“Seriously, honey, I mean it. You’ve got to learn this stuff. Commit it to memory.” Willow wasn’t losing her patience as much as she was losing her willpower to reiterate that statement even one more time. Since she couldn’t even remember the temp’s name, though, she was of the opinion she couldn’t really get too annoyed about the matter. “It’s not me you’re gonna be confusing and then setting back by putting this stuff in the wrong place,” she pointed out, following the girl around like she had been for the whole shift, putting things where they were meant to be. “Someone will come in looking for henbane and leave with belladonna at this rate...” Which probably meant someone was going to die or there was a black witch in the making about to suffer the backlash from hell. Alternatively, Allegra would just come into work and realise that everything suddenly seemed to be in the wrong place - and Willow was pretty sure her mother had told this girl where everything went.
‘She is still chewing that gum.’
She has been told to get rid of that. Okay - she’d been asked nicely. Twice. If Venus had been there, Willow would have been seriously debating how much they reckoned it would damage her karma to drop something heavy on that girl’s foot right then. Only not a crystal ball because she had conveniently taken herself off on a break after the witch asked her to get the last few out of the back. What was with that?
‘Laziness.’
Other than the obvious. Tucking her fingers into her pockets, she pulled out a single rune from one and turned it over in her hand, absent-mindedly rubbing it with the pad of her thumb while she watched the temp sit herself down in palmistry corner. Or what more or less became the palmistry corner if there was, say, someone like Willow sat there. Advertising it. She didn’t think that girl could read palms for real if one hit her upside the head. And no, she didn’t care if people were staring at her feet; what she was wearing completely counted as shoes. They just lacked soles. Also, shorts were still completely fine to wear as long as you were indoors and, like this Bohinen, stubbornly refused to believe Fall had really started.
‘Willow.’ “Yeah?” ‘She smells highly unfamiliar.’ “No, honey, that’s just her perfu--Uh.” There was a moment of Willow’s brain stalling and her eyes widening as she found herself hugged by a grinning... lunatic and was inexplicably hugging back. “Hi...” No. No, not a lunatic - she knew their names. Was this the chick... faerie... that snowglobed Venus? Was it weird that she seemed kind of squishy and adorable? “Haze, say hello or I sing Britney Spears in my head all evening.”
‘... Hello,’ the familiar managed indignantly, the irritation from that threat showing in a flick of her tail. It didn’t stop her from moving closer.
“You think I’m cool?” Seriously? Willow would not have been surprised if her disbelief showed. Which set of goggles did Star have on? While she was at it, she considered asking who named their child Star, but then who named their eldest Willow Butterfly? Really. “Sorry, you kind of caught me off guard there. Or a lot off guard.”
‘Even though she was warned.’
Haze got a Look that didn’t faze the panther in the slightest. “You are kind of a wow-factor for us at the moment,” she admitted with a flip of one hand. “I’m still kind of surprised Venus’ head didn’t explode.” Or her own. Right now. Were they sure she was the faerie? If not this chick was going to think she was crazy. ‘She does not smell like anything else I have encountered.’ Uh huh, but she had said that about MacDonald’s.