"This is the place?" Zack asked with a wry curl of his nose as a musk wafted into the otherwise fresh air, "This can't be right..."
"What? No!" Piper said dismissively, "I just... I don't know. Don't you think that place looks... cool?"
There was a poignant silence between the three of them that suggested that her friends did not agree with her, particularly after having been dragged all across town by a hungry, hungry Piper.
"I mean, if you think so." Dakota finally said, "And, you know.. if it means we don't have to eat anymore..."
"Yeah!" Zack caught on surprisingly quickly "I mean, we can totally take a break for a little while, right? It's not like Steak n Shake closes any time soon!"
If Piper noticed what they were up to, she didn't show it. The pretty punk took a few anxious steps forward, and then decidedly less so, as she guided Zack and Dakota across a surprisingly empty street...
The door chime dinged overhead as the three teenagers made their way inside. The stench of dust and musty old everything was even stronger inside than it was out. The lighting was rather dim, and if buzzed a lot more than she guessed it probably should. It went back surprisingly far, offering plenty of floor space for what looked like useless junk, and opened up to a doorway at the very far back that was draped in one of those bead dividers.
It certainly lived up to its name though; Abida's Eclectics was anything if organized. There were shelves upon shelves upon shelves, trinkets and bobbles lined the walls as armoires and dressers and old fat-back TV's and bookcases cluttered the floors. There were old books, a glass case of jewelry, and a not-surprisingly-large collection of those creepy porcelain angels that every insedit old lady seemed to have handy. All of it dusty.
"Oh, customers?" came a cheery tone, "Wait riiight there!"
From behind the beads, a powerful shape emerged from the deeper levels of the store. One draped in fluorescent colors, providing more than an eyeful of oranges, reds, purples and yellows as it made its way through the beads. A large woman finally emerged, with dark—not tanned, but dark—skin from behind the divider, appearing belly-first as she parted the vaguely eastern pattern. She was dressed in a bright orange dress, wrapped in draped in various scarves with a tightly-tied technicolor head wrap. Beneath that, she had thick black hair that fell into ringlets, which fell onto her meaty shoulders and neck.
"I am Abida, and these are my Eclectics." the woman said with a healthy dose of exposition, "What brings the three of you into my little shop, huh?"
"We mostly wanted to take a break from eating." Zack said, before Dakota raised her arm and gave him a swift punch in the shoulder, "OW!"
"I, uh... I really don't know..." Piper blinked, "I just... I just got the feeling that I should come here."
The round woman smiled warmly at the entranced teenager and stepped behind the counter. She propped herself up on her elbows, her belly cutting thickly into the edge of the counter.
"And should we not all follow our feelings?" the roly-poly shopkeep said, still smiling, "You are quite young to be so intuitive. My shop contains many treasures. I believe that, perhaps, you will find something you like. Yes?"
"Hardly." Zack coughed.
"What do you think, guys?" Piper turned back to her friends, "Think we can put our free food extravaganza on hold a little—"
"YES." Dakota and Zack answered in unison.
With that, Piper turned back into the dusty cavernous expanse of Abida's Eclectics. It went back surprisingly far; like a tooth. There were so many cool pieces on the shelves and on the floor... the only question was... where to start?
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