Mary looked up and saw the sky, never ending in all directions, filled and filled with the dark of the birds and the butterflies. Flying and flying, like soldiers into battle they were always heading towards the end, their end. They never stopped, all of them going at it, as if it was their duty.
She walked faster, she needed to get to the shop, now. A sky filled was a bad omen after all, on the blood moon it was just so much worse. There were feathers falling and falling from the sky, a few dead butterflies joining in. Mary walked by three in one sidewalk block and immediately started to run. Bad omens indeed.
The shop in the brick wall was as it always was to those that could see it. It still had the strange writing on the shop door and the windows were very much covered, the closed sign always there for those that bothered to see it.
Mary didn’t bother with the key and barged straight through the wood of the door, which was quite rude to the wood who bristled and shuddered in her wake. She winced, “sorry for intruding, that was rude of me,” she whispered to herself. Deciding to give it a good shinning later, it didn’t deserve her rudeness with all that it kept in.
The shop was in complete disarray, the books had taken refuge on the ceiling for all the good that it did and the charms were barfing in the corner, their magic making a lot more things than rainbows. There was a black hole on the far wall and a white hole on the opposite wall, gravity had became optional, which wasn’t good for any of the antiques on the ground level, they were temperamental as they were.
As Mary came in the shop flew into more of a tizzy than it already was, dust and books flying around her, the cleaning supplies wouldn’t settle down. She covered her head as she headed for the backroom, the best time to leave would be now and she needed to set in the navigation’s.
Stepping in various piles of poisonous glitter that started to resemble mold, Mary took out her keys and shoved it into the blessedly magic-proof lock. She twisted it in and stepped towards the navigation charts easily enough. The door slammed shut behind her and Mary whirred around to see numerous other locks settling into place. Those weren’t there before, but she had no time to do anything about it.
Mary turned to the maps and took out the pixie powder and radioactive salt. With the infinity gems they worked perfectly to scatter all over the maps in small, mesmerizing waves. A little flicker of dark swirling smoke from her fingertips and they were off on the magical hunt to find another location, with better omens and clearer skies.
She didn’t quite get what she wanted though.
The light of several moons greeted her as she peeked outside her door, it was brighter than day outside, though the night had stars that shinned distantly they didn’t greet her here. Mary swallowed and closed the door, if this was the best the shop could come up with then the worst has come to be.
The shop was now on its best behavior, Mary wasn’t in her best temper getting to the door and hadn’t cared much for its method of trying to get her attention. With everything in its place getting to the counter was easy and finding a newly placed map there was easier. It did try running at one point but the medical kit under there decided to betray its location.
The map itself was special enough that even Mary didn’t like it. The map spoke to her and not even in the ignorable whispers that spoke of death and eating glittery souls, no it was annoying questions which Mary knew better than to answer anyway.
“You know where the broom is and yet you don’t do anything about it, is that even a wise decision? Don’t you want to know where your sanity went? Do you want to find the memories about what happened to the girl in the lost glass? You miss the white lady, want to know where she is? You started the bad omens and don’t even know how, don’t you want to know the answer?”
The voice that came from the map never stopped asking questions, and the map itself never stopped moving The only way to use it was to start asking the right questions, so it started asking the right questions. The real danger was finding yourself in the questions. Mary had found herself to many times to like the map.
“Where am I? Why am I here? What am I going to find? When will I find it? Why will I find it here?” Mary was shouting by the end of it, because getting her questions mixed up and not started with W could be very bad for her.
The map finally started going down to whispers and mutters and finally started showing her a location. There was a dot on the map, near the shop, and it seemed to be getting closer, but then collapsed as in the dot got smaller and stopped moving.
This all struck Mary as a little peculiar and very much suspicious, as this dot didn’t even make it to her front door before collapsing. It didn’t even have the decency to come collapsing into her shop door in a shocking and very unsettling way. Now Mary would have to go out there, how rude.
Sighing and resigned to her fate, Mary stepped out the door, ready for anything as any shop keeper would be.