Setting: Antique Store

[digsruins]

As much as Lara loved to skim through auction houses and see what was available online that piqued her interest or was something that could lead to a greater adventure, there was also something to be said for those small hole-in-the-wall antique stores. Not the big garish ones that boasted of Queen Anne chairs or apothecary tables. No, Lara preferred the ones whose windows were dusty enough that you had to enter the store if you wanted to see what it held. They generally had things that had been lost to the ages, manned by someone who might be considered an antique themselves. The dingier the store, the better the treasure they held.

Not to say that a majority of what collected dust on the shelves wasn't junk or very good knock offs, but once in a while, she found something that had the collector and adventurer in her soaring, something that made her pulse jump when she saw it and inevitably reached for it.

She was hoping for just such a find as she stepped through the door of one such store she'd spied, the bell jangling like a broken chime above her as she stepped in. She had to pause at the door for her eyes to adjust to the gloom inside, but she was hoping that this little deviation would be worthwhile.

Comments

[ingastellar]

There was something to be said about getting stationed at a dusty old store waiting for a drop-off; at least it was quiet. Maybe it was even a little too quiet. She flipped through her magazine, feet on the counter, enjoying the downtime but internally grumbling a little about the lack of clear drop-off timeframe nonetheless.

She straightened and looked up as the door opened; the customer didn't look like the person she was waiting for, but Inga didn't look like an undercover agent either, with her oversize red dress and flowery scarf. But even if she weren't, no point in driving the newcomer away. She leaned her elbows on the counter, welcoming smile on her face. "Hello. Looking for something?"

[digsruins]

She turned at the welcome, noting that the woman looked decidedly younger than the usual shopkeepers she ran into in these places, but perhaps she was a daughter. Or granddaughter. Or maybe she was just as eccentric and into old dusty things as Lara herself was. She returned the smile and gave her a half shake of her head. "Nothing in particular, no. I suppose I'm hoping something jumps out at me."

[ingastellar]

"How easy-going! I like to browse, too. But my uncle says I have to keep an eye on everybody who comes in, so I hope you don't mind my staring. We don't have cameras, see, and we're quite a mess...."

Which wasn't even a lie; the real shopkeeper had let them requisition the use of his shop on the condition that nothing was to go missing. When Inga had asked what she should do if someone tried to haggle, he'd ignored her. Have them pay full price and hope his regulars didn't come in, she supposed, but she couldn't help but think that he'd rather overestimated her ability to keep her eye on the innumerable and haphazard piles of stuff lying around the shelves. Thankfully, customers had only been coming in one at a time, when they came in at all, so she only had to keep an eye on a person.

"I'll tell you a secret, though!" She lowered her voice and cupped her hands around her mouth. "I'm not allowed to haggle."

[digsruins]

"Not at all." Lara wasn't the type to sticky-finger anything from an actual establishment, though she knew that wasn't always the mindset of those who came into these places. It could be easy to walk out with full pockets and only pay a paltry sum for some costume jewelry. Rude, if you asked her.

The admission had her smiling again, then making a mock pout of disappointment. "But where's the fun in that? Half the enjoyment of antique shopping is the bartering, after all."

[ingastellar]

"Right? That's what I said, but my uncle wouldn't listen to me. He's pretty stingy, I think."

She adjusted her scarf while she took an affected glance around the shop. "I think he's attached to most of it, actually." There was one in particular that he kept in a glass case right next to the counter—empty now, because he'd taken it out. "Don't know why he's selling this stuff if he wants it. He doesn't even make the shopfront presentable! Isn't it just self-sabotage?"

[digsruins]

"Or he could be catering to a more precise clientele." Treasure hunters, real treasure hunters wouldn't step foot in a place that was pristine and had things properly in their place. Anything worth looking for would have been picked over already. No, it was in these places where one could find exactly what they were looking for, even if they weren't quite certain what that was.

[ingastellar]

"Oh?" Inga leaned forward. "Are you that 'precise clientele'? As you can probably tell," she followed up with an embarrassed laugh, "I don't know much about his business."