fandomtownies | Magpie Emporium; Friday [05/20].

It was Graham's very first day on the job at the magnificent, the wonderful, the mysterious and promising ~Magpie Emporium~ and he....almost didn't even know where to start.

Which meant he was sort of trying to start everywhere.

Should he start familiarizing himself with the products and getting to know all the different games and books and pretty shiny dice? Should he try to make friends with the cat or save himself the trouble by giving her a wide breadth? Should he map out the patterns of the little robot as it moved around, or perhaps make friends with it by understanding its existence better by laying on the floor and seeing things from its perspective? Could he tell it his secrets? His dreams? Should he challenge it to a game of chest and settle the ultimate battle between man and machines? Should he organize the comics by color to see if that worked out better? Should he double check all the games to make sure none of the pieces were missing? Maybe he should pick one and learn all he could about it. Maybe he should pick five and learn all he could about those. Maybe he could....

...the possibilities seemed so limitless and endless and full of excitement around every turn that he mostly just stood behind the counter with a somewhat dazed expression of contentment, as he might not be able to physically do all of that stuff, but you better believe it was all playing out perfectly in the theater of his mind.

Magpie Emporium is open!

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After class Kiem decided to go for a walk in the town, just to get some fresh air and perhaps to get a coffee and see if he would run into anyone he knew.

Instead of running into anyone he happened to walk past a shop that he had seen many times before but never paid much attention to, but the window display now caught his interest.

Some kind of games?

He opened the door and peered inside.

"Hello?"

At tgat particilar moment, Graham had...liberated some dice and was in the process of building them into an actually impressively thin and tall tower, stocking them expertly one on top of the other. There was a definite dangerous curve to it as it wound up almost as high as Graham could reach, wavering slightly yet never crumbling no matter how tenuous it seemed.

Until, of course, the door opened and Graham lifted his head and released the last die just a little bit too far to the left and the whole thing came sluicing down like a colorful, clattering polyhedral waterfall.

Graham blinked at the scattering of dice now spread across the floor.

He looked back up.

And immediately launched into his best, cape-sweeping, hat-tilting, formally bowing, "Greetings! And welcome to the Magpie Emporium! We have no magpies or mag-pies, but we do have wondrous portals into the wooo~oorld of imagination~," with an appropriate sweeping of his arms to convey said magnitude.

".....and dice," he added, a moment later, as the Roomba cleverly navigated around them at his feet.

"Lots and...lots of dice everywhere."

"Um, yes, I can see that," Kiem said, taking a step inside, carefully not stepping on the dice. "Sorry. What do you use them for? Apart from building towers, I mean."

"I'm still figuring that out," Graham admitted, now going a little sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck and then swept down to start picking up and gathering some of the scattered dice. "It's only my first day! But I think these ones are mostly used for either role-playing games and collecting."

Why else would there be so many different ones in so many different pretty colors and designs if you weren't supposed to collect an absolutely absurd amount of them, more than you'll probably ever actually need, but they were just so shiiiiinnnny!

"They are pretty," Kiem noted. He didn't know quite what role-playing was or why you needed dice for it, or really what kind of games filled the shop apart from dice.

"Your first day? Are you new on the island?"

"I am!" Graham confirmed with a pride that suggested he'd be considered 'new' well after the usual parameters of that distinction. "Name's Graham. Graham Cracker." He thrust out a hand. "Put 'er there, friend."

"Kiem Tegnar," he said, shaking Graham's hand. "I went home for a couple of weeks, so I missed the welcome picnic. How are you settling in?"

"Oh," Graham said, with enthusiasm and shining eyes, "just great, thank you, and I even slept this week, it's been so nice! And so many people to meet! The welcome picnic was fantastic, too, I'm sorry you had to miss it! Where's home? Is it very far away? How did you travel? Did everything go according to plan, or did anything go horribly awry? Do you like jelly beans? Have you ever had jelly beans? Popcorn ones are my favorite."

It was unusual for Kiem to meet someone who asked even more questions at the same time as he did, so he had to appreciate that.

"I'm from Iskat, you've probably never heard if it, it's a planet in a different solar system. Different universe, even. And you? Jelly beans? I think I have, but... popcorn?"

"I'm from the far of land of Llewdor," said Graham, giving it far more of a majestic treatment than it probably deserved, "and here!"

With a swish, he reached deep--deeper than you'd think was strictly possible--into one of the pockets of his cloak to pull out a bag of jelly beans. "I've got all sorts of flavors in here, but I....probably already got to all the popcorn ones." He turned a little sheepish. "Sorry..."

"That's ok," Kiem said. He could have tried a popcorn one out of curiosity, but the pink one he picked would probably taste better.

"Thank you. I haven't heard of Llewdor, are there anyone else from there here?"

The pink ones were good ones, too! And left more lime for Triumph and purple for Gray, too!

"There is, actually!" Graham was happy to report. "Miss Amaya, the blacksmith! She recognized the coin I left for her when I, uhhh....borrowed some weapons from her shop!"

In a totally handwavey scene where she also threatened to write to Graham's mother if her borrowed anything else.

"I don't know if there's anymore, though, it's pretty far away."

"I haven't met anyone from Iskat here," Kiem said. "Or anywhere in my universe. I don't mind, really, most people here are nice and don't make a big deal of... things."

Like him being royalty.

"So do you know what you are selling here? Wait, I didn't mean... I just meant if you're new and it's your first day, maybe... I wouldn't know."

That '...things' definitely made Graham's head tilt curiously...maybe something to learn about later. For now, he was just going to shrug and smile a little. "There's definitely a lot to learn," he said, "but I don't think it will take me long to figure it out. It's mostly a lot of really cool sounding games and comic books, and things like that! Were you looking for anything in particular? I bet, together, we can find it with no problem! And if there is a problem, then it'll almost be like a quest!"

"I just walked past and realised I've never checked out the shop," Kiem said. "I don't know much about Earth games, just the ones you play on your phone. So a quest sounds good."

He looked around the displays. "What about the boxes?"

Steph was late ~~pinging in~~ coming in due to ~~necessary adulting~~ having to make a doughnut run on her way, but hey, here she was!

With a box of doughnuts that she immediately opened up and set out on the counter.

"Welcome, officially, to the crew, dude. Ready to get started?"

"I'm pretty sure," said Graham, with a bright and excited grin and a firm tug of his adventire's cap as if to prove this statement, "I was born ready! I, your humble and eager student, am prepared to finally learn," his voice dropped into an awed and sacred sort of whisper, fingers dancing in the air for emphasis. "the Ways of the Magpie!"

Magpie Emporium; Friday [05/20].

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