Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

"...Flower, you're givin' that weed the sorta funny look I associate with cops," Jill says slowly. You crack a grin, and then go back to frowning in Intense Thought. "Somethin' up?"

"I think I can get us into these cabinets," you admit, feeling your way through it. You rest your fingers against the glass. Ontology, the metaphysics of being...refraction...manifestations...

Jill looks around, paying attention to outside, then back to you. "Y'ain't gonna pass out again?"

"I have no idea," you say absently, as you take out a keycard that once belonged to Nicole Bartman, and swipe it through the gap in the middle of the cabinet; partway through the motion you remember the heat from last time, and pluck at your (temporary) sports jersey, pulling it far from your chest.

It's a key, right? Again you feel that presence, that sensation of being surrounded by something that cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, and whatever it is, it ripples, tickling something your mind insists is your skin and your body disagrees about, and the cabinet in front of you unlocks. You flash Jill a cheeky little grin, feeling proud of yourself, and repeat your trick on the next three cabinet doors. The sensation that builds as you do this isn't painful, exactly, but you're ravenous when you're finished; you stagger over to the counter and pull jerky and trail mix from your pockets, tearing the packages of waxed paper that contain them open and shoveling food into your face. It's so fucking good.

"Flower, what'd you do?" Jill asks in dazed amazement.

"'sha key," you mumble around your food. "Keysh are keys."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Shur i'doesh."

Your talent for dream logic is compatible with this Gift, and has made using it easier. You and Jill loot a great deal of various forms of cannabis, in paper bags tied shut by twine.

Bounty of potentially useful drugs secured (and Jill very confused), the two of you carefully pick your way across the street towards Vivi's Yarn Barn. The ethanol you intend to secure will be your last stop; ideally, you can take it from the fuel station attached to Bayview, but if not there are others on the way back. But sewing supplies should be relatively lightweight...

Your memory tells you that this store should have sliding automatic doors, but it doesn't; instead there is a heavy glass door with a steel handle, locked but, wouldn't you know it, missing its glass, which leads into a sort of entranceway. You stop Jill from just going in, and concentrate. Why is this different? Is this Sorrow & Sons again? Think...

...No, no it isn't. You look at the other stores attached to this building, and your ravaged mind fills in some blanks; the chain rents this space from a local or, more likely, corporate landlord. It wasn't built for them. Their segment had a door like this, and they weren't allowed to change it or, even more likely, didn't want to bother with the cost of doing so. Therefore, all is currently as it should be. In theory. You take a deep breath and gesture to Jill, who blinks a few times before realizing what you're getting at.

You go in with your hand on your gun. Jill goes in holding out a membership card like a talisman.

The both of you stop with a sharp intake of breath. The interior of the store has changed; gorgeous art sprouts from the shelves, hangs from the struts in the ceiling tiles by spikes of glass, flowers from the displays. You see sculptures in a hundred thousand colors, made of clay or glass or even marble. A display of build-your-own-bonsai kits near the cash registers has become a miniature forest not unlike your roof garden, and cherry blossoms edged in steel drift through the store; one grazes past your cheek, so sharp that you don't feel the cut until a faint trickle of blood oozes from it. You and Jill skitter away to put shelves between you and the flowers, walking past intricate clockwork toys that have burst from boxes of whittling kits, and move into yarn shelving that drips with scarves, cardigans, blankets, little baby beanies, felted animals small enough to fit into the palms of your hands...

"Is there anything left?" Jill murmurs.

"Maybe," you say, unable to keep the faint note of awe out of your voice. "...Do you hear that?"

I heard the door, someone's here.

Someone's here? Hey! HEY, OVER HERE!

Jill shakes her head, and you frown to yourself. If those are statues, you can't help them, but...

...

Pick 1
[ ] Try to find what you need, and leave
[ ] Head for the voices
[ ] Split up; you go to the voices, Jill finds the sewing books and supplies

"Axe out," you murmur to Jill. "Stay close and to my left. If shit starts, I'll move to my right so you can swing. Don't hit any statues."

Jill looks at your face and whatever she sees there that you can't makes her go pale, but she nods firmly and unhooks her own fire axe from her hiking backpack (currently only containing weed and the essentials you both packed). Now that you suspect danger, the chime-like flex of her glass 'feet' (blade prosthetics, your mind supplies) seems damnably loud, but there's nothing for it, especially not with the two glass voices still yelling for you to come help them. Your route takes you through the store, past the sewing supplies (gods damn it - come back for them, come back, it's fine, come back), and towards a door marked Employees Only, which proves to be locked.

Well, that's easy enough. You swipe the keycard through the crack in the door and focus, and it audibly unlocks, permitting entry. Backstock is chaotic but not, you suspect, unusually so; rather than separated offices like Sorrow & Sons had, a hall to the right contains a break room and a restroom, and the rest of this area opens up almost immediately into a cramped, chaotic backstock that has similarly blossomed into a thousand flavors of artwork. Something that must have been a Paint By Numbers once makes your eyes hurt, not in the way certain names do but in the way seeing a series of three-dimensional mathematical equation made of paint that is also light does. You glance at the break room, but the voices aren't coming from there, so you wave Jill forward with you. She sticks close and to your left, flanking you like a bodyguard. Or a dog, maybe?

...Dog seems mean, bodyguard.

The sheer verticality of the Sorrow & Sons backstock isn't present here at Vivi's Yarn Barn, but as you slip past bushes that must have been desk plants once, duck under sculptures whose bases are planted in half-shredded boxes that did not contain that much stone at first, and through jungle scenes made entirely from yarn, you begin to suspect that the empty height and size would make you feel better.

They're not coming...

They'll come, they'll come!

Even if they come they can't help!

You emerge into a relatively open area, near a loading door and a rear exit. The pair of statues there are partially changed out of work uniforms, or this company's dress code used to be really lax, maybe both. Despite your incomprehension of gender in general, the first one twigs something familiar in your mind, which identifies it - no, her - as 'a grandma'; the sculpted features have wrinkles and a slight hunch from age, and wiry hair is pulled back into a very neat bun. She wears a cardigan, over which is a vest that must be part of the uniform...

"Okay," you murmur as you look at the other one, a person just about your height in a miniskirt, with little spiked bracelets and its work vest over a crop top. "Jill. You said skirts are for women. And. Breasts sort of."

"Breasts sort of," Jill whispers. "I know where this is going, that's a twink."

"What the fuck is a twink?"

The 'twink' calls out: Not the time, not the time! You came! You gotta help us, Corporate is here, it's here and maybe -

Charles, dear, the grandma says. I've just realized that we invited customers into an employee-only area.

Oh fuck. Nevermind us, nevermind, run, run, just run!

"They saying something worrying?" Jill murmurs, to which you respond by checking that your gun is loaded, and putting your thumb on the hammer. Your friend starts looking around.

Somewhere in backstock, you pick up a discordant note. Something is moving, brushing up against the artworks...

Lose 2
[ ] The safety of these people(?)
[ ] Ammunition
[ ] Your good health
[ ] Access to this store specifically
[ ] Jill's good health
[ ] One Gift