Survival Of The Fittest

((Sapphire McLeod continued from Chicken Soup for the Soul))

On a lazy slow Sunday afternoon, watching the groups of families, teens and friends walk around, was Sapphire, sitting in front of a trestle table, covered with a nice silver tablecloth she got from the markets ages ago. On top were her creations, a few necklaces in their brown boxes, earrings hanging from a metal tree that was originally a cupcake stand, wrist bangles in all different colours, a batch of wine rings in purple bags. Each one had its own tag, on one side the price written in red pen, the other having ink stamped on it:

Sapphire McLeod, Jewellery Artist.

Giving a small sigh, she slightly adjusted a box showing an azure and silver beaded bangle before slumping into her camp chair. The mall never was a good place to sell her wares. She usually ended up doing nothing for hours at a time, and even worse was the fact that she needed to pay more than the markets to even set up a stall. Heck, she got more people wanting to buy stuff over the phone than here.

Looking at her watch for what seemed to be the umpteenth time, Sapphire gave a twitch. It seemed almost like time had started to go backwards, like whenever she was stuck in maths. Looking down to her side, she picked up the book she brought along for these emergencies off the top of her toolbox. Flicking through the pages to where the bookmark indicated her position, she started to read.

(Andrea Raymer continued from Flaws)

Andrea was back at the mall, wandering aimlessly and generally wasting her life. Bah. Why the hell was she even here, beyond the simple fact was that she had nothing better to do at the moment?

Then she reached a hand into her pocket and fingered the crumpled mass of bills there. Ah yes, that was why. Oh, sweet disposable income. It had been a good couple of days; she'd managed to make some decent profits and could now proceed to waste said profits with reckless abandon. She didn't like dealing with the Oxy though, even though it had only been a couple of them. Handling that stuff was getting just a wee bit close to that major drug dealer who ends up getting gunned down in an alley sort of thing. She'd read an Apartment 3-G plotline like that a while back. The rest of the meds, they were no real problem. Andrea kept the Wellbutrin for herself though. She'd heard good things about it. It was like some mutant cross between antidepressants and stimulants that gave you some of the benefits of both with without those crappy side effects you got from the SSRIs. But it was supposed to take a while to have any effect, so she was still debating whether to bother with it or not.

Anyway, she had options here. She'd probably head down to the one music store in the mall that hadn't closed down in the last two years and see if anything decent had come in. Spencer's and Hot Topic were starting to bore her, and it's not like she needed any more goofy crap or unlicensed SOTF stuff. The school frowned on those items too, like really "Yargh you wear that again and you'll be facing suspension" frowned, so she couldn't wear it every day anyway. 'Course, she wasn't at school now so Andrea was free to rock the Dante Cooper SOTF T-Shirt because Dante was awesome and had a brilliant gameplan. OK, maybe he wasn't THAT awesome, but what, was she just going to be Steve Digs fan #700,002 or something? Nah. She was a rebel like that. Root for the underdog, Andrea Raymer always said.

And it was so thinking that Andrea passed by Sapphire McLeod's kiosk, ignoring it at first before looking back and confirming that yes, it was that girl from school who did jewelry. The name took another second to come to her, 'cause it's not like the two of them were runners in the same circles or hell, the same galaxies at school. Maybe they'd had a class together or two. Sapphire had her nose buried in a book and gave no intention of having seen Andrea. Well, that would have to be remedied.

"Hey McLeod. Didn't know you sold your stuff here. Actually I didn't know you sold your stuff at all, I uh, actually thought you just did all that jewelry stuff for your own amusement or something. Oooh, jewelry artiste" She put on a bit of a French accent at the end there.

Andrea wasn't trying to mock Sapphire with the way she talked, of course. OK, maybe just a tiny bit. Girl was like, sad and unfriendly and half-autistic. Not literally autistic, no no, just, er, personalityally. Yeah. If she were actually autistic then Andrea would probably feel bad about being well, her style in front of her.

But she might as well check out the wares. Andrea had plenty of areas that needed decorating after all. Five piercings on the left ear (flesh tunnel on the lobe, plus two higher up on the lobe, and the industrial on the helix that took up two more holes), and four on the right (flesh tunnel again, plus one helix, a conch, and her pride and joy, the tragus piercing that had been damn worth the pain). Add the nostril and the tongue and the labret, and you were guaranteed to make metal detectors at the airport a joy to get through. Of course, she still had plans for a couple more. Her lobes were currently up to a 6mm gauge, which wasn't quite adequate, but you couldn't just stretch them out all at once. And she totally wanted a bridge piercing, but that would be really weird and awkward when she was wearing her glasses, so she'd have to think further on that.

She quickly browsed through McLeod's selections. Meh. They were mostly beads and clunky stuff, and like big dangly earrings. She supposed it was decently made (not that Andrea had any real idea on the construction process or anything), but it just was not quite her style. Er, not quite at all. But hey, some of the pieces did have a pretty neat shape to them, and she was looking to replace the metal beads in her tongue with something more colorful, so there was some potential. Eh, but what were the odds that a girl like Sapphire McLeod would be in the business of servicing the alternative jewelry community? Tactful thing would be not to press her about it.

Of course, tact was not a word that found its way into Andrea's vocabulary very often. And hey, she'd be actually helping Sapphire by doing this, opening her up to a whole new clientele that could, like, raise her 2nd quarter profitability by a presumably high percentage.

She turned to Sapphire as she fingered one of the beaded necklaces on display. "You know, some of the beads are pretty neat. You should totally make some barbells out of them, I'd buy a couple." Andrea smiled. "You uh, ever make anything like that, McLeod?" she asked, clicking her tongue piercing against her teeth as she did.

(( Patrick Temple's opening post ))

Wandering about the mall, doing a bit of window shopping, Patrick looked more like a business man than a student, wearing a rather formal outfit, tie and all. He looked somewhat absent minded as he browsed through whatever items were on display in the windows, mentally making a note of which ones would make good presents.

Recently, Patrick's mother had been working overtime, and he and his brother had discussed getting her a present when he last called, though for his sibling it would be slightly difficult what with being in Canada at the moment, so he was left to purchase a gift on his behalf. The issue was deciding what to get, some ideas had been thrown around, but no final decision had been made leaving the choice up to Patrick, a fact that he was more than a little irritated by.

Putting that thought aside, he noticed a table set up, a girl he vaguely recalled seeing before sitting behind it, she may have been in the same school as him, though he wasn't quite sure, he didn't have much use of people at school other than as partners for projects. Shrugging to himself, he approached the table anyways, hoping to find a suitable gift, hopefully at a lower price than the mall stores, while another girl approached the stand, this one also somewhat familiar, but wearing an SOTF shirt, making Patrick groan inwardly.

"You know, some of the beads are pretty neat. You should totally make some barbells out of them, I'd buy a couple. You uh, ever make anything like that, McLeod?" Patrick caught, rolling his eyes a bit out of reflex. Quietly stepping up to the stand he began reading the tags on the various pieces of jewellery, finally having a name to put to the girl running the stand, Sapphire. Trying diligently to ignore both of them, he began fishing in his pocket for his wallet, seeing some rather nice necklaces and earrings that he was seriously considering purchasing.

"Hey, McLeod."

Quickly lowering her book, Sapphire looked up from the chair to see... Andrea?
She gulped.

"Errr... Hey. Umm, yeah, welcome."

Andrea was... alternative. OK, that was putting it nicely. Comparing the two of them together would be like comparing a kitten to a pineapple. Sapphire wore dresses, listened to easy listening music, and went to church on Sundays. Andrea wore ripped black jeans, listened to heavy rock and probably winced at crucifixes like a vampire. That's what she thought in her head anyway, the most contact they had together was probably in a lesson on opposite sides of the room. It took a while for her to accept that the human body could have so many piercings, one of them in a place that she outright knew would have been painful to have. It was almost dissapointing for her that all of them only had metal bars or studs sticking out, giving off a 'don't play with me punk' attitude.

And then she had to wear a SotF t-shirt. Of all the things that she couldn't stand, that excuse of a show ranked near the top. Whoever thought pretending to kidnap a group of students and make them kill each other off was a good idea should be thrown in jail. Dante Cooper, who the hell was he? Keeping her face calm, she silently repeated her mantra in her head.

The customer is always right. The customer is always right. The customer is always right...

"You know, some of the beads are pretty neat. You should totally make some barbells out of them, I'd buy a couple. You uh, ever make anything like that, McLeod?"

Click-click. Almost torn between distaste and a proposal of a new customer, she gave a small twitch as she mentally ran through how on earth a barbell would work if she made one.

"Well, I do take requests. I haven't made anything... like that, but I could see what I could do. I think you'd be stuck with a premade one though, unless you want something unique, in which I'd have to use polymer clay over a plain metal one."

Noticing the man on the other side, she quickly mumbled "Can I help this guy first? Thanks" and slid to the end of the trestle. He seemed kind of familiar, maybe she'd passed him somewhere on the way home to school or seen him around in the mall. Then again, it could be the suit. Maybe she had seen that suit before, and the same hair, tricking her. It was always a possibility. Clearing her throat, she tried to grab the suited mans attention.

"Hi, what are you interested in?"

Andrea hadn't expected Sapphire to actually be willing to make the piece, so it kind of threw her for a loop when she said that she could look into it. Whoa, custom stuff, fan-cy. All the same, she probably charged more for that kind of stuff and Andrea didn't know if she cared about the color of her tongue piercing to that degree. But it was amusing how the girl was obviously totally uncomfortable with Andrea's mere presence, and she couldn't resist sticking around a little while longer.

And Sapphire's quickly excusing herself to talk to the other customer was just the icing on the cake. Seriously, whatever happened to the sanctity of first come, first served? They weren't animals here. The other customer was some weirdo who was walking around the mall in a suit on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe one of those crazy religious guys who dressed up and went to church for six hour sermons. Actually, now that she thought about it she might have seen him around school too...

"Hey, uh, yeah by all means yeah, dude's got a suit on so I'm sure he's important, I'll just wait right down here for ya." She gave Sapphire a sardonic smile and turned to the other customer. "She's all yours, suit guy."

Her piece done for now, Andrea turned her attention to the earrings on display and picked one up at random. It had some blue... thing on it. More stone-like than jewel-like, which she actually preferred. Not that she'd put that on her tongue, if she was gonna use something other than metal it'd be one of the acrylics or whatever. Idly, she fiddled with the stone while waiting for McLeod to finish with other guy. Might as well see how well made this stuff actually was, cause if she was gonna get something made she did NOT want it coming apart in her mouth later on. But seriously, if Sapphire took more than 30 seconds, Andrea was out of there.

"Hey, uh, yeah by all means yeah, dude's got a suit on so I'm sure he's important, I'll just wait right down here for ya."

Despite his best efforts at ignoring the girl, who he was quite certain he had seen at school by this point, he couldn't help but overhear that part. Not everyone who wears a suit is important, some of us just like to appear professional, he found himself thinking quietly, a concept I'm sure is foreign to you. Despite how much he would like to say that, he really didn't have the time to get caught in some pointless argument right now.

"She's all yours, suit guy."

That, however, would not stand. He had no intention of being referred to as ‘suit guy' every time he was addressed here, which he was sure would be more than he wanted, so decided to set the record straight, turning his head to, something starting with an ‘a' he thought. "It's Patrick." He said blandly.

"Hi, what are you interested in?"

Turning his attention now to the girl running the little stand, he thought for a moment. "I'm looking for a matching necklace and earrings, preferably something with green." He said simply, really just wanting to get out of here before someone started asking annoying questions.

Suddenly he cursed inwardly as he remembered he was supposed to be buying something for his brother as well. Glancing around quickly for something he could get for his sibling, he noticed the wrist bangles out of the corner of his eye. "Also, do you have two wrist bangles with green?"

"I'm looking for a matching necklace and earrings, preferably something with green."

"OK Patrick. Green, green, yeah, I've got a few… Here." Pulling out a box from underneath, Sapphire revealed a silver necklace with a jade green shard as a pendant. In a corner, there was a similarly designed stainless surgical steel pair of earrings with the same type of beads. "I like to make my stuff in a set, you know, everything matching. I've got a few others here."

"Also, do you have two wrist bangles with green?"

"Erm, yeah. Most of the stuff is organised, so if you flick a few boxes…" Trying to find two boxes with green stickers on the side, Sapphire picked a few up and gave them to Patrick. "Depends if you want something identical or not, I'm not sure. Feel free to ask for something custom made. Two secs."

Noticing Andrea's impatience, she inwardly groaned before sliding over to the other side of the desk. "OK, if you're interested in something, you can take one of my cards and call me, I'm happy to give a quick quote. That might be best, I'm not 100% sure how to do bell bars, it should be kinda simple though, I reckon."

The suit guy had said his name was Patrick apparently, which probably meant that he was from school since he was acting like he knew her. Well, she couldn't be expected to know EVERYONE'S name at school, even if they did know her. Of course they'd know her, she was boffo famous around school and he was just some guy.

NOTE: Andrea is not actually boffo famous around school. We now return to your regularly scheduled perspective.

"Cool," she muttered. She was still toying with the dangly earring. Experimentally, Andrea gave the stone a tiny little tug, and it held firm. Well, Sapphire's stuff wasn't junk at least.

But speaking of the proprietor, Sapphire was still down dickering with Patrick O'Suity. Bah. Andrea was just about to wander off in pursuit of other things to do when the girl reappeared, probably sensing her impending departure. Sapphire went on to say that Andrea should take her business card, and she probably would. Of course, the odds of her actually calling and getting something made were slim to none, even though the jewelry wasn't showing any signs of being made of cheap crap Chinese materials or anything like that.

Actually, this stuff was put together pretty well, the girl had some pretty decent skills her--

Snap

"gyah!"

Whoops.

Andrea had given the earring just a bit of a harder tug than she should have. To tell the truth, it was really more of a yank than a tug. In any case, the stone came apart in her hand, with the wire bending back and at least part of the clasp breaking.

Hell. "Uhhhh, my mistake." she said, dropping the remains of the earring back onto the stand.

"Depends if you want something identical or not, I'm not sure. Feel free to ask for something custom made. Two secs."

Something custom, well that would be something. Much better than just grabbing something off the shelf, and more personal as well. The only issue could be the price involved, but he could probably over look that, as he had a fair amount of-

Snap

"gyah!"

Turning his head and staring blankly at the girl, Patrick sighed in irritation, mumbling something along the lines of; "And this is why we can't have nice things."
Why did that stupid girl have to do that? Now this was just going to take longer for him. Grumbling to himself, he went back to browsing the wares on display. This was just ridiculous, what kind of moron would pull jewellery so hard that it broke? Oh right, the Survival of the Fittest shirt wearing kind. People like her just made him annoyed, he just wanted to beat the stupid out of them at times, but he wouldn't now. He'd tolerate her, only because

Sapphire's eyes widened as the earring broke, wincing as if she had been hit by a thrown rock. For a few seconds she blanked out, totally unsure of what had happened.

"Uhhhh, my mistake."

Snapping back to reality, she swallowed as all her thoughts came rushing back at the same time, trying to think of what to do.

Should I tell her that she needs to pay for the earring? But then again, it's not that expensive, only six dollars… But now I've got only one earring in a broken pair! I could repair it… could I?

Picking up the remains, she examined the damage and gave a small groan. It was the blue-black rock ones she'd got from the internet, and whilst the stone itself was fine, the metal connectors and clasp were broken beyond her repair. Fixing it would mean she'd need to use the exact same clasp. Normally this would be just a standard thing of using another one from the jar she had, but just last week she'd run out, going on an earring making frenzy. In the end it would be more time than it was worth.

I really shouldn't pressure her or anything… but she did break it… and… oh geez.

"This might sound a bit…" Stopping and trying to think of what to say next, Sapphire shook her head and gave a loud groan. "Ugh, look. I'll sell the pair for six dollars, that's how much it cost to make the thing. Fixing it and making them look identical again would be near impossible, anyway, and it's fifty percent off. I'm making no profit out of this, I can't sell only one earring that doesn't have a pair. And you get a free matching stone with the one earring!"

You break it, you buy it? Oh, perfect. And my chances of her patronage in the future hit zero, just to make everything even more horrible. Why doesn't anything good happen when I sell stuff here?

OK, Andrea didn't WANT to laugh, it wasn't like she'd busted the earring on purpose or anything like that, but she did have to admit that Sapphire's reaction was pretty priceless. And when the girl clearly had no idea how to respond, Andrea couldn't help but break into a smile. But wow, she was actually keeping her cool, AND offering her the earrings at cost? Andrea didn't know if the jeweler was just super-nice or super-repressed or what was going on there.

And the girl obviously knew nothing about making a profit. Andrea sighed and started sifting through her pocket as she spoke.

"Wow, uh seriously? I mean thanks and all, but if you run a business you gotta charge full price, trust me I know from experience on that one. Otherwise you're just, y'know, cutting into your profits and you'll go out of business and wind up homeless in the gutter."

She pulled the always-rumpled stack of bills from her pocket and searched for her good friend Alexander Hamilton amongst the presidents. Wait, Alexander Hamilton wasn't a president. Who the fuck was he, anyway? Well whatever, there he was. She drew the bill out and passed it over to Sapphire.

"I like you, kid. Here, keep ten, I'm rich today."

Yeah, show off your cash Andrea, won't they all think you're SO cool?

And ah yes, there was the other guy from school there too. He'd made some kind of snide remark. Well screw that. Andrea was the only one who could make snide remarks in this joint.

She turned to him, remarking, "And you know dude, you CAN say something to my face if you really feel like, the pressing need to. Like I'm doing. See, it's not that hard." What the hell. Seriously. There was no excuse for wearing a suit on the weekend, and no excuse to grumble about people who actually had IN-DE-PEN-DANT thoughts and stuff like that. He was probably some jerk who just got out of church and decided he'd be all judgmental and stuff.

Stupid judgmental people. Andrea hated them.

(( Sorry about being so late posting. ))

Ugh, look. I'll sell the pair for six dollars, that's how much it cost to make the thing. Fixing it and making them look identical again would be near impossible, anyway, and it's fifty percent off. I'm making no profit out of this, I can't sell only one earring that doesn't have a pair. And you get a free matching stone with the one earring!"

What?
Patrick had to take a moment to think about that one. What horrid business sense, selling at cost? She wasn't exactly losing money, but she wasn't making any either. No wait, if sales taxes weren't included in the price that she had offered, then she was definitely losing money. This woman needed a financial adviser.


"Wow, uh seriously? I mean thanks and all, but if you run a business you gotta charge full price, trust me I know from experience on that one. Otherwise you're just, y'know, cutting into your profits and you'll go out of business and wind up homeless in the gutter."

Wait a minute; did she actually just say something intelligent? Patrick glanced over at Andrea, being genuinely surprised. He supposed that those people that had said something about not judging a book by its cover might have been right after all.
Going back to his own business, he picked up a pair of earrings and inspected them. They were all rather good quality, and he was seriously considering getting something custom made from the girl that ran the stand.

"And you know dude, you CAN say something to my face if you really feel like, the pressing need to. Like I'm doing. See, it's not that hard."

So much for not judging a book by its cover.
Patrick debated a moment whether or not to give her a piece of his mind, but decided to remain civil, for the time being. Sighing, he turned to her, taking a few moments to figure out what to say.

"Alright, I'm sorry; I'm just a little agitated today."

The things he'd do to just get this over with quickly. Well, it couldn't take that much longer, could it?
He really hoped not.

"Wow, uh seriously? I mean thanks and all, but if you run a business you gotta charge full price, trust me I know from experience on that one."

...what?
"Umm..."
Think. Think, activate brain.
"I like you, kid. Here, keep ten, I'm rich today." Wake up, you're getting money. WAKE UP!

Reaching out for the note and grabbing it, she swallowed. "...thanks." Reaching below the counter to get the money tin, she quickly got the key from out of her pocket and reopened it, placing Alexander Hamilton into a modest pile. She re-emerged from underneath, smiling a bit. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she had judged a book by it's cover and gotten it all wrong.

"And you know dude, you CAN say something to my face if you really feel like, the pressing need to. Like I'm doing. See, it's not that hard."

...or maybe Andrea just liked to speak her mind too much. Grabbing the earring and remains of the other pair off the table, Sapphire put them in a black net pouch, a small tag on the top with her details on it. With a small nod she gave it to Andrea. "Here you go. Hope you enjoy."

Sapphire looked down at the other end of the table at the black-suited man. Giving an apologetic look at him as if she was trying to say sorry for Andrea, she opened her mouth. "Have you decided on anything?"

Andrea raised an eybrow when the guy responded. She wasn't really expecting the guy to actually apologize, of all things. He'd totally seemed the confrontational type. Well, no skin off her back, although she certainly wouldn't have minded engaging in some verbal fisticuffs. But you couldn't just start bitching people out unless they were willing to bitch right back at you, that would make you some kind of crazy person. So she just nodded instead.

"Uh, brilliant. No offense taken, I just uh... enjoy the lost art of angry discourse."

Heh. She considered offering the guy some meds that might help out that agitation problem, but that might be pushing things just a little too far. Meanwhile, Sapphire had disappeared under her table and came up with a pouch that presumably contained the earring.

"Hope you enjoy."

Yeeeeah, woo-hoo. Andrea was now in possession of one broken earring and one that she didn't particularly have any use for. Well, it wasn't like she cared about being symmetrical in her fashion choices, so who the hell knew, maybe she could find some use for it. Or she'd toss it in with a whole bunch of other crap in her room somewhere and forget all about it, either way.

"Coolness. Peace out y'all."

The day was still young, she was still rich for the moment, and she figured there had to be some amusement to be gained SOMEWHERE.

(Andrea Raymer continued in Sky's the Limit)

"Uh, brilliant. No offense taken, I just uh... enjoy the lost art of angry discourse."

Inwardly, Patrick decided that he had made the right choice in apologizing. Knowing now her opinion, having made an angry response would have just gotten her to stick around longer, and worse, she probably would have enjoyed it to a degree. Come to think of it, if that was her opinion, she was probably trying to get him riled up for fun. Looks like he hadn't judged her wrong after all.

"Coolness. Peace out y'all."

Patrick watched her leave, feeling quite relieved that was over now, then turned his attention back to the shop-keep… Sapphire was it? She was giving him an apologetic look, well at least she had nothing to do with what had just occurred, and seemed rather polite at that too.

"Have you decided on anything?"

Patrick thought about this question for a minute. "Yes, I'll take this necklace, these earrings, and these two wrist bangles." He said, picking up the four items that had interested him, then remembered he had a question.
"Oh, and you mentioned something about custom items? How much would that cost?" He asked, seriously considering having something custom made.