The witchy lady gives us some more things to add to our pile of massage stuff before we stop at the huge collection of different kinds of massage oils. Veritably an entire treasure trove of scented liquids and gels.

“Uhm…. Which ones of these would you recommend?” I asked our witchy guide.

“What is your girlfriend like?” She asked back.

“Well… she’s sportsy and swings between the cute and cool axis quite a lot.”

“And she’s very family oriented too!” Ria added.

The lady chuckled. “And you don’t really know what kind of scents she likes?”

“Hmmm, I just know that she prefers more ‘fresh’ perfumes, if that makes sense. If you compare it to Ria who prefers very sweet smelling perfumes.”

“I do like very sweet things.” Ria nodded.

“Alright, I think I know what you mean.” She chuckled and gave us a couple of bottles. “I’d start with these. And perhaps afterwards you can bring her along so you can each choose your own favorite oils.”

“Cool. We will definitely do so.” I said with my arms full of massage essentials. This was going to cost quite a bit of money from the looks of it, something a mere mortal would definitely need to think twice about. But then again, since the store looks to be doing rather well, it seems that people definitely find it worth it.

“Would you like to have help picking out something else, or would this be all?” The lady asked. There still was no one else in the store so we had her undivided attention.

“Ria?” I mostly looked at Ria to do the shopping.

“Maybe some of those candles we spoke about earlier?”

“Splendid.” The lady clapped her hands with a smile. “Follow me.”

“Yes!” Ria followed the lady with a smile, while I walked after both of them.

The lady of the store and Ria had a quite lengthy conversation about the different candles, and while the conversation was going on, we learned the lady’s name was Willow Alden. A name that fits her surprisingly well in my opinion. A witchy name for a witchy lady who runs a store that doesn’t look or sound witchy at a first glance, but still is relatively witch-related once you think about it.

It definitely made me wonder, would she be a ‘real’ witch? Not real as in, wicca and the entire very real witch culture which she looks to be a part off, but real as in, magic and stuff. If vampires were a thing, I would even say magical witchcraft would be way more likely to be real than that… I wonder if any of our vampiric friends have done any research about it.

Ria chose a couple of sets of scented candles to take with us, together with some fragrance spreaders for throughout my house. It looks like we would become regular customers in the near future, purely to maintain the supplies for all the things she bought. Not that I minded, the scents she’d picked sounded interesting to me and a house that smells good is a lot more fun to live in, after all.

“Will you be able to carry this all by yourself, or do I need to let it get delivered to your home?” Willow asked after she had bagged all our purchases.

“It’s fine, I’m strong so I can carry it no problem.” I smiled back.

Ria took one of the smaller bags for herself so I didn’t need to carry everything either.

“Alright, if you have any questions…”

“Yes, I know, the handy-dandy website.”

“Exactly.” She gave me a thumbs up. “Thank you a lot for your patronage and have a nice end of the year.”

“You too!” Ria and I said together as we took our newly acquired stuff through the door and into the distinctly different smelling cold air.

“This stuff is definitely going to bring a new wind to my house.”

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“Hehe.” Ria giggled. “Do you think Shima will like it too?”

“I’m sure. At least everything is cat-safe according to Miss Alden so I doubt she’ll have any issues with it.”

Ria nodded as we both started walking, this time into a different direction from where we came, we would just loop around so we didn’t see the same scenery twice. “Didn’t you think that lady seemed quite a lot like a witch?”

I started laughing. “Ah, so you were thinking the same?”

Ria smiled and nodded again. “I really liked the way she looked and I also liked that she was so open-minded about our relationship with Em.”

“Mhmm. That’s true. I definitely wouldn’t tell that to anyone, though.”

“I know, but I felt very at ease with her from the start.”

I nodded back. “I know what you mean. Maybe she is in fact a magical witch.”

“You think so?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? I was thinking about this earlier, but if vampires like me exist, why wouldn’t witches? Take Em, for example, we both know she’s a little demonette in disguise. And you are our cute and extremely sweet angel. At least when you aren’t being a bit bratty.”

Ria giggled. “Maybe Em is the angel, and I’m the smol demon instead.”

“Hmmm…. Maybe a bit of a cheeky goblin.”

“I don’t want to be a goblin, though.” She pouted.

“Hey, goblins can be cute. Don’t you know this vtuber? Of all people I would expect to know, you’d be the one. What’s her name? Syrup goblin or something like that?”

“Yeah… it is…” Ria continued to pout. “I guess she is kinda cute… But I still prefer angels and demons.”

“Well, then you maybe shouldn’t act like a smol naughty goblin then.” I booped her on the nose.

She then quickly snatched it with her mittens. “That tickles.”

“Hehe. Serves you right!”

Ria bumped into me which just made me laugh and that quickly led to her starting to laugh as well.

“Aight, let’s go home to go and set up these fragrance spreaders.” While I said that as a co-operative venture, in reality it would be mostly Ria doing the set-up work and me just helping her. But I didn’t mind since I’m pretty good at playing the support.

“Oki!”

This time we didn’t take a detour going home apart from the new route we had decided on. It wasn’t the most handy thing in the world to walk through a shopping street with shopping bags filled to the brim with stuff. On top of that, while I would presumably quite easily catch a pickpocket, I didn’t want to break anything I was carrying either.

So with that in mind, we arrived home at just after noon. I put the bags safe and sound on the table and started to undress out of my jacket.

“Rora, I’m not hungry yet, so I’ll go set up the spreaders.”

“Don’t want me to help?”

“Hmmm, I can do it myself, don’t worry. You can take it easy, you carried most of the bags, after all.”

“Alright, I smiled. Then I’ll take something to drink, I’ll pour you some water too for if you get thirsty.”

“Thanks!” She threw her jacket on the coat rack, quickly took out her shoes, and then searched through the bags for the multiple spreaders. When she had found two of them, she started walking around, trying to figure out where to put them best.

In the meantime, I was pouring myself a glass of red stuff and a glass of water for my girlfriend as well.

Ria quickly went in and out of the tearoom and was already a spreader lighter, dumping the now empty box on the table. She then hopped and skipped into the door leading to the basement and disappeared in it for a minute or two before she came back with another empty box. She came out shaking a bit.

“Brrr, it’s really cold downstairs.” She tried to warm herself by rubbing her arms.

“Yeah, I turned off the heating there because I didn’t want to waste any energy. Want something warm to drink instead of some water?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.” Ria then ruffled around some more as took the next couple of spreaders. “I’ll put most of them upstairs, since there’s the most living space.”

“Makes sense.” I smiled at my girlfriend and gave her a happy nod while I drank from my glass.

Ria smiled back and then ran upstairs with the two boxes in her hand.

“Oh, hi Shima!” I heard her call from upstairs, as the tippy tapping of my cat's paws betrayed that our cat had passed her and was heading downstairs. She swiftly hopped on the table to look at the new things we bought.

“Don’t you wanna go and look for good places to put these, Shima?” I chuckled and gave my cat a good old pat on the head. “And make sure she doesn’t go int~.... Oh, crap.” I immediately put down my glass on the table and ran upstairs after my girlfriend. There was a non-zero chance that she would go into the room we hid her computer in to put a fragrance spreader down and I wasn’t about to let the surprise be spoiled so close to the actual reveal.

“Rora, what’s wrong?” Ria was staring at me as I arrived at the landing, she was still carrying both boxes.

“Ah, nothing…. Uh, I was just thinking, maybe we should… look for spots together.”

Ria tilted her head and squinted, the darn cuteness almost taking me off my game. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I was just thinking, if I need to refill them, it would be best that I know where you placed them so I don’t need to search for them, you know.”

“Oh… I guess you could just ask me too, but that makes sense.” She smiled and gave me an enthusiastic nod, extending her hand to give me one of the spreaders.

-Good job brain, that was a really good excuse, I probably wouldn’t have thought of that myself.-