[I can see why Sakura likes it here.]
I watch as she runs up and down the aisles while calling for her father.
"DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY!"
"Yes, I can hear you." Jacques walks out from the back with a happy, if tired, expression. "What are you doing here?"
"We came here to buy some potions!"
"We?" He looks at the doorway and sees both Josh and I standing there. "Oh, it's you two."
The small smile on his face falls into a frown.
"Hello." I smile and wave.
[I'd like it if he didn't hate me, but I don't think this will be a relationship I can repair. I'll just try to be nice from here on out.]
"We need some potions to help us if something happens while we're in the woods," Sakura explains.
"You know I hate that you go there. It's not safe."
"But I have a guardian angel!"
"Yes, yes. I know. You're protected. What would you want help with?"
[I've always wondered how she explained to her father that she was going into the forest. The guardian angel thing isn't untrue, but I don't know if it makes him feel any better. If anything, I'd say he thinks it's just part of her imagination.]
"I wanna run really, really fast and be super strong and be invisible and fly and see through walls and grow a tail and have really hard skin and, and…." Sakura says as she jumps up and down.
"Well, we have potions that can do all of those things. Would you like each individually or some combinations?"
[What? Potions can do all that?]
I vaguely remember a book on potions that the kid read, but it didn't talk about anything like this. A least, I don't think it did. Having some invisibility potions with us should make our time in the forest much safer. I decide to have to look around.
I ignore the conversation between Sakura and her father as I wander around the store. While the store looks like a chaotic light show neatly packaged into weird bottles, everything is pretty well organized. Each bottle is labeled with its name and a short explanation of what it does. There are sections broken down into different effects like enhancement, modification, status effects, healing, stat boost, transformation, and attunement. These categories comprise most of the shelves in the building. I walk over to the enhancement section and look over the labels.
"Strength enhancement: temporarily increase strength by one hundred points."
"Speed enhancement: temporarily increase endurance and agility by fifty points."
"Awareness enhancement: temporarily increase perception by eighty points."
"Why does the speed potion increase both agility and endurance?" I ask no one in particular.
"We get that question a lot."
"Ahh!" I turn around and find Sakura standing directly behind me. "When did you get here?"
"You were looking at all the potions, and I thought I'd answer any of your questions."
"Oh… thanks. Yeah, I was wondering about the speed potion."
"Making your agility higher without increasing your endurance will make you get tired really fast."
[If you drastically increase your speed without increasing your endurance, you won't be able to run for very long. Most people who would buy this potion will use it to run away from an enemy they can't beat or try to beat an enemy stronger than them. If someone with an average of thirty points in each stat suddenly had their agility increase by fifty points, they would only be able to run or fight for a couple of minutes at most. By increasing both agility and endurance, we can get all of the benefits without any of the downsides.]
"That makes sense. What would you recommend?"
"This one is good," she says as she points to a tall thin bottle. It contains a turquoise-colored liquid with some odd-looking precipitate floating around inside. "The combination of invisibility and Soft Walk is really good. A lot of monsters use their hearing, and the Soft Walk spell makes you move silently, so it works really well."
"Okay, let's each get one of these. How much are they?"
"I don't know, let me ask. DADDY!"
"Yes, sweetheart." The frayed shop owner walks up behind his daughter.
"How much are the Ghost Walk potions?"
"Those are pretty expensive. It's two hundred and fifty Denarii per bottle, and they can only be used once. The ingredients to make them are expensive, and it only lasts for about ten minutes; maybe you should look for something else?"
Sakura looks up at her father with big puppy dog eyes. I think I can even see her protruding bottom lip quiver. The emotion slides off his face as he looks into his daughter's eyes. I can almost feel his heartbreak in real time.
[She's a demon!]
"Alright, I'll sell them to you for just the price of the materials. I make it two–"
Sakura's eyes grow even bigger.
"I mean one fifty, each."
"Yay! Thank you, daddy!" Sakura jumps up and wraps her arms around her emotionally exploited father. "We also need some speed, healing, and stamina potions."
It's just a second, but I swear I see a tear forming at the corner of one of his eyes.
"Okay... I'll see what I can do."
"You're the best, daddy!" Sakura grabs Jacques's hand and drags him around the store. Having nothing else to do, I continue browsing the selection of potions. The phrase "Stat Boost" catches my eye. There is a whole shelf full of stat-boosting potions.
[Are these permanent or temporary boosts? I'll have to look into it later.]
I also find Josh wandering around, so I start a conversation with him.
"What are you looking at?"
"The potions. They don't look very organized, so I was thinking about how to organize them."
[Introverted Sensing is an information organization function, so it makes sense that he's thinking about something like this. I should ask him to organize the den next time we're there.]
"They're all organized by their function. How would you do it differently?"
"Each section isn't organized. He could put similar colors together or go by letters."
"Is it bothering you?"
"Yes, but my mom said not to touch other people's things without asking."
"That's good advice. Maybe you could talk to Sakura about it. She could bring it up to her father."
"Okay." I feel satisfied with our little back and forth, so I go looking for Sakura. I find her at the counter with a big box of potions.
[So much for having money. I'll have to ask Inari to bring us to a big patch of Punctastars next time we see her.]
"How much for the potions?" I ask the excited little girl.