It was Friday the end of her first week of work and Leesha had come to several conclusions. First and foremost, pants are in fact amazing, the department store dress code called for pants and a button up long sleeve shirt with a bow tie. And frankly Leesha might never go back, the damned things had pockets!
Less pleasant however was that working for a department store hadn’t proven to be either as lucrative or as enjoyable as she hoped. As the newest employee she was given the dubious honor of covering for other people's time off. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t meant her hours were both erratic and devilishly low.
Ah, and of course the other problem with the job was approaching her checkout register now. An older dwarven woman carrying a bundle of dresses and bags, placed them on a counter with a harumph.
“Well go on then, tally up my order girl.” the old woman said while digging through her purse without bothering to look up at Leesha. To which Leesha gave a bright smile and chirped. “Right away ma’am!” and Dutifully tallied up the old dwarfs order, folded the clothes and set them in a box so they would stay nice and tidy.
“Alright ma’am that will be 15.49” Will that be gold or silver today? To which the old woman sputtered in outraged dwarven and shook her fist at Leesha, as she explained for the fifth time today, that yes that was the actual price, yes prices are set, no she was sure she couldn’t be haggled down, and of course she’d be happy to help carry her packages to her car.
Sighing as she returned to the register Leesha mentally checked her divine blessing of Chronos and grimaced. Five minutes and thirty three seconds…that’s how long that interaction had lasted, and yet it had felt like half an hour.Wasn’t her elven half supposed to blink and see a year go by? Why couldn’t she do that during her shift?
Truth be told most of her customers were quite pleasant so far, the bad ones simply seemed more memorable for some reason. Ah well, she’d grab a bite to eat after her shift ended, that would perk her right up.
As she was contemplating what exactly it was she was going to have for dinner, her coworker Shawna, a fellow half elf but of the human variety, startled her with a pat on the back. Leesha let out a startled croak and jumped slightly, her shoulders tensing before she turned around and regarded shawna cooley, leveling her best put upon glare.
A glare Shawna ignored with a cheeky grin. Her blond curls bounced as she leaned toward Leesha and offered her a card. “You handled that one like an old hand Leesha! You're getting the hang of this. If you ever need to unwind after work, you should check this place out, they are a real hole in the wall, but if you ask for their special swordfish dinner, I think you’ll find it a real treat.”
Blinking owlishly Leesha took the card from Shawna, which contained a simple address and the name “Daves” written in elvish. “Oh, um…thank you Shawna, that’s very kind of you.” Leesha replies and ducks her head politely to her coworker. “I’ll have to go this weekend then, I think I could use a relaxing night out.” Tucking the card into her purse she thanked Shawna again before she was called away by a customer looking for a specific style of shoes. Though she did wonder how Shawna knew that she liked fish.
Turns out penny loafers don’t come with pennies in the shoes, which had confused both the customer who was a delightful young man named Franklin and Leesha herself until they looked up the item in the store's inventory booklet.
That fortunately had taken up the rest of her shift, and after a quick goodbye to Shawna and the other girls Leesha stepped out onto the winter streets of New York city. Snow was piled high along the edges of the road and the sidewalk. The streets were flush with people hurrying from place to place, the sound of engines rumbling in cars, and horses hooves clattering along the paving stones filled the air, and the entire place smelled faintly of garbage. Yet Leesha couldn’t help but give the sight of New York city a wide smile, as she walked with the flow of people down the sidewalk.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
New York was a melting pot of people and cultures, and the sheer variety of species on display was staggering. It was all so different from the elven enclave she had grown up in. There were humans of course, elves and dwarves to a lesser extent, but there were also goblins, orcs, ogres, even the odd planar attuned race here and there. Even centaurs trotting down the road in traffic lanes, alongside nagas while winged races flew overhead in their own traffic lanes.
She wasn’t quite sure what the rules were for fliers, but there did seem to be an order to the people soaring through the skies. Leesha would have to ask at some point she decided as she watched a flock of sprites round a corner above her, their glowing bodies leaving a trail of light behind them.
What was odd though, for all the variety was the lack of magic on display. Despite the crowded streets, the magic had certainly been used to build the city. The only people as far as she could tell using magic were city workers in uniform, or the occasional police officer directing traffic.
Well, Leesha had heard that the state of New York had passed several laws requiring certain licenses to cast in public, and that offensive casting was outright forbidden in everything but cases of self defense.
It had seemed strange at first, to restrict magic like that. But, having grown up in a smaller town and much more rural community she could never have accounted for the sheer press of bodies that would have made casting so impractical.
Not that it would have made the act of casting the spell physically impossible, but even if only one in three people were to do magic it would be chaos at any given moment.
After haggling with a street vendor for a turkey sandwich, Leesha stepped into some unidentifiable brown sludge while walking in the press of bodies she scowled at the ground and resolved herself to see if she could pick up one of the local licenses, if only to get permission to use her portal spell and shorten her commute.
Twenty minutes of walking through slush and snow later her apartment building finally loomed above her, and Leesha let out a sigh of relief, glad to be out of the press of the bodies. Going through the ritual of wiping her feet, and unlocking the front door, locking it behind her and climbing the stairs to the third floor she smiled as she unlocked her own apartment and stared into the single room expanse with a tired smile.
Okay, so it’s not exactly a palatial palace, what with it being only one room, just large enough for her to have a writing desk and a bed with a place to hang her clothes. The walls were horribly thin, and the noise of the street outside could be clearly heard despite the glass in the window. But gosh dang it, it was hers! That counted for something, and it’s not like the building didn't have communal washrooms, kitchen and laundry. All the necessities really, and despite things not perhaps being polished and prim everything was still perfectly functional.
Speaking of, Leesha thought to herself as she pulled out the card for “Daves” and checked the address on it, before going over to her desk and rummaging through the drawers for a moment before pulling up the map she bought of the city. She was still fairly new to town and hse had to actually look up where exactly “Daves” was.
Turns out the restaurant wasn’t more than a couple blocks down from the department store she worked at. Maybe a twenty minute walk from the apartment. Deciding that was pretty reasonable, she rummaged through her hanging clothes and picked out a comfortable navy blue dress that would go well with her tanned skin.
She had a couple hours before evening, and not exactly hungry after her sandwich, Leesha stopped by the wash room to take a bath and drop her enduring enchantments. Letting herself fully relax as her polymorph spell faded into golden glowing ember like motes of mana around her, before being reabsorbed into her mana pool.
The appearance she’d had of a slightly taller woman with high cheekbones, to reveal a shorter Gelf at a height of four foot six inches, with a more heart shaped face. What? Surprised she didn’t go with a full racial transformation?
Well there wasn’t anything wrong with being a goblin/elf hybrid in this day and age, in fact her people were considered some of the biggest movers and shakers of the industrial landscape. Able to source resources from mother nature in a sustainable manner while also being powerhouses of industry. And yes there are of course proponents of keeping the races pure blooded, the mixing of lineages and families has been going on since the early days of the industrial revolution.
No, the real problem was Leesha had run away from her family and was trying not to be found, at least not right away.
She admitted to herself as she looked in the mirror and examined her off white and gray cast skin tone and yellow cat slitted eyes, which on her more heart shaped face made her look slightly more cute than predatory that was the face of her disguise. That a dedicated divination specialist could probably find her in a matter of weeks, or even days if her mother hired a team of them.
Sighing she pushed the thoughts away, for whatever reason her family hadn’t found her yet, either they weren’t looking very hard or they simply didn’t want to find her as much as she didn’t want to be found. Either way she was glad for the reprieve, though not as glad as she was for the hot water of the bath and the soapy bubbles. “Ah indoor plumbing, I have to admit this beats a wood stove bath any day of the week.”
After a perhaps too long soak in the tub and a change into her navy blue dress, she reapplied her enduring enchantment, bringing herself back up to five feet tall, and angling her cheek bones once more with the casual ease of someone who had a great deal of practice. You could say that when it came to certain elements of spellcraft she was the “cat’s pajamas”.
“Alright, let's go check out this restaurant.”