Blake selected Nikki C.’s username.The profile picture displayed a pretty woman in her mid-forties—it listed her as a business owner of a shop called Celestial Gems.On her page, there were several reviews credited to her that had been made in the past couple of years, often for new age shops and local restaurants.He scrolled down the length of the page until he reached the review mentioning the merman.It was clear that this Nikki C.knew more and Blake opened up Google Maps to bring up her storefront.
Celestial Gems was a new age boutique in a strip mall a couple minutes down the road from Water Zone.A picture on Yelp Reviews displayed a small group of people standing outside the shop, labeled withFamily Owned and Operated Since 1996.His glance faltered over the face of a young person in the photo.
Is that Ryan’s datemate?Blake wondered.The picture was several years old, and he’d never met the person in question, but their resemblance to the photos on Ryan’s bedroom wall was striking.Blake stood up, heading towards his roommate’s open door.
Inside, Ryan kept his room simple and orderly.The only furniture was an IKEA bed and a desk with a small radio on top.On the wall, a few motorcycle and band posters bordered a cork board covered with memorabilia from Ryan’s youth.Blake approached it, scanning the photos, and a familiar countenance leapt out at him at once.
Blake held his phone up and compared the pictures.The young person was almost identical—mismatched orange horns and grey face paint aside.Careful not to damage it, he unpinned the photo from the board and flipped it over:Ryan & Celeste Halloween 2013was scrawled on the back in neat cursive.
Blake put the photo back and opened up Instagram on his phone, navigating to his roommate’s account.The first post was a blurry selfie of Ryan and his datemate, taken during the fireworks display at the State Fair a week earlier.They were crowded around a cinnamon roll the size of a baby’s head—Celeste looked beatific, but Ryan’s smile was withdrawn.
“Best cinnamon roll of my life at #CalExpo with the SO”the caption read.
“omg at least tag me, you loser!!!!”was the first and only reply.Blake clicked on the username and was met with an Instagram page full of crystals, tarot card spreads, and heavily-edited selfies of the same person in Ryan’s picture.
Without wasting time, Blake clicked ‘message’ and typed out: “Hey, my name is Blake.I’m your boyfriend’s roommate.This is going to sound really weird, but what do you know about the merman at the water park?”
3
Celestial Gems had a cluttered storefront wedged between a poke bowl shop and health food store.The shop window was decorated with a display featuring crystal balls, bushels of herbs, and Chinese fortune shakers.A poster on the door boasted of aura cleansing, tarot reading, and palmistry.Blake understood approximately none of it.
He arrived right before closing and was enveloped in a wall of smoky incense the moment he crossed the threshold.The only people in the store were a couple of middle-aged women perusing the shelves of gems and a chipper-looking goth teenager sitting behind the counter, scrolling on their phone.The name tag affixed to their shirt informed him that their name was Goose and their pronouns were they/them.
As soon as Goose spotted Blake, they set their phone down to greet him, grinning a mouthful of braces in his direction.“Hi there, what can I do for you today?
“Uh, hi,” Blake returned, awkward.“I had a meeting with Celeste for seven-thirty?”
“Ooh, are you Blake DeLuca?”Goose asked, checking a little datebook on the counter.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he nodded, shifting his weight from foot to foot.These kinds of new age-y shops tended to freak him out a little.
“Cool, cool.”Goose reached for a pen, scribbling something in the datebook.“They should be right out.”They nodded, hitching a finger over their shoulder at the back of the shop.Several doors branched off of a small hallway, at the end of which was a Victorian loveseat.“They’re finishing up with another client.You can wait on the couch if you want.”
Blake nodded in thanks and rounded the counter, plopping down onto the loveseat in the back.There were several magazines laid out on a coffee table in front of it, but he ignored them in favor of his phone.
Since he’d contacted Celeste, he’d done as much research into “pygmalion” as possible.The only results were a Greek myth about a statue and a production of a play listed on YouTube as “Pygmalion Slime Tutorial Definitely Not a Bootleg”.
In addition to this, there was a scant amount of relevant information he’d been able to come across.One was a description of a GeoCities page that talked about “pygmalions, egregores, and memetic ghosts,” but the hyperlink was broken.There was also a long-abandoned forum discussion about an early episode of a recently-cancelled CW show where a moderator had mentioned the term.
One of the doors opened and an older woman stepped out, thanking whoever else was within.She smiled at Blake, tears glittering in her eyes, and headed to the counter to pay for her session.Celeste stepped out from behind her, leaning against the doorframe—as an adult, they looked less dorky than in the photos on Ryan’s cork board and much more congruent with their Instagram selfies, despite the heavy editing.
“Blake DeLuca?”Celeste asked, picking at the hem of their tartan skirt and pointing over at him.
“Yeah,” he said.“Thanks for seeing me.”
“No problem,” Celeste responded, beckoning him into the room with a swoop of an oversized stripy sleeve.“I’m Celeste Chenette.My pronouns are they/them.Come on in.”
“Cool.Mine are he/him,” Blake said, following Celeste into the little room.It looked normal enough: there was a hanging wicker chair on one side of a coffee table and a pair of aging armchairs on the other.Several crystals were laid out on the table alongside a pack of tarot cards and a handful of other items that Blake had no name for.A Himalayan salt lamp provided the room with a calming saline scent and a rosy glow.
“So,” Celeste started, curling up catlike in the hanging chair and gesturing for Blake to sit.“The merman at the water park talked to you, huh?”
“Is this a common occurrence?”Blake asked, settling down on one of the recliners.Celeste shrugged, sighed, and then shook their head.
“Depends on who you ask,” they said, continuing to fiddle with their clothes.“People who are sensitive to this sort of stuff—like my family and I—experience weird things like that all the time.Pygmalions, ghosts, possessed teapots—all sorts of fun things.”
“What do you mean by ‘sensitive’ and ‘things like that’?”Blake asked, scrunching his nose.He wasn’t a fan of when people beat around the bush.“And what exactly is a ‘pygmalion’ anyway?”
“Sensitives, psychics, mediums, people with particularly good intuition,” Celeste rattled off, checking their manicure in the low light of the salt lamp.They paused, glancing over their cat-eye frames with sharp, dark eyes.“I’m sure you’ve had other experiences in the past?”
