More Like Super-Sensitivity

20260708

Prompt from Eiiri’s Prompt Foundry, “Pride 2 Disability Boogaloo”.

“Er, hello?”
Rex glanced up to find someone peeping in the shop door. He flashed his best customer service smile and said “Hey there! How can I help you?”
“I, um, I was wondering if you have any nose plugs which would work for human noses?”
“Oh, don’t worry, all our products are designed to work in both your forms and cause no issues when you shift-” Rex faltered as he got a good look at the prospective customer, whose facial structure was not at all werewolf-like, and belatedly registered what their question had actually been. He hastily adjusted his smile to show less teeth. “Uhhh that is, I’m afraid these don’t block smells, they just dampen them while maintaining scent fidelity…”
“Yeah, that, um, that’s exactly what I’m after!” The customer said hopefully. “I just wanted to check that, you know, they were… that they’d work on a human nose.”
“I… can’t see why they wouldn’t?” Rex scratched his head and peered at the customer. “Are you human? Er, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Yep, fully human.”
“Oh. Then, um, why do you need scent dampening? Have you been, like, cursed with super-smelling?”
“Er, kind of?” The human gave a lopsided grin. “I don’t know if my sense of smell’s more sensitive or I’m just worse at dealing with it, but… smelly places can get really overwhelming and I got in this conversation with a colleague and turns out she’s a werewolf and she said I should totally try ‘Awo-No’ plugs if they’d work for humans, so… here I am.”
“Well… I can’t think why they wouldn’t.” Rex got up and led the human to the correct shelf. “Um. You might want to start with the lowest level of dampening? Or, here, the ‘sample’ pack might be a good investment - lots of people find it useful to be able to tailor the dampening for different situations…”
He was taken aback how eagerly the human grabbed the full set - it wasn’t cheap! Not that it was overpriced either, at least if it fixed your problem, but it was hard to believe a human had any such issues. The poor things barely seemed to have a sense of small at all.
Whatever. ‘Don’t argue yourself out of a sale’ was customer service 101. So he smiled (not showing teeth) and rang the order up and sincerely said he hoped it helped them.
While he’d vaguely hoped for some kind of follow-up, at least news of whether the product worked for humans, he didn’t think much of it.
He certainly wasn’t expecting nearly two hundred online orders for Awo-No nose plug sample packs! And initially thought there must have been some weird system error, or perhaps even that his business was being pranked.
Until, in the midst of digging through trying to figure out what was going on, he saw that his business had been tagged on multiple social media platforms by some podcast called “Autistic Life Hacks”.
What where now?
Oh thank goodness, their pinned post was titled “what is autism”. Rex put it on and hoped for answers. Sadly the explanation, while moderately interesting, didn’t give him any clarity on why humans suddenly wanted scent dampening nose plugs.
So he put on the latest episode, the one his business had been tagged for… and listened with delighted bemusement as a bunch of apparently-humans complained about overwhelming smelly environments in a way he entirely understood.
And finally found out where he came in - after trying out the plugs that human (at least, he assumed it was the same one) had gone on some forum raving about them, that had been noticed by one of the podcast hosts, they’d ordered a set online, and after also raving about the plugs to their audience the orders starting pouring in.
Rex looked at the loooong list of orders, then around his little shop. Then he pulled up an email to his wholesale supplier. [Hey, you’re not going to believe this, but I just stumbled on a HUGE new market…]
By next business quarter, nearly every major autism podcast was doing sponsorship product deals for werewolf sensory gear, and some fey suppliers were starting to reach out with offers of electromagnetic blockers. And Rex was eagerly researching what other untapped markets might be lurking in the wild diversity of humanity.

Prompt was “Sensory sensitivity”.