Rarities (could be changed)

- Prologue -

It was exactly the kind of place that you could easily ignore, eyes jumping from either side to the next without processing that the cramped shop existed at all.  This was how most people viewed (or, rather, didn’t view) it, and that was just how it was meant to be.  Far from grandiose, it squeezed in between the large, clean, impressive buildings on either side, practically eclipsed by the boastful retail that plagued its surroundings.  In contrast to the other stores, the little place sported grey-blue paint, which had chipped away in places to show the crumbling brick underneath.  It was simply called Rarities.  The name was written on a fading plank, in gold and red, hung crookedly by chains over the sidewalk.

Rarities was aptly named, filled with every sort of strange, old trinket that could be imagined.  Carousel music boxes sat on grand pianos with only black keys, while stained glass butterflies with no glass flew overhead.  An old wooden rocking horse with only one eye and a saddle with no stuffing stared morosely at a bird cage with no bird, and a skull with silver eyes.  It was the congregation of the broken, the overused, and the forgotten; each new bauble resigned to a fate of dust-coated loneliness.  And none was more entitled to join than the sagging owner, whose name had been lost long ago, tucked into one of the corners of the decaying shop he called home.

While the tortured crowd passed by, the shop waited in the solitude of uniqueness for the day when its doors were opened once again.