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Spelke jumped noticibly when the woman approached him. The shop had a mysterious aura that made him jumpier than usual. He reached up to scratch behind his ear nervously and grinned. "Well, actually I was just looking for..um..looking.." he trailed off. His brain prompted him to finnish his sentance and get on with asking for directions to 'that one place where there's a bunch of odd junk and stuff' but something stopped him. Then a familiar silence ringing sound filled his mental ears, and Spelke recognized it as the sound of temporary stupidity. "..uh..sure." he agreed in a small voice and perched gingerly on an expensive looking piece of furniture. Spelke glanced warily behind him, twiddling with the miniature rubix cube on his keychain as if trying to ward off the ominous prescence of whatever was haunting this place.

"Ah..thank you?" Spelke really wasn't sure that anything from somewhere like this was safe to drink, but it definately smelled nice enough, and it would be rude to decline. He accepted the tea even more gingerly, sending some of it spilling over the sides of the cup before he had even touched the handle. He stared at the rapidly forming puddle of brownish liquid in the center of his saucer, more to avoid staring at anything else in the strange and forboding room, as he lifted the cup to take a sip...and choked.

He somehow had the prescence of mind to set the cup on the nearest flat surface, but most of the tea sloshed out of it and onto the floor anyway as Spelke coughed and sputtered, attempting to both swallow the tea and avoid getting any more if it into his lungs at the same time. "Purchase a WHAT?!" he managed to gasp out. Was this lady crazy?

Nix that, she was definitely crazy. Spelke raised an eyebrow, for untrained not-professionals, the best way to deal with crazy people was to stay calm and find an excuse to vacate the area as soon as possible..and then maybe refer her to the nearby mental hospital. A stone-faced war-mask of an expression slid into place over his features and he leaned forwards, resting one elbow on his knee. "You want to sell me a dead thing. Right." he drawled in a smooth Debater's voice. "Well, I'm not too clear on the specifics, but isn't there a law against mistreatment of the dead? I'm not saying your practices are illegal or anything, Miss Reina, but I'd certainly like to ah..look up a few things in the rulebooks first." Spelke stood up slowly, trying not to provoke her by making any sudden movements, and edged away from his seat. He glanced down to check to location of the recently spilled liquid, but there was none. Confused, he looked back up slowly, resisting the urge to start fidgeting with his keychain again.

He broke out into a cold sweat, and muttered something under his breath about not getting arrested if you weren't caught. Okay, so the first excuse hadn't worked. Well, that was okay. The first excuse very rarely worked, and in some cases, there was no such thing as a valid excuse. It crossed his mind that the shopkeeper sounded like one of those sci-fi theorists..like those people who made that Down the Rabbit Hole: What the Bleep Do We Know? movie that was like six hours long and used double-sided discs. He had almost been inclined to believe them until a classmate had pointed out that "Spirit of Romtha" was listed in the credits.

The moment the shopkeeper turned her back, Spelke made a silent mad dash for the door. If he could just get out of here..he hadn't taken four steps when he was stopped by her voice. He froze in place and turned around slowly and calmly, if a bit stiff, ready with some excuse about just wanting to stretch his legs a bit.

The first thing he saw when his eyes cleared was a very small and very work rubix cube on the end of a keychain. The stickers were peeling and the screw protruding from the middle green face square suggested that it had fallen apart and been reassembled many times.

Rawely struggled to make sense of his surroundings. He remembered driving home in the snow..and then.. how had he gotten here? He should be dead! The blood!? His hand flew to the back of his neck to check for a wound but it was gone. How..?

"Er..hi. I'm Spelke." he said tentitively as he moved forwards to greet the new person, unsure what the think of the thick leather collar around his neck. Rawley seemed rather disoriented, which seriously made him wonder about the legality of the whole thing. Still, he had to at least be polite.

"Rawley." he nodded cordially at the introduction, still quite confused. Had he just dreamed the whole thing? Or was he having a lucid dream right now? Deciding to chance it, he asked "Where am I and what happened?"
Spelke only shrugged and glanced pointedly at the shopkeeper lady. He wanted to know what was going on too.

"I am? I mean...I..am." he stuttered. Oh crap! What was he going to do now?! He had school! He had pre-law programs! He also had cube offs and chess teams and the Ren Fair, and all sorts of other things. How the heck was he going to manage taking care of this...person from who knew where with who knew what chemicals running through his blood. Still, it was hardly fair to leave him with the shopkeeper.

"Your cube.." Rawley gestured vaguely, still not as lucid as he could be after the recent return to solid form. He reached for it, holding it carefully at arms length when Spelke did not move away. "Right down. Left left up back down." he mumbled to himself as he fingered the small object. In four turns, the colors were arranged around different colored centers.

Confused and more than a little wary. Spelke pried the miniature Rubik's Cube from Rawley's hands and unhooked it from the keychain. In four more turns, he resolved it.

"Er..right." said Spelke, absentmindedly handing the cube back to Rawley, who proceeded to start rearranging the squares into a complex rainbow pattern, that wasn't quite a rainbow because there was no purple. Well, he was in for it now. With a single-minded determination, he drew a shakey line with the elaborate quil pen, and then signed his name on the line. Spelke's determination turned out to be rather short-lived no matter how single-minded, because as he handed the document back the the shopkeeper, he could already sense the sinking feeling of dread. "Okay buddy, time to go." He growled, grabbing the much bigger Rawely by the elbow (he was still playing with the rubik's cube), intent on leaving the shop (and therefore the shopkeeper) as quickly as possible. Oh what oh what had he gotten himself into now? When they were at least three blocks away in a random direction, Spelke turned back towards campus. "Well buddy, I suppose you and I are roomates now." he said to Rawley, who couldn't seem to decide if he wanted to put the white squares next to the yellow ones or on the ends. "We'd best get acquainted over a game of Chess." For the first time since the night he died, Rawley smiled.