Flower shop. Hardware store. Nail salon. Sickeningly cute café. And then, squeezed in between that and a massage parlor, a shop that looks much older and weirder than its surroundings - gnarled wood instead of cement and paint, moss and some other small plants growing directly out of the side of the wall, smoky windows, sign impossible to read.

She almost misses it, and then spins back and rounds on it with a grin. Perhaps slightly too much of a grin.

"Don't you dare be boring or abandoned," she says, and marches into the mystery shop.

It's full of weird things - taxidermy and lovely fantasy maps and dried plants and art glass and a huge orrery that might be trying to represent the Firefly setting or something because it's sure not the Solar System and funny clockwork kinetic sculptures and a columnar enclosure full of weirdly giant butterflies and fancy rugs and furniture so eclectic it would strike a typical interior designer dead on the spot.

"Gooooood morning," says a voice belonging to a woman who is simultaneously much too young and definitely weird enough to belong to this shop. She looks like she's maybe twenty, if that, and she is dressed as a witch, black robes and pointy hat and all. She's propped up on her elbows on the counter in the shop, one hand idly spinning some kind of armillary sphere around.

She does a slow, delighted twirl, taking it all in, hands over her mouth as though to stop the glee pouring out. Then she removes them, and out it pours:

"Good morning to you too!! Words cannot express how much you are exactly what I'm looking for."

"Oh! I hear these words now and then but often it is I saying them. Come here, come here, I have a feeling..." She extends her hands.

Lenore cheerfully skips up to the counter and presents herself for Mysterious Shop Lady Inspection.

"I have news!" says the mysterious shop lady after a moment of hand contact, and then her hat flies off as she manifests enormous lagomorphic ears. "Magic is real and can be all yours!"

"That's some pretty great news!" she says, absolutely without missing a beat. "Please, tell me more!"

"The merchandise is a sideline! I am a witch awakener by trade and you are an asleep witchling. You will most likely get to be a new species though you do not especially have to, and can pick up lots of hocus pocus of lots of kinds and decide how you will collect more."

"A whole new species? Is this new species like everyone's a were-something and that's where you got the fetching bunny ears, or like vampires and werewolves and elves and fairies and who knows what else?"

"Not werewolves so much. But vampires elves fairies fetching bunny ears yes."

"Fascinating. And how are these things assigned? Personality quiz? Tarot reading?"

"If you awaken yourself, subconsciousness does it for you! With me you can choose, though you will not have all possible things ever to choose from - cannot be a vampire if no vampire ancestry, etcetera."

"I will be ever so disappointed if I can't be a vampire. Though I suppose there might be some other, even more enticing thing out there to be. Anyway, sign me up! Where do I start?"

"Like so!" And through their joined hands Nia pulls them into a conceptual space full of motes of light. "- can still back out if you need to go do Googling about something, not settled till you are all ready."

"Ooooooh. It's so shiny!! Where do I find out my vampire fortune?"

"This-a-way! You do have vampire, yes - 'empusa' to be exact - and 'neutral', basic human, most anyone who comes in here looking human has that, and also... pharon, if you wish to be Egyptianish godly, dryad, for being a planty person... ooh, aurai, for screaming people back in time, rare one... sylph, instantly lose all your weight... erinyes, fallen angel things... elf, those are popular... fairy, teeny tiny but throw great parties... and daeva, like a human but fancier and taller."

"What kinds of parties do fairies throw? And what on earth is it like to be sort of an Egyptian god? And how does screaming people back in time work? And of course what is an empusa exactly?"

"Fairies! They give you a tap and you are either the happiest and sing and dance forgetting about all your cares and deadlines and bedtimes, or that but sexier. The reputable ones you can go for a responsible while with trusted friends, amazing stressbuster but very tiring. Pharons have the animal heads - actual Egyptian gods were related to pharons. Screaming people back in time terribly complicated - they get flang back in history, up to a hundred years, and have to find a magic anchor to get to the present, and the timeline fixes itself and the aurai skims off the top for mana. Mightily strange. Empusas! Vampires. Technically dead, lungs still work for talking and smelling the roses. Hollow fangs for the sucking of blooooood to recharge mana. Animals work but less well. Vegan blood grows on trees on the Moon, though, no need to be buying feeder rats from snake stores. Well fed they are superfast and superstrong - empty they die the rest of the way dead, fixable but inconvenient, cannot run on empty like most witches."

"Oh, that does sound like a very exciting party. Most witches can run on empty? Empty of what? Food, drink, blood? What if I can't decide what I want to be and want to be everything? Do pharons get the option of sometimes not having animal heads or is it strictly all animal heads all the time?"

"Mana. Species controls how you get more, but empusas must always have some. Different species might or might not need eating or drinking. You can be... three things... ish..." she pokes a mote from another cluster. "All animal heads all the time for the pharon but probably some way to fix it if we try hard and believe in ourself."

"I do like trying hard and believing in myself. How does being three-things-ish work?"

"Costs some points - you have more than most but still not infinity. Once to be two things instead of one, twice to be three things instead of two. Whichever thing you are most decides affinities - which magics are cheaper to pick up - and you get all the extra-species-magic options and all the mana charge and the best mana capacity."

"Ooh, species get extra magic options? I want to know about all the extra magic options!"

"Empusa get to add Wind affinity - that will work even if empusa is not where your affinities mostly are from - and turn into mist and be stronger and faster. Also darkvision. And flying, mistily. Pharon get a halo headlamp situation and invulnerable heads and ultra bite strength - personally I think not worth the points. Dryads can do a thing to change their plantishness by poking different plants. Also alters the rez method for being not dead any more, instead of one seed many spores. Aurai get a little short range time travel superpower, troublingly complicated. Sylph extra is for phasing through stuff, walk through walls and such. Erinyes does a complicated cursing thing. Elf does a Spiderman sort of deal, walk on walls or ceilings, balance on knife edges. Fairy has very expensive fairy ring demiplane option with some time control. Daeva gets very cheap body control thing, like comic book monks controlling the heart rate and temperature."