Grand opening; so open!

[blytheandbonnie]

WHO Bonnie and YOU
WHAT The grand opening of Bonnie's magic shop
WHERE Something Wiccan
WHEN Throughout Saturday
NOTES Specify when!
WARNINGS None right now

Early morning
She'd come outside to take a look at the display window and found a corpse. It was a woman, not anyone she knew, drained of blood and twisted into an unnatural position. She'd stood,

Comments

Afternoon

[rightawaydoctor]

Being interested in magic, Christine dropped by the new shop to take a look. She wasn't on the search for anything in particular, just browsing. Plus she figured it'd be a treat to see Bonnie again.

[blytheandbonnie]

"Christine!" Bonnie said cheerfully as the woman entered. She'd been adjusting some items in the display window as Christine entered, so she was right beside the door. With a bright smile, she crossed over to her.

"I'd actually wondered if you might show up in here sometime, after you said you were interested in magical things. But I didn't expect you quite this soon. How have you been?"

[rightawaydoctor]

"Hi, Bonnie," Christine replied with a friendly smile. "I'm good. So, grand opening, huh? That must be exciting." She let her eyes drift around the shop for a moment before turning her attention back to Bonnie. From what Christine had been reading about magic, some of it could apparently be done by anybody, which must have been who some of the items for sale were for. But other types of magic needed someone with a special touch, like Bonnie.

"So do you have time to give me the tour? Show me what's what?"

[blytheandbonnie]

"Absolutely. People I know get total preferential treatment." She was only half kidding, but that was the nice thing about owning your own place, really.

Bonnie gestured for Christine to follow her and began walking around the shop. "Books are over here. There's a lot of spell books, but there's also other useful texts on magical creatures or legends or referential material, like guides to crystals or spell ingredients or how to grow your own herbs. That sort of thing."

She ran her finger along the spine of a text, written in a language she didn't understand. "I know people in this city use a lot of different types of magic, so I tried to get a variety. The only downside is now I don't know what some of these are."

[rightawaydoctor]

The books definitely peaked Christine's interest. With all the supernatural creatures in the city, it'd be nice to see if some were listed in the text on magical creatures. Plus having a reference guide to magic would just be plain handy.

"Couldn't those contain really dangerous spells, though?" she asked, nodding at one of the unknown books.

[blytheandbonnie]

"Fingers crossed," Bonnie quipped. And she smiled a little. "I tried to get a general idea of what sort of magic each of the books contained from the people who requested them. The shop has a pretty strict policy against dark arts supplies, but the fact of the matter is, you can't completely control that. Some items are used in good or bad spells, and even different enchantments can be used for good or for bad."

She shrugged a shoulder. "I just tried to avoid anything that could, you know, contain information about how to destroy the world or anything."

[rightawaydoctor]

"Yeah, it's best not to sell info on how to destroy the world," Christine agreed, smiling a little. She'd have to trust that Bonnie knew what she was doing.

"Are there certain things that anybody can use?" she asked, waving a wave at other shelves containing who knew what. "Not that I want to dip into it myself, but I'm wondering what others could do with this stuff." Nothing too dangerous, she imagined. She hoped.

[blytheandbonnie]

"You could try dipping into it, given your interest in magic." Bonnie glanced around thoughtfully, and then settled on a pouch of runes. She opened up the pouch and dropped the runes onto the counter for Christine to take a look at.

"Like these. Are you familiar? Lots of humans dabble in runes when they're starting out magic use." She began pointing toward a few of the symbols and speaking their names. "This is Uruz. It was traditionally used to aid in hunting, but people use it as a sort of sexual aid now. Wiccan viagra, in a way. And this one is Fehu, it's sort of the business rune. It's supposed to help with your success. And this H-shaped one is Hagalaz, and it's supposed to stop destructive patterns. Some people try to use it to battle addictions, for example."

[rightawaydoctor]

Christine leaned in, listening. Before coming to Bete Noire, she would have thought magic to be nothing but nonsense, but since coming to the city and seeing what it could do, she would have been ignorant to deny it had an impact on the place.

"I've heard of them, but no idea what they do." After getting the quick introduction, she asked, "So what do you do with the runes exactly? Just keep them on you and they do their thing?" Seemed a bit too simple, and she wondered if additional steps were required to get them to work.

[blytheandbonnie]

"Various ways." Bonnie shrugged. "Some people wear them as protective charms or get tattoos of them. I'm a little skeptical of how powerful they are in that regard. Other people use them as a sort of crystal ball, to tell a person's fortune. The outcome is a little more vague than you get with actual divination, of course. And then they're used in a lot of spells. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way."

She she tossed a couple of the runes up in the air and caught them. "Like I said, magic is fluid."

[rightawaydoctor]

"So there's not a lot of rules involved?" she asked. "If it's fluid, then something that might work one way may not work that way again, right? Seems frustrating." It was interesting to her though, how one thing could be used in so many different ways.

[blytheandbonnie]

"The runes are supposed to respond to the person who uses them, so in that way, I guess they are unpredictable." She turned one of the runes over in her hand, ran her thumb across the engraving.

"Some people work with them and never stop. Some people try them once and don't get the results they like. That's another aspect of magic, I guess. It's as a real as a person, and it's as hard to control. It can get away from you if it knows you're not strong willed enough, or it can do what it wants if you're not firm with it."

Bonnie glanced up at the other woman and laughed. "Although that's not the best sales pitch, is it? I'll do better."

[rightawaydoctor]

Though all this magic stuff really interested Christine, she was happy to stay on the research side of things and let others handle the practical aspects of it. With magic being hard to control, she'd hate to truly cause damage from trying something.

She laughed along and shrugged. "But you're an honest saleswoman, and people will like that."

[blytheandbonnie]

"Well, I guess we'll see if the shop manages to survive opening weekend."

She smiled at Christine and leaned back against the table behind her. "Well, you tell me. What are you interested in finding out more information on? If I point out every magical item in the store, we'll be here all week." She tilted her head to the side, curiously. "What do you want to know?"

[rightawaydoctor]

"I guess I want to know about the origins of magic. Its history, and where it draws its power from. In science, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. With magic, that doesn't seem to apply." She thought back to when Sirius had shown her magic in the bar. He had managed to refill his glass with magic, and wondered where that energy had come from. He'd also managed to move himself from one spot to another in an instant, without the use of a transporter. That had impressed her.

[blytheandbonnie]

"History of magic? I can help with that. Let's go this way."

She walked over to one of the shelves and gestured for Christine to follow. There were a lot of dull looking tomes on the shelves, and it took Bonnie a minute to glance through to find the right selection. "Here," she finally said, running her finger across the spines of the books on one shelf. "These are all more informational texts. You might want to start here."