Becca was in a fine mood. Her life hadn't been amazing, but it was enough to make her content lately. She was more at peace than she had been since her husband's death. Living was finally living again, and not living without him.

She was cleaning her shop. So she was uncharacteristically dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers, and a scarf over her hair. There was dust on her cheek, and things piled all over the shop as she gave the place the first thorough cleaning it had gotten since before the funeral. It was long over due.

She was humming along with an Audioslave album as she worked.

(OOC: Tres short, I beg your forgiveness.)

School's out, but Alec Swan is still in town. This is for a number of reasons. The main one - officially - is that airplane tickets are fucking expensive. So the summer is stretching out in front of him, vague and empty. He's more or less been thrown out of the KU labs, mostly because his professors were sick of him. Students are meant to leave at some point, that's the deal.

Deprived of his purpose in life, Alec has taken to wandering the streets of Bayfield.

The shop he's wandered in this just moment looks from the outside like one of your typical incense, prayer beads, and cheap Tibetan jewellery deals. Alec doesn't mind. He likes the musty sandalwood smell of them. He might be a scientist but he's not a skeptic - even has a deck of tarot cards buried somewhere in the bottom of his suitcase.

The inside of the store looks more of less like a tornado hit. The tornado is possibly the jeans and tee-shirt clad woman blasting Audioslave and attacking things with a duster.

"Morning," he says, politely. His eyes dart around the store, like deranged cyan fish.

"Hello." she greets cheerily and then looks away from what she's dusting. "Need any help?" She doesn't know him, he doesn't even look remotely familiar. So she will be friendly and mostly unnish seeming for the time being.

She sets the duster down and adjusts the volume of the cd in case he does in fact need help with anything.

Alec rests his hand on the edge of a shelf and examines a wooden Buddha that happens to be sitting there. He has no idea what he would buy in this store. He's not even really clear on what it's selling.

"Just looking," he says. He's only spoken about three words but it's clear he's not really from around here. But one wouldn't expect him to be. He looks like a student after all, and students come from all over the place. Although mostly from Toronto. But other places too.

Next to the Bhudda is a highly polished peice of quartz, with a bluish tinge. It seems to radiate a sort of cool confidence.

He could be from anywhere, Becca notes. She gets curiousity seekers of all types though. "Okay. Lemme know if you need anything then." she says cheerily and begins to put a freshly dusted shelf back in order.

"Will do," Alec tells her absently. He moves his hand along the shelf, rests on top of a hunk of quartz. He's always been a bit dubious about people who sell quartz. It seems to be a fairly common mineral. It's cool and solid under his hand, though. He likes the feel of it.

Of course, he was always one of those kids with sticky fingers. Their family was poor, and it just came with the territory. Not to say that all poor kids steal stuff, but that was always Di and Alec's method of compensating for the lack of allowance.

But that doesn't mean he'd steal totally unnecessary things from some poor old lady.

He moves along, looking at a display of various floral incenses.

The incense is currently all half off. Becca hates for it to be around long enough to get stale and lose it's potency.

Alec decides maybe he actually would like to buy some incense, and proceeds to pick up each flavour and smell it carefully. It's reasonably cheap and he likes to have some around. It masks the smell of creeping damp in his flat.

Becca's still dusting away happily.

Alec proceeds through the store, checking things out, humming absently along to the music. He manages to aquire a bouquet of incense sticks, and a small charm on a long leather thong.

And perhaps something else has disappeared into his bag. But that would have been an accident, of course. Grad students aren't thieves, of course.

He approaches the counter, giving Becca a toothy but reassuring grin.

She hasn't caugt anything amiss yet. She comes to the counter to ring up the purchases. She's quick and perky as she does.

Alec rummages through his pocket to come up with something resembling an appropriate amount of cash. All his bills are folded up into weird little shapes.

Normally a fan of oragami, Becca makes a great fuss over neatening the cash, and then fronting and facing the bills before tendering the transaction.

"Sorry," Alec says, looking very apologetic. He normally tries to unfold the bills before he hands them over, but the initial folding is compulsive and inevitable.

Since he does actually seem sorry it's quickly forgotten as she gives him his change.

"Thanks," Alec says. He takes his change, and it's all in coins so he doesn't have to worry about folding it.

Becca nods. She hasn't yet caught on that he didn't pay for everything he'll be leaving with.

The clerk seems to be oblvious to the fact a crime has been committed, so Alec bids her a cheerful goodbye, and saunters out of the store as only Alec can saunter.

The shop and it's contents are however riddled with contingencies for just such occaisions. Becca has a do right or pay philosophy. It suffices to say Alec may begin to feel very restless soon for having made his illicit aquistion, no matter how triffling.