now say something beautiful and true

^“At the bottom of the image is the segment of the flag cut for the St. Patrick’s Cathedral protest. Photograph by Mick Hicks”

The fae do not deal in money, they deal in aspects. You can pawn off any aspect of yourself, or occasionally a very valuable item (though it's up in the air what the fae consider valuable) for store credit. And then you can spend the store credit to get things others have pawned off to the fae. People can gain a lot from such a store, but they'll have to lose a lot in turn. And those who try to chest the fae or steal from them end up with truly terrifying consequences.

There have been people who have used the store as a way of getting out of consequences. There was a man in Atlantic City so deep in debt that he feared the loan sharks would kill his family, and he went to the fae. They sold him a magic lantern, so beautiful and powerful he could sell it and become a millionaire. But he had to pawn off his identity and past to get it, and not a single person who knew him would recognize or remember him the momment he left the shop. His family was safe and debt was gone, and it was worth it, and he would watch them from the shadows at times. Though his fate became worse when someone else walked into the shop and bought his past, and got to be his wife's husband and his children's father instead.

Sometimes the true consequences aren't always obvious. There was a child in Boston who had come into the store, and sold her future womanhood to the fae for the best candy bars in the world. For years she didn't know she was going to face any consequence, but when she reached adolescence she didn't go through puberty, to doctors it seemed as if her womb had faded into nothing, and nothing they injected her with worked. As an adult she tried to get it back but learned it had been pawned off to someone who wanted it more then she ever could know.

All the way up in Vermont there was a preacher who wanted to know the true nature of the universe and how it was created, so he could convince people of his religion with perfect knowledge instead of just faith. He pawned the bones of ancient saints to the fae just to get it, and seemed so happy with himself. But when he found out the truth he screamed for days upon days, wandering the woods in terror. When he came to his senses again he said he didn't want to burden anyone with such knowledge, and chose to never speak of religion again.

There was a woman in Brooklyn who had been kicked out of one of the city's greatest underground wizarding schools, who went to the fae shop to try to get phenomenal cosmic power, and eternal life. She sold off the most valuable thing she thought she had, her ability to fall in love (most fae who worked that shop would have given her more credit for her fancy hat but she didn't know that). She thought she would one day earn it back, and she thought that the fate that she was given would destroy her humanity until she got it back. But she ended up being fine with her new way of living in the world, she just started seeing her former boyfriend as her best freind instead, and was still able to form connections and live a good life. She never went back for her romantic attraction, it wouldn't be worth it anyway, (and it was sold off to a vampire anyway but that's a whole other story).

There was even someone out in Connecticut who tried to become the most powerful person in the world by making deals with the fae shop. He started out by agreeing that he would trade a finger for the power to fly, and then he agreed that he'd let them take more and more of his body for the sake of getting more and more powers that the shop had laying around. And when it was all over with and he walked out with so many powers, all that was left of him with a single drop of blood, but it was the most powerful drop of blood in North America.