They may have all been our guests for almost a hundred years but they weren't, you know, The Good Folk. The tea shop's far too deep into our iron infested city for them to bother coming near it, even if we are right on the outskirts. I mean, I've seen a few of Them around but they're always in a hurry to leave.
Doesn't make our patrons any less deserving of suspicion and a sharp eye. Whatever they are it isn't human, it isn't fae and none of them react too kindly to the assumption that they're anything less than law abiding senior citizens just having tea and cake with their knitting club thankyouverymuch.
Found that one out when a new girl - Katie or Keelie, some K-ee name - just straight up asked a being known as Mrs Shippendon what she was. She carried on to say "cause you've been here literally since the shop opened and that was ninety something years ago and you clearly haven't aged or died or whatever so are you human or what?" all in a single, courageous and final breath.
She collapsed right after with no answer given, only a rather unimpressed "Oh Dearie." from Mrs Shippendon while the rest of our staff dragged the girl to the break room and called for an ambulance.
It wasn't a heart attack, they said. It was just that her heart had been stopped. Literally. Like a hand had reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart until it no longer had the room to pulsate and caused her body to go straight into shock and then a quick, oxygen deprived death.
They said it would have been painless so we sent Mrs Shippendon an apology card for any distress and a thank you card for not making the poor girl suffer. It wasn't that we believed she did it, it was just that we wanted to be sure she didn't do it again - if it was even her.
There's no way for us to know that doesn't put us all in the firing line.
Doesn't make our patrons any less deserving of suspicion and a sharp eye. Whatever they are it isn't human, it isn't fae and none of them react too kindly to the assumption that they're anything less than law abiding senior citizens just having tea and cake with their knitting club thankyouverymuch.
Found that one out when a new girl - Katie or Keelie, some K-ee name - just straight up asked a being known as Mrs Shippendon what she was. She carried on to say "cause you've been here literally since the shop opened and that was ninety something years ago and you clearly haven't aged or died or whatever so are you human or what?" all in a single, courageous and final breath.
She collapsed right after with no answer given, only a rather unimpressed "Oh Dearie." from Mrs Shippendon while the rest of our staff dragged the girl to the break room and called for an ambulance.
It wasn't a heart attack, they said. It was just that her heart had been stopped. Literally. Like a hand had reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart until it no longer had the room to pulsate and caused her body to go straight into shock and then a quick, oxygen deprived death.
They said it would have been painless so we sent Mrs Shippendon an apology card for any distress and a thank you card for not making the poor girl suffer. It wasn't that we believed she did it, it was just that we wanted to be sure she didn't do it again - if it was even her.
There's no way for us to know that doesn't put us all in the firing line.
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