There is a shop with incongruous architecture, gnarled mossy wood tucked in between a pink stucco nail salon ("Gel manicures!") and a similarly stucco but painted blue record store ("BUY - SELL - TRADE").

Ooh, a store that is antique. Is it also an antique store? What has it got in its windows?

The windows are actually really hard to see through, they have a smoky stained quality and also the pieces of glass are really small. The mullions between each little smeary glass diamond look real, not decorative.

Huh, that seems counterproductive, and also like it might be a historical building they can't change. Curious. But it's definitely a storefront kind of place and not an office or an apartment entrance? She doesn’t want to bother anybody that isn’t asking to be bothered.

There's a bell on the door!

Okay, fair enough. If the shop turns out to be for things completely unrelated to her life she can apologize and compliment the architecture. Clunk DING DING squeeeal.

"Welcome!" says a girl who looks much less antique than the shop. She is, as compensation of some sort, dressed up as a witch complete with pointy hat. "Come in come in!"

The wares are not exactly antiques. There are fantasy maps up on the wall, a glass column full of live giant butterflies, a model of a solar system that isn't this one, scrolls and wands and crystals and a fishbowl and decks of ?tarot? cards...

Wow. It’s a strangely high-budget kind of cryptically eclectic. Fantasy decor? Cosplay for a locally popular fandom with lots of money? Magic props?

She looks around, intentionally conveyed puzzlement on her face, and tries to see if the butterflies have an explanation visible.

The butterflies are unlabeled.

"When you have had enough look at the butterflies come here to be looked at your own self, I have a hunch!" chirps the witch.

“What, is your hunch perhaps that I’m your next customer? With a hole in my life shaped like a butterfly?”

Whatever this is, it is not a normal sort of store and it does not seem fitting to stick to a conventionally polite sort of conversation. Arguably she should be making an excuse and exiting promptly before she has to exit less gracefully from whatever this is. But there’s something about the whole picture that — is somehow right despite looking like it should be wrong.

She will approach the counter to a more comfortable conversational distance.

The witch takes Kaitliyn's hands in hers like that is a normal thing to do. And then her witch hat flies off her head, because her ears have abruptly morphed into big brown bunny ears.

"My hunch was so right. How would you like to be a witch, stranger?"

Whoa.

“If I am one, do I have to ply my trade in a mysterious shop with no name?”

"Only if this sparks joys."

“I can see how it might, for people who aren't me.”

"I like it. But needs not must. The line of work is not retail, anyway, that is mostly decoration - not that I would not sell you something if you wanted any. The line of work is awakening witches!"

“And this is a rare enough opportunity that you don’t have a booth at the career fair.”

"Oh, you could be an awakener if you wished but there is some continuing of the education after learning just how to do magic."

“Oh, sorry, that was ambiguous. I mean — being a witch is not the sort of thing that comes up at the career fair.”

"Oh. No. Most people do not have potential."

“And the ones that — awaken — aren’t out there having already collected the Randi Prize and generally being agreed to exist and do magic because—?”

"There is a Veil, and a Veil is needful, because if too many mundie types learn of magic here on this Earth - this one specifically, tell all the neighboring ones you like - then there is a bad problem. It has happened before, sixty five million years ago, and back then, this was not the specific Earth! It was a different one and all the dinosaurs here still died."

“Does that mean that — wait, who was doing the telling to whom, then? Were the dinosaurs intelligent and magical? — never mind, you didn’t say that these are somehow otherwise-identical Earths, it’s just a popular idea that there could be some.”

“So if I get to be a witch, and I have to keep it secret, what can I do with it? Besides hang out with butterflies and stained glass, which are pretty but aren’t people. Unless they are.”

"Some pretty similar but presumable differences were happening sixty-five million years back.

"You can go places full of witches! And use magic here too, on the sly - the Veil will help, if you are not too obvious. These butterflies are not people, they are just big."

“And is there a price? Or an oath? A lethal allergy to water?”

"Lethal allergy to water optional, since I am helping - natural awakenings sometimes get nasty surprises. My business model does not charge you or ask you any oaths."