"Oof", Weaver sits down heavily on the chair after closing the shop early. The central air conditioning for the building her shop is in has not been behaving itself and the weather has chosen an unfortunate time to reveal this situational weakness. Unseasonably high temperatures all week resulted in every merchant in the building experiencing unpleasantly warm temperatures as the majority of its windows face the sun close to from dawn to dusk.
On this particular day, hot and muggy enough to suggest the possibility of a thunderstorm, it just became too unpleasant in the shop to allow customers in. Conversation between merchants in the morning had revealed that the landlord was aware of the problem and was sourcing a solution. This combined with the weather report for the upcoming long weekend which promised a cooling to more reasonable springtime temperatures, boded well for when the summer actually started. Buying the building owners some time before the truly hot season started.
For this day, however, there was to be no respite until well after sunset and each extra body in the building added degrees to the overall radiant heat. It is unpleasant enough out there to discourage most locals, accustomed to a normally cooler Temperate Rainforest clime, to avoid going outside. The town that the shop was in had qualified for small city status not too many years back and it boasted two unique features. The first was the highest number of inhabitants with some form of breathing troubles in the whole Province and, for second, was the cause of said unusually common respiratory issues.
The mountains that surround the city have trace quantities of platinum in their makeup ... not enough to make trying to retrieve it a worthwhile venture but definitely more than enough to enter into a chemical reaction with the UV radiation of a cloudless day and the pollution that the prevailing winds gathered from all around and dropped atop the place where the mountains bottleneck the air currents. The end result of the mixing of all these elements was a phenomenon known as white haze. Essentially a form of acidic air that attacked the lungs of those who breathed it regularly on those hot, sunny days without a cloud in the sky.
Locals who know better tend to take refuge indoors to escape the unpleasant sensation that gradually builds in the ribcage and chest when the sky goes hazy and the mountain it originates from are obscured. Therefore, there were not a lot of people to be found in the whole mall.
"It's better that folk aren't here today anyhow, " She inclines her head in the direction of the bright spark of energy that has been hiding sullenly under the big table all day. "Between the fellows coming to install the shelves this morning and the high temperatures the rest of the day, it would have been unwise to allow others in for long." She brightened at the mention of the shelving.
Weaver has been waiting for nearly a month to finally get these shelves hung so that she could properly display more stock than the current floorspace allowed. Three burly men were finally secured to come and get it all hung in the one go and she could not be more pleased ... especially in the Parlour which has rapidly gone from a cold, sterile space to something far calmer. A beanbag chair and muted lighting rounded out the room so far, but its development had stalled as the lack of space meant that boxes began to accumulate and they were temporarily put in there to keep them from becoming an eyesore to the customers.
Now that the shelving was hung, she would be able to get everything out of the boxes and up on display. The Parlour could finish being built. This thought put Weaver into a good mood and she couldn't help singing along with the music in her headset as she bumbled her way through the shop cleaning and getting everything ready for the morrow.
For its part, Spark did its best to ignore the disruptions unless one of the workers came to close to its hunting spot of the day ... the big game table had been the source of much merriment just the night before as five brave souls had gathered to partake of dice rolling adventure. A session zero that set the stage for an ongoing, weekly game that had the group rolling with laughter and glee from the get go.
Incorporeal tail lashing eagerly from side to side, it prowled through the energetic imprints that had not yet faded.
The flashing flit of fairy wings, the cold iron of restraining chains, the lingering call of an elk, terrified screams mingled with the angry roar of a yak ... all the slowly fading etheric imprints were fair game in its mind except one. The dark shade that moved in flashes of colourful silks and luxurious furs. A single dark gloved hand and an emanation of evil that the creature did its best to avoid. There was something in the nature of this echo of an NPC that suggested that it would not simply play nice and allow itself to be eaten.
Spark snorted in that one's direction - yesss, much better to leave that shade be.
At least, for now ...
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