Muffin's Eccentric Retail Experience

Disclaimer: NSFW.

Content/Kink Warnings: Cock Warming, Under the Table, Excessively Indulgent Media References :3

-HOUR 0-

“And you’re absolutely sure people are actually gonna wanna buy this stuff?” April frowned, leaning forwards to examine a strange pair of cracked inventor’s goggles sitting atop a low shelf, humming as she tilted her head. 

Muffin sighed as she set the final item, a white grinning mask with empty eyes and crooked teeth, onto a nail sticking out from the hardwood shelving behind the counter. With a glance back out at the small store she’d filled the shelves of with trinkets and curiosities, she just shrugged, turning back to the girl who now leaned tiredly against the frame of the front door. 

“Honestly, I have no clue,” Muffin waved her hand in acknowledgement, “But hey, some people are into collecting weird stuff. Plus, I’m sure there are a handful of Coalescents, Ylemmic Constructs, or whatever who’d probably be able to find some use for this stuff that we can’t.”

April just hummed again, before shrugging and walking back to join Muffin at the counter. Being a Scribe by trade, making a living off of finding, enscribing, and trading the stories hidden in the many worlds of the Tangle, one ended up in possession of a lot of… oddities. Muffin didn’t really have much use for them once she’d gotten the stories out of them, most of the time, so they often just ended up collecting dust in the rather extensive storage closet in her and April’s shared apartment. Now that April’s work had dried up for the Cycle, however, Muffin found herself needing to pick up a bit more of the rent, so here she was. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Muffin spied the uppermost corner of the lantern-lined ceiling ever so slightly bulging and shifting. It had only been through a rather exorbitant licensing fee, and a little work under the table (in more ways than one) that she’d managed to temporarily lease out this vacant demiplane, just so that she could have a small store accessible via Ways and Termini, for those capable of travelling between the worlds of the Tangle like herself. It was pretty slapdash, though - the untrained eye might see no problem with the comfortable, almost art-deco wood shelves and soft lantern lighting, but to those familiar with the skills to shape reality, Muffin had to admit, this was essentially the equivalent of a curbside lemonade stand. 

“Guess that’s about that,” Muffin shrugged, molding the floor behind the counter up into a crude stool for her to sit down on, “As soon as you leave, that door’s set to manifest in just about every back-alley market and bazaar within a hundred-stratum radius, only perceptible to people and things like us. Should be a reasonable enough customer flow, I guess, I just hope I’m enough of a saleswoman to actually push some of this junk.”

“Have you… ever actually worked in retail?” April cocked her head at her roommate, folding her arms over her stomach.

“A few of my lifetimes were boring enough, sure,” Muffin nodded, before promptly switching on her unfortunately-practiced customer service voice, “It’s always such a treat to help a loyal customer find what they’re looking for! It’s such a pleasure to assist others in enriching their own lives, and furthering the company in the process!”

“Oh, Gods,” April cracked into a laugh and waved a dismissive hand at a giggling Muffin, “Gross. Awful. Nightmare. Don’t ever do that again.”

Muffin gave a wrong-handed salute to that, and the smile dripped off of April’s face as she hesitantly glanced around the shop once again, now that the pair of them had finally finished filling the shelves.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help out?” April asked, “I could help, maybe take turns at the counter, or just be some shoes on the floor in the aisles. Just give me twenty, I can drop back by the apartment and put on something tighter-fitting.”

Muffin snorted at that, “April, it’s not your fault your photos aren’t fetching as much right now. Market’s an ebb and flow, we know that, not much we can do. I knew I was signing up for that from the jump, just go home and relax.”

April fidgeted a bit at that, rubbing her arm awkwardly. She was silent for a moment, glancing off to the side in thought, before turning back.

“Well, if you’re sure. There is a new season of one of my dating shows, after all…”

Muffin clapped her hands together, “Fantastic! Go enjoy that, and bonus, I’ll find this experience a lot more bearable knowing that it’s sparing me from having to watch that with you! Again.”

April laughed, “It’s so fascinating how you always manage to have some pressing obligation whenever that happens. Is it so awful to watch shitty people being shitty to each other with little ol’ me?”

“One could say, in fact, that it’s shitty,” Muffin jabbed back, smirking.

“Whatever then, see ya bitch, have fun with the 70-hour shift.”

“Don’t call me bitch, you hussy.”

“Slut.”

“Whore.”

“Tramp.”

“Cunt.”

“Love you, bitch.”

“Love you too, bitch.”

Both girls laughed lightheartedly as April swung the door open, the roiling magenta and gold nebula of the Way backlighting her as she turned back, “I’ll tell some of our friends you’re here, get them to drop by, relieve your pain a little bit. Don’t kill anybody, to the best of your ability.”

Muffin just gave a weak, halfhearted wave at that, which April returned with a wink, before promptly hopping out the door and letting it drift shut behind her, catapulting through the Weave of the Tangle back to the other pocket realm they’d made into their apartment. As the door clicked shut, the colour of the light peeking out from under it changed from the violent pink flickering of an unconnected Way into golden sunlight. Muffin sighed, readjusted herself in her seat, and waved her hand to twist the sign on the opposite side of the door to read ‘Open’. 

It was just as she was resting her chin in her hands and reaching into her pocket for the small book she’d packed to pass the time that the door swung open for the first time, the brass bell on the ceiling chiming as the door struck it, and Muffin just grimaced and steeled her shoulders. 

It was time to make some money. 

~

-HOUR 4-

“No, I obviously don’t have a return policy, this is a pop-up shop.”

Muffin frowned at the suit-clad Hirulchian Worm Hive standing before her - really just a humanoid mass of intercoiled worms moving as a single unit - as it warbled angrily at her, little flecks of slime flying off as the worms vibrated to form the sound. 

“What do you mean, it’s not ‘wet enough’? It’s the Chalice of the Endless Pacific, it’s literally infinite water,” she folded her arms and leaned back in her seat, gesturing to the brimming gold cup the Hive had brought back after having bought it two hours prior. The being just grumbled at her pointedly, gesturing to its “face”, where the collection of worms appeared to be a lot more wrinkled and uncomfortable than they had been previously.

“Yeah, it’s salt water. As in, from the Pacific ocean,” Muffin sighed, “Look, if you don’t want it, then I’ll take it back, but you’re not getting a refund.”

The Hive just grumbled and wriggled in frustration, but promptly plucked the chalice back up off the counter and walked out stiffly, a few dried and desiccated worms falling off onto the floor in the process. Muffin sighed, waved her hand to prompt a gust of wind to pluck them up and throw them out, and turned to the next customer in line. 

~

-HOUR 13-

Thud!

Muffin blinked at the sight of the heavy green idol thumping down on the counter in front of her. The bust was a jade carving of some unknown, tentacled entity, bizarre and shifting runes littering its surface amid the grime it had accumulated from millennia spent at the bottom of the deepest ocean of its native world. 

“Uhm… I-Is this what I think it is…?” Asked the young woman who had brought it up, a timid, scrawny thing with coke-bottle glasses and wiry pink hair. She poked her fingers together anxiously, her shoulders seeming to fidget with an impatient discomfort.

Muffin just regarded her flatly. 

“You don’t look like the cultist-of-black type,” she noted bluntly, “Any… other particular reason why you’re feeling like summoning a Nameless on this particular Tuesday?”

“W-well…” the girl stammered, “I mean… h-have you done it? Have you… summoned, erm… o-one of these? What was it like? Was it… fun?”

Muffin regarded her flatly once more. The silence dragged on just long enough for the clear impulsive delirium in the girl’s eyes, magnified by her glasses, to be penetrated by chilled reality, and her expression suddenly flushed. 

“Yeah… with respect, I can tell by looking you aren’t ready for this,” Muffin chuckled, delicately lifting the idol and sending it floating back to reassume its place on the shelf, “Check the back left, there’s a whole shelf of daemonology texts and scrolls and shit, that’s a lot more entry-level.”

“R-right…” the girl fidgeted awkwardly, looking just about ready to curl into herself where she stood, “A-and… do you know, what should I–”

“I advise handcuffs. And there are some heat-retardant lubes you can buy. Good luck.”

Muffin couldn’t help her chuckle as the girl giddily nodded and scampered back to the shelf. In the end, she cleared the store out of that entire shelf, her gawky hips practically swaying in excitement as she hurried out, tomes and ritual components in hand.

~

-HOUR 19-

A long-suffering groan slipped free from Muffin’s lips as, for the third time in ten minutes, an entire armful of weapons was dropped unceremoniously onto the wooden counter in front of her, and five pairs of eyes turned expectantly up towards her. 

“What’s this one do? This one looks cool!” a black leather-clad halfling hopped up onto the counter alongside the pile and scooped up a small porcelain knife, “I bet this one casts some kinda spell! Ooh, or what if it turns people to stone if it stabs them?”

“Urlga want to know about this thing,” grunted a massive half-orc woman in nothing but chest wrappings and a loincloth, hefting a massive crystal kanabō over her shoulder. The two speakers, as well as the rest of their motley party, turned again to Muffin with expectancy shining in their eyes.
“It doesn’t cast any spells, and it doesn’t turn people to stone,” Muffin shook her head, plucking the dagger out of the Halfling’s hands delicately and setting it down, “That is the Blade of Azrael, and it would be very irresponsible of me to let it fall into mortal hands, so.”

“Aw, so, like, is it just plus two to attack and damage rolls, then?” The halfling asked, sounding immediately disinterested.

Muffin eyed him strangely, “...the fuck is a ‘damage roll’?”

“What’s this thing, then?” another companion of theirs, an elf in fighters’ garb, held up a massive metallic gun with glowing green laser diodes blinking all over it, “It was stored with your weaponry, but I’ve never seen anything of the make before…”

“That’s… a little past your technology,” Muffin shook her head, pushing the BFG 9000 aside and out of reach of the rather grabby adventurers pointedly, “Look, I don’t know what sort of store you think you walked into, but–”

BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!

The lanterns in the shop all abruptly winked to a bright, blaring scarlet red as an unseen klaxon wailed, causing a few cries of surprise from other customers busy perusing the shelves. Stunned into silence, the adventuring party clogging Muffin’s view parted as they all turned back to look, where a previously-unseen sixth individual, a kobold in a shadecloak, was staring back at her wide-eyed. A potion of enlargement, distinctly unpaid for, was poking halfway out of his inner cloak pocket.

“Eh… erm…” the kobold stammered beneath Muffin’s withering gaze, “It’s just… it’s what my character would do?”

The door vanished behind the party of six, slamming shut and clipping off the end of the kobold rogue’s tail, as they were all jettisoned out into a heap by a very satisfying burst of green flame. 

~

-HOUR 25-

Muffin sighed contentedly, a feeling of satisfied warmth filling her for the first time since the ordeal had begun. She glanced up to the long line of customers, smiling sweetly and patiently at them, even helping them along with packing up their purchases, even as some of them seemed to be unwilling to meet her gaze for too long at the moment. 

“Alright, the journals of Ford Pines, and the Necronomicon ex Mortis, there you go… anything else? You can pay with your native currency, or with memories, if you prefer. No? Alright, that’ll do, have a nice day, Giles.”

“Oh yeah, nasty thing, that mirror, you sure you’re up for it? Ah, fair enough, here, I’ll just take a few of your less interesting story memories, I’m more happy to have that thing off my hands. Cheers.”

“Pretty flower, right? Try it as a soup, word from the wise, you won’t believe the wonders it does for your hair. 170 Lien will be fine, that’s not too much trouble to get converted around. Have a good one.”

“Just that skull? Sure, your funeral, I guess, I– oop, hold on.”

Muffin cut herself off, recognizing the sensation of proximity from beneath her. She braced the palms of her hands against the counter, bracing her shoulders and humming contentedly.

The rotund gold-skinned man beneath her groaned, head rolling back and hips shivering. His cock, which had been nestled comfortably in Muffin’s pussy for the past hour or so, had finally hit its limit, shooting a thick stream of his demideific cum into her.

“Ah…” Muffin sighed airily, shaking her head free of her own orgasm and turning back to her customer, quickly finishing the transaction and waving the slightly disconcerted cyborg off with a smile.

“Muffin…” Badraan groaned, exhausted, beneath her, “I think I’m spent… is that payment enough for you?”

“Enough? You haven’t even gotten to the second hole yet,” Muffin chided, wiggling her hips atop him, “Come on, Badraan, you volunteered for this. You do have money, it’s not my fault you’re such a cheapskate, especially for someone literally made of gold. Hop to it, soldier, I’m waiting.”

Badraan offered a groan at that, but Muffin could tell by the way he hid his smirk and grabbed her hips for stability that he wasn’t quite so uneager as he portrayed.

~

-HOUR 33-

“Whoa, this place is a lot more packed than I thought it would be,” a dark-skinned woman with long auburn hair muttered as she walked in, paper bag in hand, and glanced around. 

“Roxy!” Muffin’s voice from over by the counter drew her attention, and with a smile of recognition, she strode over.

“Hey, M,” Roxy chuckled, handing over the paper bag to her friend behind the counter, “April told me you were gonna be here a while, thought I’d pop in and drop this off. Good thing I did, it looks like you need it.”

“Gods, you are a saviour, Roxanne Rook,” Muffin bowed her head in joking reverence as she took the bag and extracted the large coffee and sandwich.

“I know, I impress even myself,” Roxy chuckled as Muffin began downing her coffee, glancing around, “Some cool stuff left, though… and some… interesting people…”

“Oh yeah,” Muffin nodded, “It’s been a hell of a day or two… oop, hold on, I gotta deal with this. Go find something fun, you can have it.”

Roxy shrugged and nodded, stepping away from the counter as Muffin turned to face a roiling wall of creeping black fog, which appeared to be angrily pointing at a small puzzle cube on the shelf behind her.

“What?” Muffin rolled her eyes, swatting away a large sharp spider leg that jutted out from the fog, “It’s not like you were using it anymore. You can buy it back, if you want.”

The Entity just made a series of annoyed clickings at her from the fog, but drifted away out the door instead. Muffin just chuckled and took a bite of her sandwich, thankful it had left before it realized just how much more shit from its realm she’d swiped over the cycles.

~

-HOUR 41-

The man that didn’t have a face was doing his best, Muffin supposed, but charades was hardly the thing she was expecting to be doing at the moment. 

“Uh… spike? Triangle? The letter A?” Muffin cocked her head as the large man held his frankly chiselled arms above his head in a convergent shape, touching the tips of his fingers together. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have a head, and it seemed as though a face was sort of there, but all the features were blurry and indistinct, as though you were viewing only the impression of a face through squinted eyes. 

“Uhm… sorry, I’m a little distracted,” Muffin confessed, unsure where exactly where she ought to be looking to meet this man’s eyes, but being at least fairly certain hungrily roaming her eyes around his incredibly defined and shirtless torso was probably the wrong idea, “Are you… looking for something in particular? I don’t really have an inventory list, you’re just supposed to… browse.”

The strange man threw up his hands in apparent exasperation, before miming a zipper over his… well, where his mouth would be.

“Yeah, I know you can’t talk, that’s sorta the whole–” Muffin began, before the man shook his head quickly and repeated the motion, “Oh, uh… you mean… zip? No? Quiet? Quiet. Does that motion mean I’m getting warmer? Yes? Okay, uh… soft? Silent?”

The man pointed at her incredibly enthusiastically, before then moving his arm in front of him in a strange half-circle, as though it was cresting.

“Half-circle? Crescent? No, okay… are you miming, like a bump? Okay, closer… mountain? Oh, very close, okay… Hill? Do you mean Hill?”

The man pointed at her enthusiastically once again. Muffin just blinked, cocking her head in confusion.

“Silent… Hill?” Muffin frowned, before the man held his arms above his head in a triangle shape again, and it finally hit her.

“OH, fuck, I thought… I thought you had ceased to exist, that’s actually my bad,” Muffin stifled laughter behind her hand as the man just planted his hands on his hips crossly, “Yeah, no, go ahead and take your helmet back, that’s on me.”

The man reclaimed his large conical helm from behind the counter, nodded politely but somewhat brusquely to Muffin, who continued to giggle, and closed the door gently on his way out.

~

-HOUR 44-

“Yo-ho, I’m gonna take this stuff off your hands, if that’s all chill, brah.”

Muffin coughed softly, waving the air in front of her nose to disperse the sudden, distinct scent of Judosi Blue Fern that wafted off the customer in front of her. A cyan-skinned man of a species she wasn’t familiar with, which was new. Stubble on his chin, unwashed navy hair tumbling out of a slouch beanie, faded oversize band tee and board shorts, all distinctly not very new, though.

“Alright, just know I’m not doing returns, in case you come down in a few hours and–” Muffin began, before her breath choked up in her throat as she recognized the assortment of things that had been put in front of her. 

The Grail of Fuyuki. The Millennium Ring. The Eye of Vecna, Areadbhar, the Severed Hand, the gods-damned Monado.

“...planning… a fun night?” Muffin eventually coughed out, glancing back up at the man awkwardly, a little shaken.

“Oh yeah, how’d ya know?” he laughed, stuffing his hands nonchalantly into the pockets of his board shorts, “I’m bringin’ my boys over, gonna throw back a couple cold ones and vibe, mannn… this stuff looks lit, gonna put it up at my place as decoration, ya know?”

Muffin balked slightly, “...you… might be lost. This isn’t, like, a paraphernalia store, and unless I’m a lot worse at reading people than I thought, you… don’t seem like the type to be into eschatology.”

“Whaaat? Nah, babe, I’m not that into word history.”

“I… uh-”

“You’re a Scribe, right? So I can pay with a memory, then?”

Muffin blinked, glancing between the man with the lazy, addled smile and her scribing materials, and back to the frankly horrifying combination of items on the counter.

“I got just the one, should cover it,” the man chuckled airily, massaging his bloodshot eyes, “Nothing too pricey, it’s chill.”

Muffin hesitantly plucked her reparographic knife up from where it laid on the counter and hesitantly trimmed the forefrontal memory free, transferring it on the edge of the knife into her book, where it began to write itself out.

Muffin made no move to stop the man as he let out a hearty laugh at her expression, gathered up his purchases, and walked out. It was a good ten minutes until Muffin finally managed to pull her eyes away from the story she’d pulled free of his mind, gulping and making a shaky mental note that, apparently, not all primordial evils exactly self-advertise.

~

-HOUR 53-

“Begone with you, you nettlesome construct!” An echoing shout sounded from a far corner of the shop, “You don’t even approach the arcane wisdom required to even touch such a thing!”

“You antiquated, charlatanous simpleton!” Another voice cried in response, “I have no patience for your ‘arcana’, I am a man of the human sciences, and I must understand the chemical properties of this concoction!”
“Why, you–”

“No, why you–”

“HEY!” Muffin shouted brashly, standing up to glower at the pair of squabbling old men, both of whom seemed to wither before her gaze. They were arguing over a small vial, orange liquid with black tendrils snaking and twitching around in it, with a symbol of an Ouroboros on the label. Both men, one dressed in clear wizardly garb down to the stars on the pointy hat, and one in a labcoat with half of his body replaced with advanced glowing cybernetics, hand a hand on the vial, both seemingly trying to yank it out of the other’s grip.

“Apologies,” the wizard shook his head, “But I can’t seem to get this metal-brained buffoon to leave the potions to the professionals. Look at you, have you even de-eyed a newt in your entire life?”

“Potionmaking, pshaw,” the scientist grumbled, glaring daggers at the wizard, “This is no potion, this is an advanced scientific concoction, such things shouldn’t concern someone from a world that hasn’t even discovered insulin yet.”

“If you two morons break that vial open in here, you’re both going to have a lot of reason to be concerned about it,” Muffin huffed impatiently, “If you can’t decide which of you gets it, neither of you will, got it?”

Both men winced, before turning to one another painedly.

“Understand, please,” the scientist mumbled, “I am a man of fascination. These sorts of formulas, their intricacies and their construction, the materials and matter of what makes the very reality around us tick… I only seek to further my understanding, the understanding of my world, even.”

“I seek the same,” The wizard looked thoughtful, “You are right, I suppose, my world may have much to learn from yours… tell me, what is that strange blue elixir shining in your metallic veins?”

“Oh, this? Why, this is but liquid cyberfuel! Condensed nuclear energy, capable of powering anything! A simple pinch of this fuel could provide electricity to a city for a whole weekend!”

“Fascinating… in all my thousand years of life, I have never heard of such an efficient fuel, and in an elixir, no less…”

“Thousand years? How is that possible?”

“My good man, have you no waters of youth in your world?”

“Waters of youth!?”

The conversation, which Muffin quickly tuned out from that point, proceeded for another ten minutes, occasionally interspersed with fits of excited giggling from both men, until they both promptly swept each other out of the store, hands clasped tight and fingers interlaced affectionately. With a sigh, a groan, and a bang of her forehead on the table in front of her, Muffin confirmed that yes, they had, in fact, both left without buying anything. Not even the vial they had been fighting over in the first place.

~

-HOUR 56-

A cool wind swept through the store as the door drifted open, a lengthy creak heralding the arrival of the black-clad newcomer, as even the bright chime of the bell seemed to suffocate beneath their ghastly presence. Muffin felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise instinctively as the figure, looming in a black cloak, hood shading their face, seemed to suck the colour free from their surroundings.

A long silence passed without breath in the store, the few customers that had been milling about freezing in place just the same, staring at the strange arrival with unknown trepidation in their eyes as the door clicked shut behind him. 

A beat passed. Then another. 

“...well…” a strained voice reverberated out from the darkness beneath the hood, “...this feels awkward all of a sudden.”

A wave of relief and indignance washed over Muffin, and she couldn’t help but pluck up a nearby paperweight and toss it at the figure, who caught it out of the air before it struck them in the head and laughed.

“Inkswill!” Muffin chided, “What the fuck was the suspense for? Take your damn hood off already!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Inkswill nodded and doffed their hood, revealing their ink-black features. Their six eyes blinked at the light for a moment, adjusting to existing in a reality space with colour, and turned back to Muffin, “I think it’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen you since I trounced your stygian ass at Blackjack!” Muffin laughed back, “Not like I’d want to come back to your home turf after that, don’t think I wanna try my luck twice.”

“You only trounced me because you cheated,” Inkswill noted, although he hardly seemed all that upset about the fact.

“Well, you are a Reaper,” Muffin reminded, “Your fault for letting me pick a game I could cheat at, I’d be dead in a ditch right now if you’d insisted on Chess or Faro or something.”

“You know I prefer to give people a fighting chance,” Inkswill shrugged, glancing around, “So you’re selling off your collection? Getting out of the adventuring game, Scribe?”

“Hardly,” Muffin shook her head, “Too much fun yet to be had out there in the great messy Tangle. This is just all the stuff I’ve milked dry of all the stories. They’re still powerful, sure, but they’re junk to me now.”

“Junk? This stuff?” Inkswill rolled their many eyes, “The lives you Coalescents lead…”

Muffin rolled her eyes right back at the Reaper, “Yeah, yeah, I know, burn nations, get money, I’ve heard your ‘ancienter-and-wiser-than-thou’ speech before. Are you gonna buy anything, or not?”

Inkswill shook their head, “Oh, I just saw your door in a farmer’s market I was busy collecting in, and I got curious to see an old acquaintance. I should probably—”

Their eyes locked onto a spot on a high shelf, their amicable expression falling in an instant.

“...is that–”

“Yup.”

“...but that’s-”

“The stories of its destruction were greatly overstated.”

“...how did–”

“Trade secret.”

Inkswill just regarded her, mouths slightly agape and appalled.

“You seem worried that it might fall into the wrong hands,” Muffin teased lightly, “I think, in that case, you should probably buy it.”

The Reaper just stared at her in silence for a moment more, mumbled some antiquated curse under their breath, and plucked the artifact off the shelf. Muffin gleefully waved goodbye as they departed, slipping the drachma they’d left behind into her pocket. Should come in handy, should she ever meet another of their like - exactly why she’d made certain that the door would eventually appear somewhere that Inkswill couldn’t miss it.

~

-HOUR 60- 

“Where did you get this, anyway?” the man in the bow tie was asking, holding up the bizarre little metal cylinder with the green light at the end, “It’s mine, but I haven’t even lost this yet, I’d very much like to know where you found it so that I know where I’m going to lose it.”

Sydell Okiro, the young man perched fidgetingly on the stool behind the counter, stammered out, “U-Uhm… I don’t… actually–”

“I mean, it’s– blimey, it’s hundreds of years older than it is right now,” the man in the bow tie plucked a seemingly identical device out of his tweed jacket pocket and compared the two, before licking the one he’d gotten from the shelf and grimacing, “Is that Drasharian moon film? I really do get this lost at some point, don’t I?”

Sydell’s first attempt at a response ended up choked out as a whine, his body spasming awkwardly and his hands flying down below the counter and out of sight. The man in the bow tie seemed to wait patiently, if a bit confusedly, whilst Sydell collected himself somewhat.

“U-uhm… look, uh, Mister–”

“Doctor,” the man in the bow tie corrected offhandedly.

“W-whatever,” Sydell stammered out, flinching for an unknown reason, “I don’t… I’m not… the p-person who all this stuff belongs to, I don’t really w-work here, I’m just… her friend k-kinda… filling in…?”

“Is that right?” the man sighed, tucking his own device (or perhaps the one from the shelf? Sydell had lost track of which was which) back into his jacket and plopping the other down on the counter in front of Sydell.

“I’ll have that, then,” he said, “Lovely little shop you have here, by the way. I love a little shop. Bit fiddly around the edges, though, why is every 90 degree angle in here actually 92 degrees? That’s just silly, isn’t it?”

Sydell just shook his head, losing his words in a heavy gasp once again, body seeming to curl into itself, before righting himself at last, “D-do you have money?”

“Money? No, of course not, I never carry money. You wouldn’t happen to accept charm and a little sweep of your floors as payment, would you? There seems like several species’ assorted goos worked into the wood around here.”

Sydell couldn’t manage to do much more than shake his head at that. As he did, though, a hand that very much did not belong to Sydell poked up from behind the counter, holding up a reparography knife and pointing it roughly at the man in the bow tie.

“Oh, my. What’s that, then?” the man cocked an eyebrow, picking up his strange little tube and pointing it at the knife, waving it around as it made a funny sound for a few seconds, and then examining it, “Now, isn’t that a funny thing to find in a place like this! A little memory splitter, at least that’s what I call them. Is that how this works, then, eh? Little trim off the top, a fond little memory I’m not using anymore? Fair trade to some, I suppose. Come on, then, let’s have a go at it.”

Sydell could only watch in fidgety silence as the man in the bow tie leant down and brushed his head against the knife, a little bit of green light flickering out of his temple and along the edge of the blade. The knife, and the hand holding it, then both tucked back away under the table, and the man in the bow tie smiled at Sydell. 

“Pleasure,” the man said with a charming smile, “And would you please let your friend down there know, when she’s done, I mean, that if she ever takes my things again, I’ll be very cross? Thanks.”

Sydell’s fidgeting at last turned into a set of full-body spasms as he could no longer bear any more. The man in the bow tie, blessedly the only customer in the store at the time, whisked out of the door as Sydell cried out, sweat pouring down his face as his convulsions died down.

Muffin popped back up from under the counter as Sydell’s head hit the countertop. She just smiled cheekily down at him, swallowed, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Thanks, Sy,” she wiggled her brows at him, “I needed that pick-me-up.”

~

-HOUR 67-

“Greetings, bizarre mortal! It is I, the great Halcyon, god-king and mighty ruler of light!” Said the man with the torso coated in glowing tattoos, eyes glittering with golden radiance, “Feel no need to prostate thyself, I come envisioned to you today only as a simple, humble patron of your establishment! I–”

Yaaaaawwwnnnnn…

The barrel-chested man, evidently Halcyon, balked at the sight of Muffin offering a dramatic yawn, complete with leaning as far back as she could in her stool without falling and kicking her shoes up onto the countertop. 

“You… yawn at me?” Halcyon asked, taken aback, “You yawn at the mighty god-king?”

“I yawneth at any who intoduceth themselves with a title,” Muffin rolled her eyes, tone mocking of his highborne accent, before addressing him flatly, “And don’t think I didn’t catch those disembodied trumpets that sounded off when you talked, either. I don’t mind you shopping here, but try to keep it to at least a dull roar, yeah?”

Halcyon held a hand to his chest on apparent offense, “Such indignity… I permitted a degree of geniality, but such unholy recalcitrance, I’m taken aba–OW!”

Muffin just snickered as the countertop, which Halcyon had begun leaning on to get in her fact, delivered a rather gnarly splinter straight through the palm of his oversized hand. Quite intentionally, of course, a fact that the “god-king” clearly picked up on, based on the indignant look he shot her as he plucked it out.

“I’m quivering in my converse,” she droned, “The only actual difference, other than flair, between a “god” and a reality bender is that you lot bought up all the real estate millions of cycles before we were born. What world are you even the god of, anyway?”
“Earth!” Halcyon whined, voice cracking, before he coughed and adjusted his tone, “Great and mighty Earth, cradle of human civilization! Mecca of life, art, and–”

“Which Earth?”

Halcyon, after a few seconds of silence, just gulped.

“There are, like, a couple million different worlds called Earth, my guy,” Muffin chuckled at his expression, “That’s the entire Cluster. Earth is the multiversal baseline. Which one are you the god of?”

Another few seconds of silence passed.

“...the… four hundred and fourty-third?”

Muffin, unable to contain herself anymore, just burst out laughing.

“In the triple digits!? That’s it!? You’re practically dead center of the whole Tangle, holy shit! Is there literally anything interesting about your world, like, at all!?”

“That’s why I’m here, okay!?” Halcyon shot back, though all booming, godly affectation in his voice appeared to have vanished. Indeed, it seemed as though his earlier voice crack had actually just been the voice he’d been intentionally putting on slipping up, his real voice was a whole lot more high-pitched and nasally.

“The only even slightly remarkable thing about my Earth is that my koalas are green!” The god whined, “That’s why I’m here! I want something I can spice it up a bit with! Now for god’s sake, stop laughing!”
“Wait, gods actually say ‘for God’s sake’?” Muffin asked, only managing to stifle her laughter into ongoing chuckles.

“Yeah, go figure, nomenclature was never really made with us in mind,” Halcyon sighed, shaking his head.

“Aha… alright then, guy,” Muffin shook her head with a wry smirk, “Go find something fun. Check the box of shit with the label on it that looks like a hazard symbol with three arrows. If that stuff won’t spice up your world, there’s nothing that will.”

In the end, Halcyon left with a sculpture, a patchwork teddy bear, a quite extremely broken chair, a silver cardboard box, and a mosque lamp. Muffin, on the other hand, found herself richer by several centuries’ worth of deeply, deeply boring history.

~

-HOUR 69-

The chime of the bell above the door was a lot more sluggish than it had been when she’d left last time, April realized as she finally strode back into Muffin’s little pop-up shop after 70 long hours apart. That traced, she supposed - looking around, it was clear enough that the entire interior had gotten a lot droopier, for lack of a better term. The shelves, every single one of them empty, were practically melting into each other. 

Casting her gaze back over to the counter, April found Muffin checking out the final customer, a tall green-haired woman with a faintly holy odour about her. Their conversation was brief and pleasant, but April could see the bags beneath her roommate’s eyes from where she stood, and she held the door open for the customer as she departed.

Muffin’s forehead collapsed onto the countertop as the door swung shut, and April giggled softly as she made her way over.

“So, that looks like it went well,” she noted, “Cleaned you all the way out, huh?”

It seemed to take every bit of strength Muffin could yet muster to just turn her head to meet April’s eye.

“I shoulda made a comfier chair…” Muffin whined weakly.

“Why didn’t you?” April rolled her eyes with a smirk, “Literally nothing was stopping you.”

“Mmmggh… forgot…” Muffin slurred, her eyes clearly fluttering, “Legs asleep… can’t move…”

“Oh, well, that’s a shame,” April cracked, “Your rental on this demiplane is about to run out, it’s gonna collapse into raw potentiality again. You better get a move on.”

Muffin just groaned, weakly lifting an arm to reach out to April, before letting it fall back down to the countertop with a thud.

“Carry,” she mumbled.

“How romantic,” April chuckled back.

“C’monnnnnnnnn…” Muffin groaned, wiggling pathetically, “I just worked a 70-hour shift in retail, and I’m pretty sure I just paid our rent for the next, like, five cycles, I think I deserve to be treated like a princess now, thank you very much.”

“Right,” April rolled her eyes, “Well, would her highness like her bath perfumed or bombed tonight?”

“Mmmh… both.”

“Good, that’s what I figured. I already ran it, it’s waiting back at the apartment.”

Both girls laughed at that, and April stooped down to plant an appreciative kiss on Muffin’s forehead. The tan girl was hardly heavy, so it wasn’t too hard to hoist her up in a bridal carry, both of them headed towards the door just as the integrity of the store’s reality began to break down around them. 

The bath, steamy and scented as promised, brought the light back into Muffin’s eyes as she dipped down into it, electing to simply phase her clothes off of her body instead of stripping manually. 

“So, any fun stories?” April asked, soaping a loofah and beginning to rub it affectionately over Muffin’s back, “Horror stories from bad customers, weird stuff that happened, anything like that?”

“Loads,” Muffin shook her head with a sigh, “But I just wanna be done, for tonight… I’ll spill all that tea tomorrow…”

“Fair enough,” April chuckled, “I feel like such a fucking housewife right now, ha. Anything else you need?”

Muffin just hummed contentedly for a moment as April gently scrubbed her, her touch soothing away the aches and fatigues like magic. After a time, she opened her eyes to meet her roommate’s gaze, and a familiar mischievous spark alighted in them that all but spoiled what she was about to say before she said it.

“I need you to get your ass in this bath already,” she wiggled her eyebrows at the ginger.

April laughed, already halfway done stripping by the time Muffin finished talking, tossing her clothes aside and stepping in, “Well, obviously.”

April was gentle, that night, as there was only so much that she figured Muffin could still handle, worn out as she was.

The next morning, when they found out that Muffin had actually managed to pay for twelve whole cycles’ worth of rent all by herself, April was a lot less gentle. As a treat, of course. 

-END-

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