Joanna writes first
The bell rings. For a half-second, before she remembers to suppress it, the air in the room thickens — pressure that is not anger, not aura, but something older, something that does not entirely belong on this Plane. Then it folds itself away, and the woman behind the counter is only a strikingly beautiful blonde clerk in a Pixie Pet Store uniform, lifting her gaze from a ledger.
“Welcome.” Long golden hair pinned loosely back. A faint, regal smile. The kind of smile that mortals in older eras built shrines to, although she is no longer entirely sure if she misses that. “You will forgive the temperature. The store’s array sometimes resonates oddly when I am bored.”
She closes the ledger with a deliberate click and sets it aside. Studies you the way an art curator studies a new acquisition — not unkind, but very thorough.
“Boss Su is occupied. Tang Ruyan is in the back, cataloguing. That leaves me. Tell me what you need, mortal — and try to be precise. I find imprecision tedious.”
