Juniper woke up. Well, ‘woke up’ would be a strong word. It was more along the lines of ‘Juniper was no longer sleeping’. Awake, but not fully cognizant of her surroundings. At least it was better than her first year living in town, sleeping in the guest room of Arca's house above the store. More specifically, directly above his lab. Getting her own apartment did wonders for her sleep and sanity.
But today was just one of those days where she didn’t fully wake up. She trotted to the kitchen and prepared herself a breakfast of oatmeal and daisies before trudging off to the store on autopilot. As she marched through the streets of the little hamlet towards the single building distanced from all the others on the street, she groggily shook herself out of her mental slumber enough to remember how to climb the steps on the porch. She slogged her way inside, put on her happy customer service face, and sat behind the counter.
It was about twenty minutes until the door swung open, the jingling of bells snapping Juniper awake again. The first customer of the day trotted in, hesitantly. “Um, hi, I came here for a potion of… oh. I… I must have the wrong store. So sorry!” the cream colored stallion left before Juniper could respond.
“Wait, what are you talking about? This is Alchemiracles, and… uh…” Juniper looked around the store for the first time that day, her mind finally awake enough to process the near-daily puzzle of ‘what is out of place?’ Today, the answer was sofas. Dozens of sofas of different colors and styles, all stacked in such a way they not only wouldn't fall over, but also replaced all the shelves. Potions were even resting atop the multitude of cushions, labeled with price tags and all. “...And this is new.”
“Good morning, Juniper!” a cheerful Arca bounced out of the back room with several colorful potions in his grasp, setting them on the plush ‘shelves’ according to potion type and dosage. “how are you today?”
“Boss… dare I ask about… this?” She gestured to the surrounding furniture.
“Sure, go ahead. No dumb questions here. Well, except when the customers ask them. Seriously, who can't eyeball the difference between a 10 milliliter and a 12 milliliter dose? Blind fools…”
Juniper decided not to point out that she couldn't do that either, and pressed on. “The sofas, boss! Where did all these come from?”
“Oh, Furniture King was having a buy one, get one free sale! I saved so much money, isn't it great? And they aren't sofas, they are couches.” Juniper facehooved. “What? You never know when 500 couches are gonna end up useful! And I only had to pay for 250 of ‘em!”
“What are you going to do with 500 couches? Because they don't make good shelves.” She gestured to a few potions about to roll off a couch-shelf, barely catching them before they shattered on the floor.
“Uh… well… I suppose I could use them to…” Arca floundered for an answer, a rare occurrence to those who knew him. “But they were on SALE!”
Juniper turned around and headed out of the shop. “Oh, floof this. Forget it, Boss. I'm taking a day off. Try to have the bucking shelves back by tomorrow, please…”
“Fine, fine. See you tomorrow, Juniper. As for the couches, I'll figure something out as to where to put them. I hope.”
Juniper woke up the next day feeling refreshed. She didn't often take paid time off because she was honestly scared of what Arca would do alone, but she chuckled to herself about the irony there. Originally Arca didn't even track how many days off she took, and when the nearby alchemy guild told him having a set number of days off per year was the law, he gave her 365 days a year as potential PTO. She took almost 3 weeks off every month until what would go down as ‘The floof that never happened, I swear, please don't ask ever’ took place because she was off that day, and she'd maintained a near-perfect attendance ever since.
So, with a pep in her step from a good night's rest, she took to the skies and flew the rest of the distance to the store. There was a semi-official danger zone around the shop known as the Arca Limit where few dared take to the skies… or build anything. At least it meant that they had great landscaping and Celestia damnit she did not see what she thought she saw.
Sitting happily atop the mightiest couch cushion fortress ever constructed, complete with a liquid rainbow moat, Arca munched on his morning blueberry waffles and waved to his apprentice, clearly proud of himself. “Good morning, Juniper! Look, I found a use for the couches after all!”