secondhand love [kaya]

@"Kaya and Gang"

Human garbage and leftovers were always the most interesting things to look at. One could tell almost everything about them by what they threw away, and Yesterday was in dire need to learn what humans were all about.

The first few nights of going through garbage had gotten him some odd looks, but lately the humans authority enforcers, the "police", as they were called, had taken notice and had shooed him away from the dumpsters and garbage cans and all manners of curiousities. That was where he found his first dictionary! And children's picture book and some old technology thing called a 'phone' and... Now where was he supposed to learn things?

Apparently, sometimes humans sold their old things to these places called "secondhand shops" or "consignment stores". Huh, how curious that they thought their old things were sometimes worth currency and sometimes worth just dumping in the trash. Better take a look, though.

So he went to one he found while strolling the other week, peering into the windows first before entering the shop. The walls were lined with items, the tables full while the tables themselves were for sale. Old china dolls and newer looking clothes, paintings of ladies in long dresses and porcelain bowls...

How curious.

@"Kaya and Gang"

Human trash was such an interesting thing. Sometimes people threw away things of great value, and sometimes they thought trash had a lot of value attached. Yesterday had yet to disconcert the difference. He picked up an old fork out of a rusty set of cutlery, wondering who would want to sell this and who would want to purchase it. Certainly metal was precious to humans, but they threw it away often, too.

He continued to dig through the piles of sheer stuff. Various garments, utensils and technology lay scattered about in boxes. He tried some of their technology but found most of it dead, even when he gave it a little boost. Well, perhaps his power source was different from theirs.

Yesterday was just reaching for a book as thick as the width of his hand when he felt a voice. Felt was the correct word for it. He didn't seem to hear it, but felt it more like vibrations through the air. At first he thought it was the owner, but no...

It was a lamp.

But a strange lamp. A lamp with a liquid inside and within that only what his visual analysis could detect was wax. Did humans use light up wax? He approached the lamp and its voice, entirely curious as he leaned down to be eye level with it.

"I didn't know human furniture could speak."

@"Kaya and Gang"

Yesterday blinked curiously at the lamp; it looked to be unplugged, yet the 'voice' vibrated in the air around it. Did nobody else hear it, or did his program pick up the frequency where no human could? Why did the owner not hear?

Fleshlings? Flame and wrath? The light of purity? What was all that supposed to mean?

"Wielder?" He questioned, cocking his head to the side. "Wield a lamp? But a lamp isn't a weapon." Unless it had the cleansing light, apparently. He just had this weird feeling that he shouldn't touch it, and his algorithms were telling him it may or may not be a horrid idea.

@"Kaya and Gang"

The lamp was... Uh...

Yesterday could only watch on, unsure of what he was supposed to be feeling was awe or fear. What were humans supposed to feel right now as they saw an inanimate lamp transform into something else? Lamps weren't supposed to do that, nor were they supposed to speak in such a booming voice. Yesterday technically didn't feel a thing, but he supposed he was supposed to.

Where the heck was the shopkeep?

"Uh..." Well, should he? One white gloved hand reached for the flashlight sitting in the lava lamp's place, only to pause. "This would be no danger to be, would it?"

Better to be safe than blown to smithereens by a shapeshifting lighting fixture. He'd never heard of those before even back home, but humans were odd and their inventions were even more so.