Finding The Five || FNAF Movie

17 || A Trip to Rachel's

"If you could point me in the right direction, that would be great," I ask, and she nods excitedly, her hair bouncing around as she moves. 

"We have a full collection across the store. Tumbled, natural, geodes, cut, whatever you'd like," she offers, and I'm suddenly sure that the accent is German even though it still doesn't quite sound like it. She points as she finishes speaking, and Jonah and I both turn around to look. "Some have small description cards, and our mixed collections have pictures to help you identify them. There is a book to the far right of the wall with an explanation of all gemstones and how they relate to various practices. If you find yourself in need of help, you know my name!" 

"Thank you, Sophia," I say gently, and her heartwarming smile is the last thing I see before she whisks herself away in a cloud of flowing silk and fabric, her shoes making soft clicks along the wood as she walks away. 

Jonah and I turn around and he tentatively leads the way to the other side of the store. Halfway there, we pass Mike and Abby, who are both inspecting a statue of a rabbit that is on one of the center shelves. All the other shelves are parallel to the wall with the entrance on it, but nine short shelves positioned in a three-by-three pattern, are set to be perpendicular to it in spite of their distance away. 

We pass them quietly and when we arrive on the other side, we find shelves mounted to the walls and wooden stands with mixed crystals inside. Each stand is labeled with one of three words: Natural, Tumbled, and Cut. The geodes Sophia mentioned are on the shelves above, along with displays of rocks and explanations of what each form means. Natural being... you know... natural, tumbled being smooth and shiny (made so by a process called "tumbling", or which there is another explanation for, and cut being removed from natural gemstone clusters to remove any bits of rock or other substance that isn't the gemstone itself. Apparently cut can come in "simple", meaning it has just cut away the bare minimum, or "complex", meaning all of the imperfections were cut away.

"This is a lot," Jonah mumbles, and I hum mhm in agreement. He walks over to the book at the end of the display, taking his panicked emotions with him, while I continue reading about the gemstones and their properties. 

"Hello, my name is Sophia!" I hear the shop owner somewhere behind me. "Is there anything I can help you find?"

"What's your favorite thing in here?" Abby asks, and Sophia makes a noise as though she's never quite considered it. I smile to myself, waiting for her answer as I pretend to scan the top of one of the buckets of rocks. 

"Well, I don't think I've ever thought of it," she admits, confirming my assumption, "but if I had to choose something without thinking too terribly long about it, I'd have to say it's the bracelets. We have a display in the back. Any color, any stone, any size. I love them all dearly. Every one is unique in its own way, and once someone purchases it, it's gone. There will never be another like it." 

"Can we go look at them, Mike?" Abby asks. He doesn't respond verbally, but the following events tell me what I need to know. 

"Come on, I'll look at them with you," Sophia says happily, and two pairs of footsteps go running across the store. I smile again, my heart warming at the sound of Abby's gasp. 

A sudden presence behind me spooks my senses and I whirl around quickly. A few feet away, Mike holds his hands up innocently and immediately says, "My bad, I thought you heard me come over." 

I exhale a soft breath and chuckle, "It's alright. Do you want to help me look for gems?" 

"Sure," he agrees, though the look on his face tells me he has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to do. I turn back around, looking up at the gems on the shelf while he picks up one from the bucket. "What exactly are we looking for?" he asks after a moment.