Mark’s first look into what constituted an alien clothing store was fairly surprising.

There were no neat rows of clothing folded onto shelves in a manner that Mark could not duplicate, nor were there hangers or anything else.

It was a fairly small shop, and Mark compared its size to any corner store he had ever been to. It smelled remotely of flowers, as if someone had used a deodorizing spray, and Mark’s feet clacked on the hardwood floors.

Beside the counter and the person staring at him from the other side, the room contained three doors on the opposing wall. One even had a red sign on it, though Mark still couldn’t read the alien script.

The person manning the counter was staring at Mark as if he was some kind of alien. Mark stared back at the strange creature.

They stood about the same height as Mark, an oddity to the human as most creatures had a tendency to either tower above him or to be small enough that he had to look down to make eye contact. The stranger’s skin tone was rather pale and he had long dark hair. The employee seemed overall very human until you saw their eyes.

They did not have human eyes; they were dark and the slight light refraction revealed a form of compound eye.

Mark concluded that they were, in fact, some sort of insect-person. When the human stepped into line, the few people in the store replaced blank staring with frequent glances.

The human wondered if it was his ears that they were staring at; he did not have much of a physiological difference from an elf in his opinion.

Mark leaned to the side to survey the line. There were three people ahead of him and he somewhat recognized the species. An orc, an elf, and one of the blue people with nose ridges.

The person with the nose ridge began speaking with the insect person store owner, and Mark was able to see how a clothing shop in this world actually worked.

He spoke in “I need three buttoned shirts, long sleeves and very light blue. And I need reinforcements around the elbows and collar.”

The insect person nodded, then began weaving their fingers together.

Mark stepped slightly out of line to get a better view of what the shopkeeper was doing, and to his surprise strands of some unknown material began to trail away from his hands as they weaved it into clothing.

He watched the three shirts come into existence, seemingly from nothing in front of his very eyes.

Not an insect person; a spider person. Mark corrected himself, and for a moment he wished that Zirrilit had followed him into the store so that he could have someone to talk with about how weird everything around him was.

The rest of his group was at a restaurant across the street reserving a table, and so he felt even more alone despite all of the strangers around him.

Mark waited in line as the first person had a few shirts tailor made, then someone wanted a pair of pants repaired, and then a third person just wanted to know what the color range was that the spider person had available and stepped off to the side to consider their options.

Finally, it was Mark’s turn, and he came to realize that he had no clue what he should be ordering. There were no menus or helpful diagrams to annotate anything. He suddenly struggled to remember anything that anyone had ever ordered when he was in the front of the line.

He would need shirts too, just like that one guy ahead of him had bought. And pants probably.

Does this place sell shoes or should he continue to wear the cheap cloth footwear he was given at the hospital?

Mark immediately tried to remember what kind of shoes he had ever seen anyone wear and came up blank.

He realized the person behind the counter was staring at them, and that a few people had just stepped into line behind him and were starting to form a line. He began to feel embarrassment as he realized he was now the stereotype of bad customers who were now holding everything up.

“I would like a…” He purposefully dragged his sentence on for a moment to think, when the door opened.

He turned to the right and saw Zirrilit walk into the store, the dragonoid having to hunch over and turn slightly to fit through the door. But when she spotted Mark she hurried in a straight line, shouldering past two people in order to stand adjacent to him.

“One moment,” Mark said to the shopkeeper, “I need to talk with them real quick.”

He then used this opportunity to step out of line, he could chat with Zirrilit and think about what he should be ordering right now.

“Hey, weren’t you at a restaurant or something?” Mark asked, “Did something happen?”

Zirrilit took a moment to look guilty, staring downwards for a moment before answering, “They said it takes awhile for a whole goat to get cooked so I thought I would just wait with you.”

“Ah,” Mark realized that she may have felt more out of place by herself than he did, while together they were people in an alien world. Alone, she didn’t even have a grasp on what a car was.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Did you get your jacket yet?” Zirrilit asked, “You said you were cold and that was why your arm hairs kept being pointy.”

“Oh, ah… I was just about to do that.” Mark lied.

He had completely forgotten and was about to buy a bunch of button up shirts and describe footwear that he had never really thought about in enough detail.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Mark asked, “They gave me a card so we don’t have to pay for it, and they said I could buy whatever I wanted.”

Zirrilit thought for a moment, before shaking her head.

“I already got clothes. I have all three of these suits.” She pulled the brown one piece jumpsuit from her stomach slightly.

“Yeah… You don’t want anything else though? Like-”

Mark tried to think for a moment about what she would actually wear. She didn’t have normal feet, so shoes were out of the picture.

“-you want a hat or something?” Mark finished.

Zirrilit shrugged, before nodding. “Sure… I’ll take a hat.”

“What kind of hat?”

Zirrilit paused to think for a moment, “Can I have one of the ones with the round top and the sides that are all flat around your head?” She motioned some sort of cowboy hat’s brim around her head.

Mark nodded, then got back into line. The distraction had been long enough for him to put together his own shopping list.

A jacket, a few shirts, a few pairs of some type of jean analogue…

He supposed his current outfit would work as gym clothes; in fact, he had used it as gym clothes before.

The line in front of him began to shrink. The same purple haired elf from before had gotten back into line again, this time asking for a few pairs of socks.

He assumed they were just staring at him, elves in his experience stared at him a lot. Mark had been told it was because they were natural researchers and he was a new species. It created some kind of subconscious interest.

An orc was behind him in line, this one notably different from the one before with medium length brown hair combed back. He wondered if orcs were common in this nation.

Eventually, the elf stopped describing their socks and took their new belongings, allowing Mark to move to the front of the line again.

“I would like three white long-sleeved button-down shirts, three pairs of dark colored pants, a dark green jacket, and six pairs of socks… Do you have to look at my foot size?” Mark asked.

“No sir, I think I have a grasp on your body shape.” The insectoid answered, before grabbing a handful of buttons from beneath the counter and setting them in front of Mark.

“Which ones do you want? The larger ones are the options for pants.”

The human fingered through the choices for a moment, pushing back the ones that were brightly colored in favor of some more neutral options.

He handed back a few simple grays and light browns which the spider person pinched up before he began weaving his fingers back and forth.

Now that Mark had a closer look, he came to realize that the strands he was weaving into the clothes did not come from the counter itself or from the person.

He pushed his face closer and watched as threads literally came from nothingness, inches away from the man's fingers thin bits of string would weave themselves into existence.

“So… Are you making cloth out of the air?” Mark wondered. “Just nothingness and then string?”

It seemed like a rather specific blessing to have, though surely a spider god or something would give more sinister blessings? Would the man have a venomous bite too? Or super strength?

Mark paused his thinking to consider how racist he was being, he didn’t even know for a fact that this was a spider person. The only difference between the shopkeeper and a normal human were the black compound eyes and the magic strings. It could be a silk worm-person or something.

“No, I make silk, sir.” The man pulled some of the half finished clothing taut to demonstrate the material to Mark. “It’s strong as steel, sir.”

“Where does the silk come from?” Mark asked next.

“I make it right in front of you, sir,” He answered, “Some people make fire or lasers or ice. I can make silk.”

It made sense to Mark, he had only one final question as the man completed his order.

“I forgot, but my friend wanted a hat with a brim around it. Could you make that too?”

The shopkeep handed Mark his freshly made clothing, though the human did not know how to feel about it being warm.

“Sorry, but I don’t make clothes for deathworlders here.” The man answered.

“What do you mean?” Mark asked. “Just make me a wide brimmed hat.”

“We don’t serve deathworlders here.” They repeated in the same slightly high pitched tone.

“What do you mean you don’t serve deathworlders here?” Mark snapped. “Make the damn hat.”

The man snapped back, “If they want something they can go somewhere else, we don’t serve deathworlders here.”

“Why the fuck not, you racist jackass?”

“I don’t want a bunch of eight foot tall monsters breaking the door every time they try to come in! And what even is a racist? Are you making that up?”

Mark felt himself begin to flush when Zirrilit grabbed his shoulder.

“I uh… don’t really want the hat.” She confessed. “I just said yes because you asked. You don’t have to argue with that guy over it.”

“I’m yelling at the guy because he’s treating you differently because of your species.”

“But I am different from everyone else because of my species.” Zirrilit said, “And I have broken like three doors now when I pushed on them wrong. It makes sense to have a separate place that won’t break so easily, right?”

“I’m not buying this separate but equal shit, they could just make you a hat. If it was some kind of building code violation he would have told us to leave the moment you walked in.” Mark concluded. “He’s just being an asshole. I’m not leaving without that hat.”

Someone seized Mark’s shirt and slammed him backwards into the counter, a green face snarled at him.

“Kid, you and your lizard pet aren’t welcome in here. Grab your bleeding shit and-”

Mark felt that he was oddly calm as he realized what was happening.

One elf in the corner, watching. One large aggressor. One half beast-half person standing within arm’s reach…

“Ooooooooooh,” Mark slipped before catching himself. “I get it.”

It was the fake adventurer’s guild all over again. No one would start physically assaulting a random customer in front of them over something as stupid as the race of the person who the order was for.

“Mark-” Zirrilit asked, “What do you get?”

They were testing him again, that must be it. Some sort of social experiment to see how he reacted to stress.

The orc was threatening him, continuing to scream. His hands were around the human’s collar.

The human’s hand wrapped around his shiny new revolver and jerked as he tried to pull it out of the holster. A green hand restrained his arm as the green giant realized the fight had escalated. The other hand tightened around the human’s neck and he started to panic as he felt himself choking.

A hand seized the orc from behind, and for a moment Zirrilit stood unsure of what she should do. While on one claw she really wanted to just rip the orc’s brains out and be done with it, she also intellectually understood that such actions would complicate the situation moving forward and struggled to come to the proper conclusion.

For a moment Mark struggled to breathe as the orc’s grip loosened, Zirrilit wrapped her claw around the orc’s neck as her nails began to dig into his flesh ever so slightly and the orc stood perfectly still so as to avoid having his neck ripped open.

The elf thought for a moment, recalling proper anti-deathworlder combat training, before pointing a wand at the dragonoid’s back.

“[Blindness].”

Zirrilit flinched as her vision went blank, accidentally slicing inches into the orc’s thick neck.

His grip on Mark’s neck tightened and the human gagged, but the orc’s other hand went to his own neck. Mark freed his revolver from his holster and unloaded into the orc’s stomach until pulling the trigger resulted in nothing but quiet clicks.

The orc dropped Mark and the human stumbled away before falling onto his ass and gasping for air.

Zirrilit hung onto the orc with one claw and scrubbed at her eyes as the orc tried to contain his lifeblood with his hands.

The elf teleported out of the room.

The spider-person used their phone to call for guards.