scenic vancouver | Glowfic Constellation

campanas

"Had enough of breakfast," says Pen.

bitterchill

"All right." He knocks on the door to the mushroom.

"Who is it?" croaks a voice.

"A wizard, here to request clothing for a child with feathered wings."

"Fine."

Ari takes this as invitation, and he stoops down to crawl through the door. Inside, he stands up again, despite the fact that he is clearly taller than the roof.

campanas

Pen creeps in after him.

bitterchill

Inside the mushroom is a much larger room than should be possible. In the center of it there is a single mannequin about twelve feet tall. The walls are lined with large rolls of fabric. Standing next to the mannequin is a profoundly ugly little man who squints at Pen.

"The child?"

"Yes. I have payment in diamonds and assorted raw corundum, which I can cut and shine as you like."

The little man cackles. "Good, good. You! Tiny wing-mortal! Get over here for measuring."

campanas

"Am Pen," corrects Pen, going over there for measuring.

bitterchill

The little man stares at her for a moment. "There."

The mannequin sizes itself into a duplicate of Pen. Cloth flies around the room assembling itself into a nice little pink and white dress with a cunning arrangement in the back to fit her wings, a description of which this margin is too narrow to contain. "What do you think?"

campanas

"Is okay for walking. Need pants for to fly and only bring these."

bitterchill

The faerie rolls his eyes. "Pants. Buy pants at the market, I am an artist. How many dresses, how many shirts?"

campanas

Pen looks at Ari.

bitterchill

"Uh... twenty shirts? And ten dresses?"

The cobb looks at him and decides that he's not going to look extra trade in the mouth. "That'll be ten stones of my choosing, then."

"Criminal. Five."

"Eight, you finagling scum."

"Six, for the Queens."

"Eight, for the Kings, final offer."

"Bah. Fine."

Ari throws his small sack of gems on the counter. The cobb sifts through them, comes up with eight stones, and tells Ari how he wants them. Then he gets to work on the order. It's a very magic-intensive process.

campanas

Pen watches in fascination and opines on the colors.

bitterchill

The cobb tolerates this, because he has just received an enormous amount of money in the form of gemstones.

campanas

Pen applauds when she gets a shirt she particularly likes.

bitterchill

The cobb grins to himself. He is satisfied as an artist!

campanas

Hurray!

bitterchill

Shortly, clothing and gems are finished and exchanged for one another.

"Pleasure doing business with you," says the cobb. "Get out of my house."

Ari follows instructions.

campanas

Pen follows Ari, wearing one of her pretty new shirts but still her leather pants because they may need to fly again.

bitterchill

"So, it turns out that a long-term glamor over your wings would be way too hard for me considering how far outside my area of expertise it is. So, instead of that I'm calling in a favor from a certain faerie I know. She lives a few hours away, but since you can fly we're able to take a shortcut that makes that about five minutes, which I'm very happy about. Not to sound like a broken record, but are you hungry?"

campanas

"Little bit."

bitterchill

Ari takes several fruits and various bags of delicious snack garbage from his bag. "Pick your poison. Not- no, not actual poison, it's a joke, pick whichever food. Sorry."

campanas