As with the three dresses he’d picked prior, the girl looked the garment up and down, and then returned her stare to someplace that seemed to always be over the shoulder of whomever was speaking to her.
“Yeah, not particularly practical.” The corporal tossed it aside, atop the pile with the others.
“Wasting daylight!” the sergeant called, from his place by the glass-paneled doors of the boutique.
“Nothing in this place is practical,” the dark-haired man said. He’d been looking through rack after rack of gowns, dresses, blouses… all of it frilled, or spangled, or both.
“Then we move on to the next,” the sergeant said, easing the door open, and holding it with his foot, long-arm held at the ready as he scanned up and down the shopping street. “Try to keep under cover to this side. That ash fall doesn’t seem to be letting up.”
“Three or four stores past the corner is a Whimsby’s,” the professor said, pointing. “We’re bound to find something utilitarian for the girl there.”
“That’s why nobody shops at Whimsby’s,” the corporal muttered.
* * *
Three solid hits with the butt of the corporal’s heavy long-arm saw them through the shopfront’s security shutter.
“Huh. No alarm,” he noted.
“No power to the wards,” the professor said.
“Which also means glowstones,” the sergeant grumbled. “Brilliant. Shopping in the dark.”
“They sell handhelds,” the corporal said. “We’ll just grab some at the kiosks.”
The sergeant snorted. “Sounds like you know your way around.”
“I shop for the consumables, not the fashion. Name an outpost that doesn’t have a Whimsby’s.”
The professor nodded. “Fair point. Military pay isn’t all that great.” He managed to catch the handheld glowstone package the corporal tossed perhaps a bit harder than necessary.
“You’ve got a couple of stretches, maximum,” the sergeant said, taking up position just inside the security shutters. “Shopping spree for the little lady, then grab what supplies you think we can carry.”
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