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Turtle & Canary; Monday [12/31].

Since Astrid was apparently now taking all the classes on Monday, she’d come to talk to Summer about switching to a different day, and Summer figured she’d be more than happy to foist Fridays on the girl and go back to focusing on Monday, which worked better for her anyway, from a business standpoint. Do all the ordering and budgeting and all that fun stuff after the weekend, get a better perspective on projections, blah blah blah blah blah.

She had Girl with her, too, since she felt kind of bad. She was a great dog, really. Almost too great; it was almost a little creepy, but she had a weird thing about smart dogs; it sort of happened when you’d been threatened by a few of them and they took over your world for a little bit, and she kept getting distracted, thinking, wondering, because Zack had said that he was open to the idea of someone else taking care of her if she thought of anyone, and she almost got to wondering, now that the pet shop boys were back in town, if either of them would be interested in helping out. With the stunt they pulled over the snowman attack to keep that shelter safe, she could hardly see Zack being all, “OMG, I can’t believe you let those guys take care of my dog!”

Honestly, she was pretty sure they’d be better at it than she was.

But she shook her head, realizing she was getting distracted, and gave Girl a little bit of a pat before getting back to work, making a note in the back of her brain to sort of fling the idea to Prompto or Sidon when she had the chance.

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Today’s Squishy Flavors
Champagne
Who Cares What Flavor It Is, It’s Got Glitter in It!!!
Red

Today’s Jello Flavor
Potato Salad

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Mae was out wandering around town again after class (it was what she did), and decided she wanted a snack. Per the rules of her universe, the shop with animals in its name was the clear choice for where to get a snack.

"Ooo, hey, champagne squishy! . . . Is that good? That could maybe actually be really gross, huh."

Mae was also prone to thinking out loud, yes.

Summer had been around the multiverse enough to not instantly be drawn in and charmed by the cuteness of little cat-headed girl, but, so help her, if it wasn't actually a little bit difficult.

"It's okay," she offered reasonably. "No actual champagne in it, either, so that's another point against it. The Glitter one is actually way better, and I'm not saying that just because it has glitter in it."

And she wasn't! She didn't know what the flavor was, really, but it was pretty tasty.

"Does it make you poop glitter?"

Here was Mae, asking the important questions.

Summer took a moment to consider this cat-person, from the careful perspective of a businesswoman but also from the perspective of a woman with a very weird sense of scatological humor that really wasn't ever touched on ~~because it was sometimes even too weird for me~~.

"Oh, yeah," she said, eloquently. "You'll have some of the sparkliest poop on the whole island."

...she wasn't going to make assumptions about anyone who might wind up proving her wrong.

Mae nodded and looked at the squishy machine thoughtfully. "I can't decide if that's a feature or a bug."

"Yeah," Summer allowed, "it's a definitely a 'your mileage may vary' situation with that one. But we do have sample cups, if you only wanted to try a little bit."

"I will have a sample cup, then."

Anything she didn't have to pay for.

"This place is pretty cool. It's like an off-brand Snack Falcon."

And Summer handed her three, just in case. Who knew? Maybe she'd even be brave enough to try Red.

"You one of the new students this semester?" she ventured, supposing, hey, she could be a new teacher, too. But the poop question definitely tilted the scales on that one.

Still not a perfect margin, no, but it helped.

"Yup." For once, Mae actually offered a straight answer to that question. "Must be nice, getting a bunch of new people coming in on a regular basis."

Possum Springs almost never had new people move in. Just old people moving out.

"It definitely keeps things interesting," Summer allowed. "But there is a flip side to it, and that's that a lot of people leave, too; that can be kind of a bummer. What's the place where you're from like?"

That, she figured, was a way more useful question than where are you from, anyway.

"Lots of people leaving, not a lot of people coming in." Ahh, the joys of outsourced industry. "But it's nice otherwise. We have lots of traditions."

Including a new one of everyone looking at Mae suspiciously. Hence her being here.

"How about you?"

Summer shrugged a little. "Not too dissimilar than this place, really," she admitted. "Doesn't seem like too much on the outside, but there's some pretty weird stuff going on that makes it pretty interesting when you get down to it. I just like the people here better."

Not being related to any of them helped an awful lot.

"I'm Summer, by the way," she added. "I don't think we got around to the name thing yet."

"Mae," Mae said with a little wave. "Mind if I just wander around a little?"

She was feeling the need for some five finger discount snoballs.

"Yeah, sure," Summer nodded. "Go ahead. It's a big store, though, so if you need help finding something, just let one of us know. And if there's anything you're looking for that we don't have, we can usually do special orders on most things."

"Yeah, thanks." Mae didn't have money for snack cakes, she definitely couldn't afford a special order. She gave Summer a small but bright smile anyway and went to go wander.

Keeping one eye on Summer the whole time.

And Summer, for her part, was going to mostly go back to sales projections and estimates for the end of the month...and, oh god, end of the year, oh booooy...keeping an ear open for any calls for assistance, maybe glancing up every once in a while to see if anyone else had wandered in or up to the register.

Alright. This was her moment. Mae was a little off to the side, by a display of snack cakes.

It was simple psychology. Human eyes were set up to pay attention to movement. The key was to just freeze any time the clerk looked at her. Even if she was holding the contraband. Just freeze in place until she looked away again.

Here she went, hand only shaking a little. Easing towards the snoballs, keeping a sharp eye on Summer. Eaaasy does it. Eaaaaaasy does it. . . .

Right. So...

...Summer was totally set on letting Mae sort of explore the place a little, but she wasn't exactly going very far, was she? And the fact that she seemed to just freeze in place whenever Summer glanced up wasn't at all weird or anything, no...

Mostly out of curiosity, Summer looked back at her laptop, with the intention of looking back up in about as long as she suspected, considering the current careful, glacial pace, it would take Mae to grab that snoball she was reaching for.

Mae would, at some point, get pretty good at this. (Especially since, in her world, it actually worked.)

Mae was not yet at all good at this.

She grabbed the snoball.

And she was so subtle about it, too.

Summer's brow quirked slightly once the snoball was obtained, and now came the real question, didn't it? What was to be done with said snoball at this point? Going on a hunch, Summer guessed it wouldn't be much if she was looking right at Mae. So she took a moment to yawn and stretch, taking her time, making it incredibly obvious how much Not Looking she was doing as she also went to reach for something Over There.

So far, so good!

Or, well, it wasn't, but Mae was 15 and managed to be very full of herself for all that she also had basically no self-esteem.

Alright now, easy does it, just move the snoball to her pocket, ready to freeze at a moment's notice. . . .

And that moment just might be nigh, as, stretching complete, stack of papers gathered and straightened on the counter, Summer glanced back to the snack rack to see how the progress on what she was pretty sure was a cat-faced kid trying to steal snacks right in plain sight. Summer was literally looking straight at her, and not at all being subtle about it, either.

Mae was either bold as hell or stupid as shit, and Summer was just fascinated enough to just wait and see how this all continued to play out, because wow, Mae. Woo-oo-ooow.

Mae was a whole lot of both! What with being 15 and all.

She froze in place again, watching Summer out of the corner of her eye, waiting for her to look away again.

It had to be working since Summer hadn't yelled at her yet, right?

Summer, whose whole three years more of life experience than Mae clearly made a big difference, was mostly leaning toward letting Mae get away with it now and then totally bringing it up at a future point in time, after she'd probably felt she had gotten away with it. Because that was way more fun.

It's not like she imagined it would be difficult for the troopers to track down a cat-faced girl if they had to.

And the last person who'd done something illegal in the store wound up with a job, so...

Summer looked away again, pointedly typing away at her computer to give a little bit extra time for Mae to figure out what her next big step was going to be.

Mae got the snoball into her pocket! This was an important step.

Then she went ahead and started to wander back to the front of the store, stopping to try out the squishies in the sample cups first.

She was . . . actually doing rather a good job at being nonchalant, now that the actual grabbing seemed to have gone off without a hitch.

She totally was! If Summer hadn't almost entirely watched the whole thing play out in slow motion, she'd have never had guessed anything!

She was definitely watching again as Mae tried the Squishies, though, and, of course, had to at least ask, "So, what do you think?"

Because, yup. She was still there. Mae. She was still there this whoooooole tiiiiime.

"What the hell is even in the red flavor?"

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Turtle & Canary; Monday [12/31].

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