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Nepeta & Dave Go To A Spooky Store Of Esoterica

Summary:

From the outside it wasn't anything particularly strange outside of the abundance of skulls and little tarot motifs plastered about on the windows in poster-size, obscuring the view of the interior from any onlookers. It was certainly a strange store, with an appropriately goth-y name that Dave wasn't paying close enough attention to to pick up on a hot summer day like this, instead grabbing the old steel handle on the swinging glass door and pulling open. The handle was rough, like it hadn't been shined or polished since the store had opened, with little ridges just to make the experience of tugging on it slightly more imperceptibly more painful, and a burst of slightly fetid, dry-ish air hit him once he managed to open up the startlingly heavy glass door.

93/365

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

From the outside it wasn't anything particularly strange outside of the abundance of skulls and little tarot motifs plastered about on the windows in poster-size, obscuring the view of the interior from any onlookers. It was certainly a strange store, with an appropriately goth-y name that Dave wasn't paying close enough attention to to pick up on a hot summer day like this, instead grabbing the old steel handle on the swinging glass door and pulling open. The handle was rough, like it hadn't been shined or polished since the store had opened, with little ridges just to make the experience of tugging on it slightly more imperceptibly more painful, and a burst of slightly fetid, dry-ish air hit him once he managed to open up the startlingly heavy glass door.

"Man. What a place." Dave mused, slipping in first, Nepeta following closely behind with a cutesy giggle. The inside looked like a mishmash of several Victorian antique rooms, with patina'd metal furniture that could really use some attention and love, wrinkling old paintings that look like nobody had looked directly at them in two centuries, and, oh yeah, a gigantic taxidermied bear looming over them, glass eyes staring forward, completely unseeing. That was the source of the strange scent, evidently, making Dave wrinkle his nose as he walked up the stairwell to the main part of the store, looking around with the highest eyebrow he could possibly manage stuck in permanent raised mode. "And you just like to come here and look around?" He asked behind his shoulder.

"Well, a lot of this stuff is really expensive!" Nepeta said, grabbing the railing and pulling herself up the three or four steps into the store proper rather than the front display section, waving hello to a bored looking young adult managing the cash register. They gently shuffled a deck of cards and dealt them out to themselves, not paying the two much mind except for waving hello back to Nepeta in a way that suggested the two were more than a little familiar with each other. They mumbled something about letting them know if they had any questions about prices and values or something of the sort.

"I mean, hey, these earrings look pretty cheap." Dave said, peering down into the glass display case that the cash register was set out on, along with the iPad on a display mount with one of those Square things plugged into the bottom for swiping credit cards into. Inside were all kinds of morbid jewelry, cleaned rat skeleton parts, other small preserved animals, butterflies sealed between glass hanging on chains meant to attach to holes in someone's ears, and-- "Holy shit, is that a frog skin purse?"

"Yep!" Nepeta and the young adult manning the cash register both said at the same time.

"That is way cheaper than I expected a coinpurse made out of a small frog to cost." Dave mused, rubbing his chin in thought while Nepeta looked through the selection of tarot decks on offer for the latest offerings.

"How much did you expect a coinpurse made out of a frog to cost?" Nepeta asked, picking up an ornithology themed tarot deck and looking at it rather than Dave, flipping it back and forth, admiring the imagery with the sort of discerning glare that a person who bought lots of tarot decks tended to give to new tarot decks. Assessing, perhaps, if it would be a good addition to her growing collection of tarot decks. She set it back down on the table to think about it.

"I'm not sure, but not that cheap." Dave replied, turning around to look at the other wall of the store, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head behind his sunglasses. "Holy shit, is that a fucking--"

"Yep. It is." Nepeta interrupted, laughing as Dave got a view of one of the most disturbing preserved animals in a jar of formaldehyde he had ever seen in his life. Distressing in a cool way, of course, in a sealed, rounded glass jar, flat bottom, flat top, price tag in the hundreds of dollars. "It's been here since I started coming here."

"I can imagine, who the fuck would want that in their house?" Dave replied, laughing. "Besides me, of course."

"Huh?" Nepeta said, turning her head towards Dave, who had immediately spun around on his heel to face the cashier again.

"Hey, do you guys do payment plans and also deliver cross-country?"

Notes:

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