Dimensional cracks are not the kind of thing one might expect to find in þereminia. It is an ordinary world, as these things go: no magic, and only ordinary amounts of science. But there is a place where the borders of the world are ever so slightly weaker.

Weiss appears just inside the double glass doors of Central River City Bank. An orderly queue of customers lines up across the lobby, mostly wearing green or brown ordinary day robes. Two tellers sit behind the high counter on the far end of the room, wearing formal purple robes. The room is decorated with a few plants. In the center of the lobby is a circular table with various paper forms in little metal holders.

A giant fox- Closer to a Great Dane than a Corgi in size, and maybe even larger than that- Lands on the floor, paws squishing softly against whatever surface makes up the floor. She lets out a 'yip!' of surprise.

And then, after about one second, is invisible.

The floor of the bank is covered in thin carpet — perfectly comfortable on paws, and unlikely to give her away from the indentations her feet make.

One of the people waiting in line turns to their neighbor and asks "Did you see that?" in the tone of voice of someone who very much hopes the answer is yes.

"I did," someone else agrees. A brief discussion ensues, before the customers eventually agree that some of them saw a large dog, or possibly a fox appear, fall to the ground, and then disappear.

"This is really weird," a person in a robe with a raindrop design opines. "Do you think we should ... search around for it?"

   "It didn't go anywhere, though, it just vanished."

One of the people in line leaves their spot to start walking in her direction, carefully swinging their walking stick through the space in front of them.

WELP.

She doesn't know this language. Is it... Well, it's not what she vaguely remembers it should be...

If she's somehow back home most people will probably be pretty alarmed about it and she went ahead and was a giant fox in front of God and everyone... She thinks that's how it goes, anyway?

(She moves out of the way of the investigating person smoothly, leaving tiny micro illusions to cover carpet depression.)

Maybe she can play it off somehow...? An illusion of a racoon, that will run away? 'An animal must have gotten into the vents, it only looked big because we were surprised'...? Oh, gods. That sounds a little funny but also its been three or four seconds of invisibility now and every additional moment makes it worse.

The person with the walking stick reaches the doors and turns around.

"Well, we all saw something, but there's nothing here, so I'm not sure what it makes sense to do. I would call someone, but 'a group of people saw a momentary dog' doesn't sound ... actionable," they remark.

One of the tellers finishes up her transaction, and motions for her next customer to wait.

"I can check the security tapes, if that would make everyone feel better?" she offers.

There's a general agreement from the customers, and she steps away into the back. Nobody else seems inclined to hunt around for invisible animals.

...She's being stupid and panicking slightly.

She goes over to the automatic door. It doesn't open, she's invisible. Are these thermal?? She illuses a little burst of infrared warmth at about chest height to see if that gets it to open. If not? She then tries a brief ripple of a vague human form, 'angled' so it'd only be visible from outward. That should work. If it doesn't she'll literally nose the door open herself and peek around outside, bracing herself for the stench of cars.

The doors are indeed using a cheap IR sensor. So she can open them with ease. The doors aren't invisible, though, so this gets a certain amount of attention from the people inside the bank.

Outside, there is no stench of cars — or, barely any. There have been cars here, but they're clearly not being used nearly as much as she might expect. There is a faint mechanical whining, audible to her sensitive ears, however.

The street outside is cobbled, and covered in a light dusting of snow. People walk up and down it, occasionally stopping to greet one another. The street is lined with three or four story buildings, which all seem to have shops of different kinds built into them. Directly across the street is a clothing store that seems to mostly be offering robes and dresses in various simple colors.

Inside the building, where Weiss cannot see her, Tsanek is having a very confusing time with the security tapes.

She places a call to Emergency Services.

There's nothing to be done about confusing people at least a little bit, at this point. Alas. Maybe they'll get over it.

Her ears and whiskers twitch, trying to follow the noise... Oh, do they have electric cars here? She was gone for a while. Technology!!!

Gosh, it's so nostalgic to see places like this... She peers into the windows of the clothes store, still alert to avoid anyone walking into her, then looks for a cafe or something.

...She'll have no money. Well, there's some gold and gems and other possible-saleable things, but...

The screech of steel on steel echos from down the street, and makes it clear that, while they may or may not have electric cars, they definitely have trains.

Through the windows of the clothes store, she can see a few more varieties. The clothes seem to be divided into three different sections, although what characteristic they're divided by is probably not obvious on casual inspection. Today's fashions seem to lean toward pleats and overlapping strips of stiffer fabric, although there's plenty of more comfortable clothing as well.

A café is not too hard to find — two doors down, there's a shop with a set of tables set outside, shielded from the snow with cloth umbrellas. Inside, there's a wall full of drink-making machinery and two probable-baristas making drinks from it. She doesn't smell coffee, though. The strongest scent she can get from the outside, other than the general smells of humanity, is probably the ginger.

She also doesn't see people obviously using money. People will walk in, grab their drink, and walk out. Or walk in, study the menu, talk with a server, tap a rectangle on a lanyard to a large square with a symbol on it, and get their drink a moment later. If she waits long enough, she might see someone walk in, hand the barista a piece of paper about the size of a business card, and then take a drink, but this is much rarer.

Gosh, this place is like, idyllic... She can't remember the names, but... Anyway, no fucking parking lots everywhere. And yep, credit cards rule the day. Pawn shop hunting time. They tend to be in sleazy neighborhoods, she'll be walking around for a while looking for one probably? Or rather, running along the street where people aren't in the way. Also, she can't afford to stay invisible forever... Hmm... Well, it feels like some kind of nice spy mission, so she'll keep doing it for now~

The streets have an odd layout. This one, and the ones nearest it, are built on a square grid. She can walk through alleys over to a parallel street with different storefronts. But if she goes far enough, the streets will switch to a hexagonal layout — zigzagging back and forth, leaving plenty of room for little courtyards and parks in the odd gaps between buildings. That direction also has taller and taller buildings, though, so if she's looking for a sleazy neighborhood, she might choose to turn and skirt around the hexagonal area.

Eventually, after enough searching, she can find a shop with bars on the windows that smells like antiques, which seems promising. It's squeezed in between a shop that sells items made of leather, and an unmarked building that smells mostly of paper and dust.

She still has no idea what language this is... Well, she's picked up what are probably 'hello' and 'goodbye'. and hanging out invisibly trying to learn the language sounds... Boring.

Leather goods? Interesting. The other one seems like a bookstore, probably.

Before going in she transforms- Ugh, yeah, she's starting to expend noticeable amounts of energy- And pulls out from her tail gold coins with a square in the middle, strung on a long string, and a smaller pouch of silver and copper ones aaaaand... Hmm, not any of the wands or scrolls, not her jars of spices... The weapons and furniture she carries in her pocket space she mostly keeps for sentimental reasons... Yeah, probably best to stick with the coins.

She's now wearing a (partially illusory; she's adding extras to her usual tunic and skirt-type outfit) outfit that is sort of aping that stiff-fabric style, complete with a hood that should effectively hide her ears if they don't twitch too much in surprise, and a big coat to stick her tail into. Mostly tans and browns.

-Ugh, the curse has settled on making her eyes strange today. Deep amber and with odd pupils. Well, she can't do anything about that.

Into the pawn shop (if it's open)! Cheerful innocent shopper demeanor! Peering at the shelves! Polite hello once addressed!

She doesn't know the word for 'selling' so she'll just present several of the coppers and silvers. The coppers have a motif of a sun over grain field on one side and a crescent moon over a forest on the other, and a few words in the Northern Federation's language. The silver ones have an image of what might be aurora borealis on one side and clouds surrounding a comet on the other, and another few unfamiliar words.