess."

"Ah, seers. I apologize." That likely explained some of the social awkwardness. Those who could perceive what others couldn't always had a hard time fitting in. "Well, I'd say that's a perfectly good qualification right there. We can figure the rest out together."

Norman blinked. Just like that?

Well. The man had said that he'd never hired somebody before. And if this was how Norman's first-ever job interview went... he could hardly complain.

"That sounds good," he said, biting his lip. Keeping his eyes on the other man. "Uh, do you mind if I ask...?"

He'd felt weird about asking Peter last week if he was alive or not. How did one go about asking someone why it was making one's eyes get all weird just to perceive them?

"Ah, yes, terribly sorry," Jenkins said, completely misinterpreting. "I am Jenkins. And you are?"

"I'm Norman," Norman replied, kind of rolling with that. It gave him a moment more to kind of gather his thoughts so that he could add, "and I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep looking away. I don't mean to, but my eyes just keep kind of wanting to wander somewhere else."

He grimaced.

Jenkins straightened slightly. "Really," he said. "Now that is interesting. Tell me, Norman, what sorts of energies are your seer abilities generally attuned to?"

And now, Norman had begun to fidget.

"Death," he replied, a little more quietly. "Ghosts, mostly, but I can communicate with the undead and I've seen visions of death as if I was there, before."

"Ah," Jenkins said, with a small nod. "Well, I do have a theory with regards to your . . . difficulty. But I wonder if perhaps you have some yourself?"

Norman was quiet for a long moment, keeping his faceted gaze on Jenkins. He bit his lip, afraid to make a guess but to get it horribly wrong.

... At least partly because might would be rude.

"I'm attuned to death," he said, carefully. "You're..."

He frowned a bit, and then barreled on, resolving himself to the answer that made the most sense.

"You're not. You're more not than anybody I've ever met before."

"Well. I'm certainly familiar with it as a concept."

He'd had to watch a lot of people die, after all.

"Less so the after part, which I gather is the part of death you're most familiar with."

"Ghosts and zombies," Norman agreed, trying on a wry smile. "But... I mean... plenty of people aren't dead yet. I can still look at them without my perception getting all weird about it."

Whereas Jenkins was practically death-repellent. Or overcharged on life or something. The antithesis to whatever it was Norman was attuned to.

“So you’re proposing I’m in some way even less influenced by death than most?”

He was, of course. But he was enjoying watching Norman work through the question himself.

"I'm proposing death has no idea what to do with you," Norman replied, looking up and giving a short, definitive kind of nod. "Am I wrong?"

“Not in the least my boy, though you are the first to notice it without — let’s say a clear demonstration. You’re quite remarkable, aren’t you.”

Norman had no idea what to do with that, except to shrug his shoulders and offer a slightly awkward, "Well, I do see remarkable things."

Remarkable was a new one for him. At least it was a step or two up from freak?

"And understand them enough to interpret what you see. That's a more rare trait than you might think."

"Not that much more rare than I might think," Norman said, after a pause. "People in general don't know what to do with the unusual, do they? Maybe they don't want to."

"'People in general' are entirely unqualified to handle the unusual," Jenkins said. "I suspect you can have difficulty with it yourself, at times."

"I've had to pinch myself once or twice just to make sure I'm awake," Norman admitted. "More around here than back home, though."

Jell-O dragons.

Jell-O dragons.

"Ah yes. Life on a convergence of universes is rife with surprises. I must say, I've been enjoying it immensely."

"It's been mostly pretty okay," Norman noted. "I was starting to wonder if this place was as exciting as everyone said right up until that snowstorm."

And then there had been no shortage of weird.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Magic Box, Thursday

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject