Clothes
A pedestrian swears and the drama rolls by, a scrap of waste paper flattening against your heaving side and then fluttering away as if it was never there. The Jack Russell barges back on to the road, scratching up the side of a sports car, and screams out the window, one paw waving crazily. Your chest heaves and you gulp at the lingering charcoal tyre marks, exactly where you were standing a moment ago. Your side aches from landing so heavily and your tail is twisted beneath your body, though you scramble carefully to your hooves so that you may not give watching bystanders any more of a show than you already have. A dolphin whistles, clicking his beak in amusement.
It is no good wandering around in ill fitting clothes, you decide, staunchly ignoring the leers, which are all too obvious when one is looking for them. Anxiety rocks in your belly. You don’t want to play by the rules but you don’t want to walk around with your wares on show either. Clothes will benefit you either way, you decide with a sick feeling. Are you playing straight into the paws of the show host?
Either way, there is an abundance of shops and, avoiding the street rubbish, you flee across the road, weaving in and out of crawling cars. Though drivers call obscenities and make rude gestures, you make it across the four lane road in one piece and stand panting on the far side next to a building with a bright pink neon sign. It seems to be a club of some kind — The Tail End — but that’s not what you are looking for right now. Clothes, you need clothes. There is a scrappy charity shop with a pea green front a few doors down, slightly out of place but as good as anything else in the near vicinity. The windows are dirty and you approach at a cautious pace, ears drooping apprehensively.
Written by Amethyst Mare on 21 April 2013
