[The Antoinette] Your Stars Shine On Me

“Did we really have to come here…?”

Vanyan wrung his hands nervously as he followed behind Jin through the section of the city known as ‘The Underground’. The whole area gave him a nervous vibe—well, everywhere outside of his home gave him a nervous vibe, but The Underground more so. Plus, he didn’t really have any interest in the types of shops that were in the area—or at least he assumed he didn’t. He was dragged by Jin—as per usual—because she wanted items to help her in rescuing her fellow selkies.

And if she found something she wanted, Vanyan was going to be the one to foot the bill. As per usual.

“You know what would be great? Temporary invisibility,” Jin said, really talking more so to herself than her companion. “That would make escaping so easy.”

Vanyan nodded absentmindedly—not really paying attention to what Jin was saying. This whole place gave him the creeps, and he was constantly looking over his shoulder. He did feel safer with Jin by his side, but that didn’t exactly make all of his paranoia disappear. He just wanted Jin to get this done and over with so he could go home…

…At least, until he passed by The Antoinette and something caught his eye through the window. He stopped in his tracks, and then tentatively approached the store to get a closer look. Jin nearly didn’t notice at first, but quickly backed up when she realized he wasn’t right behind her.

“What? Something you want?” Jin asked, squinting as she peered through the window herself.

“Um…sort of…” Vanyan muttered as he scratched at the back of his neck. “It’s the telescope over there…I’ve been thinking of getting one.”

“Oh. Let’s go in then!” Jin said as she headed for the door.

“W-we don’t really have to…”

“Too late—I want to go in now, so we’re going in now,” Jin replied—so of course Vanyan couldn’t argue with that. With a sigh, he followed behind her as she stopped at the door, tilting her head at the odd sign.

“Anti-electronic field? What does that mean?”

Vanyan considered for a moment, and then pulled out his cell phone.

“I think it means we better turn these off.”

“Oh,” Jin shrugged and stepped into the shop.

“D-do you not have your cell phone with you…?” Vanyan asked as he followed behind the selkie. “Didn’t I give it to you at home?”

“Yup. Guess I left it there,” Jin muttered, obviously apathetic to the issue of the cell phone as she started glancing over some of the jewelry. Oh it was so shiny…

“You should really keep that with you!” Vanyan replied with a frown. “In case of an emergency or something…”

“I can punch my way out of any sort of emergency,” Jin grunted. Then she pointed at a ring with an aquamarine gem on display. “You should buy me that.”

“Why would I buy you that?” Vanyan asked with a sigh, letting the cell phone issue slide. Jin did whatever she wanted—he knew better than to try and convince her to do anything.

“It’s shiny and reminds me of the ocean,” Jin replied before lifting her head. “You gonna look at your tele-whatever thing or what?”

“O-oh…right…” Vanyan bit his lip as he headed over to the aisle where he saw the telescopes on display. As he said, he was thinking of investing in a telescope—he just wasn’t sure if now was really the time to get one. Plus, if he did decide on getting one, he could just order it off the internet and, you know, not have to interact with a person during the buying process.

Speaking of interacting with a person, he wondered where the owner of the shop was…?

The owner finally made himself known—albeit at kind of an odd distance—and it took Jin a moment to figure out why he seemed to know her.

“Oh! We fought that crazy bitch at the lake together!” Jin said with a big grin when she realized who he was.

Vanyan tilted his head toward her with a raised eyebrow. “When did you get into a fight at the lake…?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jin replied, brushing him off. But of course Vanyan was going to worry about it. Why was Jin getting into fights? Did she start it? How did this shop owner get involved? What did Jin do this time?

Jin tilted her head over toward Vanyan. “He’s interested in buying one of those…uh, things.”

“Telescope, Jin. It’s to look at the stars.”

“Can’t you just go outside and look up?” Jin asked, then she suddenly turned and headed for another aisle. “I’m going to go look at more stuff.”

Of course she didn’t give Vanyan even a second to explain that a telescope was for seeing stars at a drastically closer view. She just left him with the shop owner, who was still keeping a distance away. Vanyan glanced over to him, having not really gotten a good look beforehand. He was so tall—even taller than Jin maybe? But despite the height, Vanyan found something soft in his look—the light skin, freckles, and blonde hair…

He seemed a bit stiff and uncomfortable…which was okay because that made two of them.

“Um…” Vanyan shifted his attention to the telescopes once more—feeling as though he may have stared just a bit too long at the shop owner.

“Well, she’s right, I have been considering investing in a telescope…I just happened to see these as I was passing by…they’re excellent quality…”

Vanyan already found himself wondering where Jin had wandered off to in the store. It has been a while since he had been dragged out of his home and had to, you know, interact with other people who weren’t a crazy selkie lady. Jin come back help me please.

Vanyan’s otherwise anxious expression lit up when Joshua brought down the box with the faint glow.

“Wow, that is…exactly what I need, actually,” Vanyan said as he peered into the box. Then he raised his head with a smile on his face. “I would much prefer to stay at home, so this will be perfect.”

Jin was indeed browsing the shelves with little to no care about Joshua and Vanyan. Rather, her interest laid with the shelves of unique books that Joshua had on display. She started browsing through them—obviously intent on finding specific information in each one. When she did come across what she was looking for, she would let out a low, annoyed growl and put the book back on the shelf—only to go to the next one that caught her interest.

Vanyan overheard her growling and started to get a little worried. “Jin, what are you doing?”

“I was just curious to see what some of these spellbooks had to say about Selkies and our powers.” She held up one of the more ancient spellbooks which appeared to be written in Latin. “They’re all the same though: ‘How to Tame a Selkie into your Personal Slave’ bullshit. Bunch of bastards who wrote these books...”

“Er, I see…” Vanyan murmured nervously. Jin was just going to piss herself off if she kept looking through those books—unless maybe he could get her on another topic. “I…was not aware you could read Latin?”

“What, you can’t?” Jin answered with a shrug as she placed the book back on the shelf and started reaching for another. Crap, he needed a better way to distract her.

“Weren’t you interested in, um, an item that can make you invisible or something?”

Jin stopped reaching then and turned to the two men. “I was, wasn’t I?” Vanyan let out a small sigh of relief at her response. Just like that she no longer cared about the books.

“So, you do have something like that?” Jin asked as she approached Joshua. Her hands rested on her hips as she gave Joshua a quick look over—since she hadn’t really bothered or cared about him until she had to ask him something. “Like a…something that could grant a person temporary invisibility? Because that would be incredibly useful.”

Jin raised an eyebrow as she crossed her arms in front of her. Damnit, she wanted to tower over people and frown down at them in situations like this and it was pissing her off to no end that this guy was actually slightly taller than her.

“’Scuse you—I am saving lives.”

Despite him keeping a smile on his face, the smallest of groans came from Vanyan’s tight-lipped mouth. He knew what was coming: one of Jin’s tangents he had heard many times before.

“I am an anomaly among my kind. I’m huge and aggressive, while most of my kind are rather small and meek—and easily taken advantage of. There are selkies all over the place being abused and forced into slavery because they’re easy targets.”

“She’s a hero among her kind, believe it or not,” Vanyan suddenly interjected. This simple act would hopefully make Jin’s tangent a lot shorter by making her lose her train of thought.

“Er…yeah. What he said,” Jin muttered. When she lowered her voice and her eyes darted away from the two, Vanyan knew he was successful.

“Right, well…long story short: I’m saving them because no one else will. And because I’m big and scary so I might as well make use of it.”

That felt a lot more anticlimactic then she would have liked. She scowled and glared at Vanyan, because she knew it was his fault. Vanyan let out an awkward little laugh in return.

“Right, well…basically she wants to find equipment to make these rescues safer.” Vanyan explained. “Just quickly sneak the selkies and their skin out quickly without anyone getting hurt. Right, Jin?”

“…Sure.” Jin agreed reluctantly. She liked hurting the bastards who kept selkie slaves, but she understood why Vanyan was steering in that direction.