don't you see the starlight?don't you dream impossible things?

Running a bookshop within a magical city had its own delights, Piper was quickly learning. While the young, human, girl was still unable to accurately identify the species that frequented her little shop within the Western district, she could certainly guess. It was quickly becoming a game for her, a way to pass the time and add some sort of excitement to her world. To consider the lives that her customers had when they weren't within Westside Stories, to invent stories and adventures that they might go on during their day. The trio of girls that came in two days before the full moon each month and bought out cookbooks - they were absolutely witches (though she couldn't prove it). The grumpy man who only came in five minutes to closing and always ordered ahead? Definitely a vampire. The teenage girl who was always asking for elemental books or tarot cards? She was human, but like Piper, she certainly didn't always want to be.

But that wasn't to say it was always fun to work in her bookstore. Customers were always aggressive around the full moon and were more likely to haggle prices with her, often anticipating that she was a cashier, and not the owner. A new moon would always bring forth a variety of people wanting to try a new hobby. Sunny days meant people were in the mood for browsing, yet they were always the worst sales days within her store. The winter months - in addition to the pandemic - had made people more likely to buy books for hobbies, but it had also made them just as likely to return those books a week later. Overcast skies and rain made people irritable, snow meant that the wooden floors were a mess, the warmer weather now meant mud.

Piper loved her store, truly she did. It was everything she'd wanted it to be, right down to the artwork on the walls and the comfy chairs to read within. And yet... some days the young girl couldn't help but be bored. The shop today had been slow, with what few people had come in wanting to browse rather than actually buy anything. And a group of teenage boys had come in after school hours and absolutely destroyed her graphic novels section, a project that had taken her almost an hour to correct. By the time she was done, she was almost glad for the lack of customers in her store if only because she could distract herself with the latest period romance novel that had come in last week and she'd only now found time to look at. The blonde had nestled herself behind the counter, leaning over it as she dove into the world of 19th century England. Piper was unaware of the overcast skies that had crept away the sunshine outside, just as she was equally unaware of the delivery man struggling with opening her door while those boxes balanced precariously in his arms.

It was only once the bell above her door chimed that she looked up, and by then it was too late for her to come around to assist him with her delivery. The young woman perked up, just as she always did for new deliveries coming into her store - each box held its own adventures, a dozen or more individual worlds wrapped in pretty bindings. Piper's hands went out to steady the boxes as he sat them on her counter, the woman entirely eager to see what had come in on the latest shipment - after all, with business booming, it was hard to remember what all had been ordered. Her 'thank you' died upon her lips in the same way his sentence had, interrupted by the sudden sound of rain hitting the windows. Piper, too, flinched at the sound. Between the bell, the man stumbling into her shop, and now the rain, it was almost an assault to her senses to be within reality and not her own fictional world. Piper's gaze held focused on the large storefront window and the heavy droplets that pounded against it, considering exactly how this would kill the rest of the business for the day, at least until his voice reminded her once more that she wasn't exactly alone.