“Magic socks”
“Magic Socks! They stretch to fit!” I’d seen such signs before, in discount stores and supermarkets in half a dozen states and three time zones. Been burned before, too, by socks that really didn’t stretch to fit — socks that stretched a little, but with purely mundane elastics rather than the difficult Green and Purple Expansion, or even Rhialto’s Excellent Paisley. So I was understandably skeptical of this latest claim… Kroger isn’t known for dealing in magical attire, after all.
Still, I kept coming back to them. I didn’t want to just stare at the display, of course. Obvious interest would be embarassing if they were fakes, or expensive when the time came to haggle for the real thing. Just a glance from the corner of my eye, to study the complete absence of runes on the box. I focused my will to examine their presence in the lowest of the arcane planes, where even the simplest of cantrips quivers in a rainbow of vibrations. Nothing. Couldn’t possibly be real. Unless it was the subtlest magic ever worked upon a pair of socks. I wished briefly for access to my workroom in lost Isthlay, knowing I might more profitably wish now for the moon.
And yet… and yet… They did look like nice socks, even without any spiritual enhancement. Just simple black socks, which the casual or undiscriminating eye might perhaps mistake for actual men’s dress socks. At least they’d cover my feet, which is more than the illusion charm I’d applied before slipping out of my refuge this morning could do. (The illusion of warmth, I should note for those with no experience of such, is a far cry from the real thing.) If they’d fit, that is. Yes, I kept coming back to the question of fit.
The package says “stretches to fit”. It’s a crime in this land – how quaint – to falsely advertise. Perhaps they meant simply that the socks would stretch to fit most human feet…. it certainly didn’t say “stretches to fit all“, or “fits any adult”. For that matter, they don’t even say it fits feet – perhaps it’s for making sock puppets? But they really ought to be more precise in their claims.
I could take them home. Just to try them on. It’s hardly a disappointment if they don’t, socks to fit my feet are rather rare in these parts. Understandably. And I’m fairly sure they aren’t truly magic socks, whatever the box says. (Who would I talk to, I wondered, about an investigation into that particular claim?) Only $5.99 for two pairs, hardly a big investment even without my stolen Purse of Plenty. I waited until nobody was walking nearby and slipped them into the basket, then headed for the checkout counter.
