Who: Baba Yaga, off-screen Pscipolnitsa, Zhara [NPC Firebird] & mentions of Andjelijah and Dimitri [Communism]. Closed Narrative. When: Sometime before dawn. Where: Across the street from the empty lot where Lady Midday's shop once stood, somewhere near Central Park. What: A gift.
It started and ended with a haggard sigh.
Baba Yaga eased herself slowly into the welcome discomfort of a bench, on a random side street some thirty minutes (walking) from Central Park. Across the street from this bench were several obscure buildings and an empty lot inbetween them. The lot was fenced off. The earth had been salted. Nothing was to grow there or to be built there; no one knew why, really. Superstitious neighbors nearby would whisper that the ground had been cursed by a witch, that there was once a charming and quaint little shop there, with a yellow brick path leading up to the doorway, and a garden with species that existed no where else. They would say that one day, the shop just disappeared, leveled itself.
Common sense dictated that it might have had faulty foundations, that there might have been some unsound structure within the building to cause it to collapse so. Buildings did not just fall, let alone deconstruct themselves.
Right?
The old woman narrowed her tired eyes, withdrawing a clove cigarette from the folds of her many layers of dress pockets. Despite the heat and the humidity, Baba Yaga always wore many layers. The clove lit itself, and she smoked, slowly, sleepily, watching the empty space across the street, remembering the day she had handed over the keys to what would become Midday's Herbs'n'Things to a very delighted and very excited Lady Midday, who endearingly went by 'Nitsa. 'Nitsa's light eyes had glowed with what she thought might be joy.
Baba Yaga had given the forgotten, obscure and cracking Pscipolnitsa something to do, and for that, Pscipolnitsa was forever grateful to the old death crone, the old Russian witch whose own power existed now in storybooks, on the internet on various literary sites or videos, obscure educational programs on Slavic folklore, and dusty books on mythology few people cared to know. Lady Midday was a selfish creature, and never saw what "underwriting" the shop was doing to her ancient, deadly and lovely friend. It was because of this Baba Yaga would often warn anyone who associated with Lady Midday not to get too close. Baba Yaga smirked, thinking of the endearing way Lady Midday had so frolicked away on some "adventure" with Andjelijah. 'Nitsa was always in it for herself. She would never love. The only love Lady Midday had ever felt was the blissful feeling of breaking a man's neck in the heat of the day. And yet, here Baba Yaga was, doing the demon a great service.
The shop had been charming, changing and shifting its contents depending on who entered. Baba Yaga had made this so in order to let Lady Midday know who was entering her shop, be they immortal, demon, human, or something else. It was an invaluable space, full of odds and ends, and always stocked to the nines with the finest texts on Slavic folklore. Zhara, 'Nitsa's companion, was there not only to entertain Lady Midday and her shop, but also to ensure that the fading monstrosity did not have harm befall her. Baba Yaga always made sure of that.
And then, the shop and Pscipolnitsa with it, had disappeared.
The smell of cloves and magic enveloped the old woman.
Across the street, the soil and remnants of yellow bricks began to shift; the vines that had started claim the remains of a wooden foundation began to slink back into the earth. She sank deeper into the bench, slouching now, and possibly looking thinner, older, her clothes dirtier and her eyes milkier, glazed.
Slowly, slowly, the foundation of Lady Midday's old shop began to rebuild itself.
From there, walls, rafters, ceiling, and the infamous door that was built for someone as petite and darling as Lady Midday herself, built to annoy taller customers and delight Lady Midday with their discomfort.
Shelves and shelves of rare herbs, plants, eggs, remedies. Books, vials, jars, amulets and jewelry, an ever changing menagerie of inanimate objects that once had amazing roles and purposes, and now had been reduced to nothing - unless, of course, the customer knew what they wanted, unless, of course, the customer believed. The Firebrid's old cage, shining and new now, wrought with gold and adorned by opalescent mother-of-pearl chains. Windows with panes made of crystal on the inside, seen only by immortal eyes, and in the garden that flanked the path that lead to the entrance, herbs and flowers that were not native to Manhattan, from lands both familiar and strange, far, far away. The shop was a shining beacon in the darkness of the immortal world, for it could provide them anything they knew, anything they wanted. For humans, it was nothing more than a heavily decorated and strange 'new age shop', full of quack remedies.
Baba Yaga rasped a stream of smoke through her lips, which creased into a thin smile, sending lines into her jowls that she'd forgotten she'd had. If she were to speak now, she would have no voice, but instead the hiss of a dying grandmother, of a beckoning corpse. Her eyes had become glassy and white, no longer kind, no longer anything.
It was done. For a horrible, horrible price.
Struggling, struggling, reaching, Baba Yaga's rawbone hand gripped the back of the bench, the other tossed the clove into the open window of nearby basement apartment. She did not hear the wail of a child within that basement apartment, or smell the licking flames that followed shortly after. Her body trembling, shaking, she rose to an uneasy stand, glancing with wavering eyes down the street. She reluctantly moved from the bench, her body stooped and struggling, her mind's only thought the wish for a cane. Her lips pursed, her mind tired, her whole being flickered. There were slugs that moved faster than Baba Yaga at this moment, as she slowly wove her way through the tapestry of dark streets, seeking shelter from the storm of self-destruction, thinking fleetingly of Dimitri's soup. She felt...