.What we currently know.
Marilyn Balcombe had inherited the shop from her grandparents when they had passed away. It was something the young woman didn’t mind in the least – she had no direction in life and needed to do something to supplement her income. She couldn’t freeload off her parents, as easy as that would be.
The shop itself was quite nice. It was situated within in Durem, not too far from the clock tower that chimed each hour with that deep gong Marilyn had come to live with. The front was stone with great windows, tiny little murals of fantastical beasts etched onto the bottom in white ice. A wooden sign hung from wrought iron was fixed to the shop front, reading “Balcombe Curiosities.” It had been made by her grandfather before the arthritis set in and was a remarkable piece of art, the Balcombe family had always thought.
All in all, it was an ordinary shop. A bit on the grandiose side, but normal. But there would be no story if it was but a normal shop, and Marilyn was soon to discover that what she thought would be a cozy gig would turn into something much harder than that.
The day it happened, it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t storming, there was no thunder or lightning; it wasn’t anything but sunny and bright and cheerful. It was completely ordinary.
She had been cleaning out various boxes, organizing their contents onto shelves within the store and marking prices on their little tags. It was repetitious work, but fairly easy, so Marilyn Balcombe did not mind. That was until she found the rabbit figure.
The figure was one of those objects you would expect to see in an old lady’s house – the kind of ceramic animal that was an off white with ridiculous roses and little swirling patterns on its surface. Yet there was something about it, something that drew Marilyn to the object, made it irresistible to touch.
For a moment, she cradled the rabbit figure in her arms as if she would if it were living before whisking it off under the counter to remove it from the shop floor. It was hers now and no one else’s.
If anyone asked later, Marilyn wouldn’t be able to tell you why she had felt that urge to own the object. She just did. And for that, the object seemed grateful. Although its gratitude was not something it related in the best of ways.
That night, when Marilyn took the rabbit figure home, she set it up on a shelf, ate her dinner, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. That morning, it was gone. Baffled, the young woman began to her search her house, looking for wherever the figure could have disappeared to.
And then, she found it. Sitting right there, cooing in the middle of her floor was a toddler that greatly resembled the ceramic figure, from off white skin to hair the same colour as the swirling patterns to rose clothing. It was the figure. And it was alive.
Marilyn could only stare, shocked.
The toddler stared back, unperturbed.
Marilyn stared some more, jaw dropping.
The toddler cooed, pleased with the attention.
".............Well, s**t."
So, Marilyn submitted to her fate, raising the little rabbit girl on her own. As time passed, she noticed a couple of the people who ventured into her shop seemed, well, drawn to certain items, and each time it was a very different person with a very different item. A couple of the customers came back with children that greatly resembled the item that was originally taken.
It appeared that the shop's strange items called to the buyers more than a strange item caught the attention of an eclectic person.
Marilyn set out to help those Guardians, keeping them sane in an otherwise insane situation. She watched a couple of the children grow, she watched a couple of the parents go crazy with their new burdens...
Then, suddenly, Marilyn left. She took her two curio children and left, leaving the shop, in all of its strange wonder, in the hands of one of the most unwilling parents...Switch Gear.
Now Switch watches over the shop, bewildered as to why the burden was placed on her. It was as unexpected as the time she became the Guardian of a little Mayan boy with a snake attached to his skull. She can only hope to continue on where Marilyn left off, hoping that the woman will one day return.
.Fin.
