fandomtownies | The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (8/11)

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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (8/11)

Steph was in a notably better mood this week than she had been recently, as she came in to open up the store... and get promptly yelled at by Saffron.

"Okay, okay, I know I haven't been as good at sticking to your feeding schedule for a few days," she said, putting down a bowl of Saffron's favorite wet food as an attempted peace offering. Look, she'd been preoccupied. "Forgive me? Or at least think about it?"

Saffron made a loud grumbling noise, trotted off to the other side of the store, and stayed there until Steph was distracted by doing actual work, and therefore unlikely to notice the cat who was just going to sneak back over quietly to eat without being noti--

"Taking that as a maybe."

[OOC: Open! Please make this headache go away.]

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By some strange and unfathomable coincidence, Vi was also in a much better mood today.

"Hey." Did you know that it had been hours since they'd seen each other? And if it hadn't (it hadn't) then it sure felt like it.

Several hours, twenty minutes, close enough.

"Hey," Steph replied, grinning brightly at her. "Saffron's super mad at me."

Vi would've grinned back, but that'd imply she wasn't grinning already. "Saffron mad at you? That's never happened before," she said.

Saffron for her part, raced over to let Vi know just how horribly neglected she'd been.

"This is a special edition of mad at me, I think," Steph replied, laughing as Saffron practically bowled over the plushie mimic on her way to demand all of Vi's attention.

"...is it just me, or does something feel different around here today?"

You know, other than the vibe around the two of them.

Other than that.

Vi bent down to scoop Saffron up, only to immediately betray her by leaning over to try and steal a kiss off Steph, because no, she wasn't over being able to do that.

"I'm sure she'll get over it," she said, scratching behind the aghast Saffron's ears, as she looked around. "Yeah, not sure what though."

Steph definitely let her steal that kiss, and reached out to grab her hand besides, which earned her another glare from Saffron.

"Other than the displacer plushies being in different places," she said thoughtfully, "which I should probably be more concerned about but I'm not... nothing's really changed, as far as I can tell?"

Little Bot beeped happily at them as he passed, waving one little robotic arm that did not, for once, have a pine cone dangling from it.

Vi was definitely not following approved Snuggle Human protocol here.

"Is that what they are? I meant to ask but then I got distracted."

So distracted she didn't notice the thick layer of pine cones covering the floor were staying on their neat piles.

Also, Steph kept trying to butt into what was supposed to be strictly Snuggle Human protocol, which was both rude and incredibly inconvenient, and only added to Saffron's litany of grievances against her.

"Oh, the displacer beast kitties?" Steph tossed the empty cat food can into the trash and reached over to pick up one of them, adjusting one of its bitey tentacles and then making it dance for a thoroughly unimpressed Saffron. "Yeah, I couldn't help it. They're cute. I think I remember cat me trying to protect you from them, though."

The pine cones, while still piled up everywhere, were not proliferating, though it might be understandable if they didn't notice that yet.

Did no one think of Saffron and how hard her life was?

"You did, I have pictures."

It was almost like they were rolling disadvantage on all their perception checks for some reason.

Saffron had even gone so far as to tell kitty!Steph exactly what her problems were. It was terrible of her to pretend to have forgotten now.

"Oh no," Steph said, laughing as she started to sort through three days' worth of mail (whoops). "How many embarrassing pictures of me did you end up with?"

How weird. Did that mean they were spending too much time grinning goofily at each other?

Truly none had ever suffered like Saffron had.

"Enough to have excellent blackmail material."

They weren't spending enough if you asked Vi.

Saffron's life was the hardest ever. Ever.

"Just because I was the cutest cat in the world," Steph said with an exaggerated sigh before adding, as if it would appease the most hard done by cat in the world, "Except for you, Saffron."

Well, of course they weren't spending enough, but even if there weren't inconvenient practicalities like running the store to worry about, Saffron really did need to be fed on a regular basis and they could hardly leave that up to Little Bot, could they?

"You were adorable," Vi said. "Especially when your beanie was the same size as you."

That might be the thing that did Saffron in for good. So they should probably avoid it.

"Obviously I was adorable," Steph replied, feigning a huff of indignation. "That beanie was not the same size as me, though."

Only almost the same size.

"You're always adorable," Vi agreed easily. Far too easily, even. "And you're right it was bigger."

Someone liked living dangerously.

Following his lunch with Steven, Watts did have another errand to take care of today.

"Afternoon, Miss Gingrich," he greeted as he came in to her shop, taking off his hat and absently hanging it off one of the eyestalks belonging to the cardboard standee near the door.

Okay, that was officially the best use of a beholder cardboard standee ever, and Steph was totally filing that away for use in a game sometime.

"Watts," she said, nodding towards him as she set aside the shipment of giant d20s she'd been unboxing. "What's up?"

“Some time ago, you suggested I acquire a pair of headphones so I could listen to music in public spaces without disturbing others. I’ve been meaning to do so, but the number of choices is… overwhelming,” he admitted. Not to mention some of the more technical details in some of the descriptions still eluded him.

"Yeah," Steph said, wincing at the realization. "Shit, dude, I kind of just threw you right into the deep end with that one, huh? Okay."

Still holding one of the giant d20s in her hand, she headed up to the counter to grab her laptop and pull up a new tab.

"So I guess, first question. Would you want actual, over the ears, headphones or the little wireless ones you just stick in your ears? Personally I'm way more biased toward the classic giant earmuff ones, but that's seriously a question of what you're more comfortable with."

“Some of those wireless ones- I feel like they would get lost easily,” Watts said with a grimace.

On the other hand, those giant earmuff style headphones might not be compatible with his typical headwear while outdoors.

"Yeah, those are for people who want to look trendy and don't actually care that much about sound quality," said Steph, who clearly had Opinions on AirPods and had just been waiting for a chance to vent about them. "And can afford to keep buying new ones. How the hell do you even listen to music like a normal person without them falling out every three seconds?"

“… Trendy?” Watts questioned.

Without realizing he’d done so, he’d picked up one of those giant d20s from the box Steph had been working on before following her over to the counter, and was now turning it over in his hands as he spoke.

They were the good giant d20s, too! Resin, not metal, so they were nice and solid without running the risk of breaking the table, and in some fun color combinations.

"Supposedly they make you look cool," Steph said with an eloquent eyeroll. "And in fashion, or whatever. But how much fun are you really going to have listening to music if you're always worrying about one falling out if you tilt your head the wrong way?"

‘Cool’ was also obviously not being used in the sense that he was familiar with, but thankfully context let him decipher the alternate meaning there.

Watts nodded. “Anything like that, then, I think we can safely eliminate.”

"On the other hand --" Steph nodded back toward the hat dangling off the flat beholder's eyestalk -- "the over-the-head kind might cramp your style."

She noticed him fiddling with the d20 and grinned as she pulled up a set of earphones on her laptop.

"Maybe something like this?" she suggested. "I should probably warn you, though, these can get a little pricey."

Watts winced pre-emptively. His mobile phone had so far been his largest purchase, and that had been… yeah.

“How pricey are we talking?” Watts wondered.

Steph scrunched her face up in an apologetic sort of grimace. "Probably not as much as your phone?"

"Probably," Watts echoed, sounding resigned. "I like the design, though. Unobtrusive," and wouldn't squish his hat, "but not so small as to risk it being lost."

Steph totally got the importance of hats to one's wardrobe, even if hers were much more compatible with her favored style of headphones.

"Depending on how good you want them to be?" Steph took a quick scroll through her search page. "Probably between around thirty to a hundred and fifty bucks, but about fifty should get you a solid set."

She paused. "What can I say, man. Inflation blows."

Yet more slang that he could at least piece together by context. "No point in investing in a pair at all if the quality's not any good," he decided. Though, to be fair, such things were comparative. The sound of voices over the telephone, for example. Back home, he'd found the sound distorted to the point of being nearly unbearable at times. But on modern devices... it was remarkably clear.

It was the sort of thing you had to deal with, conversing with someone from her canon. At least out of the Arcadia Bay kids, it was her and not Chloe or Max, who would have had some very weird slang to throw around.

"Well, no, that's true," Steph agreed. "You don't want something that's going to fall apart next week. But also, I mean... good's kind of relative, right? Totally depends on what you think is your money's worth."

She levered herself up to sit on the front register counter, one leg tucked up against her chest and the other dangling down with the foot swinging idly.

"What I mean is, there's no point in paying a few hundred dollars for a professional studio grade pair when all you want to do is listen to music and have a good time," she went on. "The quality on those is mindblowing sometimes, but to be totally honest I always think music loses some of its charm if it's a little too crisp."

She was a punk musician who would pick vinyl records over CDs every time. Of course she would say that.

Steph, you were talking to someone for whom the height of recording technology before coming to Fandom was phonograph cylinders. "So, middle-of-the-road, perhaps?"

Luckily Steph wasn't quite so inclined to hipster-y tendencies as to think those were cool. Still.

"Given the kind of music you like to listen to?" She considered for a moment, tried to dredge up what little she actually knew about listening to classical music (which mostly consisted of things Duckie had said after a few drinks at the Lantern), and nodded. "Yeah, for sure. Even if you don't need to be able to pick out the... third piccolo or whatever, it shouldn't sound like mush either."

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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (8/11)

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