Before The Store [Pre-1870]
From his early life, Rush can remember only a handful of things: a large, soft woman he called Mataji, loud noises in all the walls, lots of dirt and heat. His family, such that it was, could barely keep all of their members alive, and as soon as possible--maybe sooner as it wasn’t uncommon for poor families to lie about their childrens’ ages in order to get them into gurukulas and have one less mouth to feed--he was relocated to the home of a guru on the outskirts of the city, where he was to learn magic. The guru in question did not permit study or wand work until he had deemed to pupil ready to learn them, and indeed would not even acknowledge the boys until they had already been “brought up” for several years by the older and more experienced students. In the meantime, Rush was little more than an errand boy, and went out with the rest of the pack of students each night to beg for his dinner.
On one such occasion he became lost, and ended up sleeping in the street overnight. The next morning he was afraid to go back, as he was certain he’d be beaten for being late--so he hid in a shop instead.
This was when Rush’s life really began. He hid in the shop--an imported goods shop, though he wasn’t literate and so didn’t know that when he entered--until it was starting to close. Afraid of being thrown out and sent back to the guruklava, he went deeper into the shop and ended up stumbling into more magic than he’d ever seen in one place before. Eventually, the owner found him. The old man was nice--he talked to Rush and fed him a meal--but after a day in what the young boy of indeterminate age considered a sort of paradise, he was told he’d have to go back to his home. He protested (he actually sort of threw a fit) and displayed magic for the first time by breaking a handful of items that probably cost more than his life was worth, at the moment.
Fortunately, the store owner didn’t seem inclined to beat him, or even to turn him over to the police for breaking his things. Instead, after a long talk in a language that Rush didn’t understand, the old man asked if he’d like to stay, instead. Obviously, he said yes.
Still Mostly A Kid [1870-1879]
He only told them his name was “Rush,” although they assumed that was probably short for something he didn’t remember. For the moment, the shop consisted of three others: Krishna, the man who owned the store and had agreed to take him in, Reva, who was his daughter and and already an adult by the time Rush was introduced to her, and a girl a bit younger than him who was related to them in some way that he didn’t immediately comprehend. Rush secretly wondered whether the two adults had agreed to take him in because of his proximity in age to the little girl, like he was being picked up as a designated playmate rather than because they actually cared about him. That didn’t bother him a bit, though, and he dutifully followed Yasmina around for the next year. If his ticket to the shop rested on appealing to the little girl, he was going to make damn sure that she liked him.
Rush learned that Yasmina was a recent addition to the shop, as well; she’d joined them a year earlier after her father had died under circumstances he never bothered to ask about. That only strengthened his feeling that he was primarily there to make Yasmina feel more at home, even though he did grow progressively more and more attached to Krishna--whom he called Grandfather because Yasmina did--and to Reva. After he had been at the shop a year, their “family” grew again with the inclusion of Mei, a scrappy Asian girl a few years older than him who’d come in through the Chicago storefront.
As the years went by, Rush learned reading and writing from the other people in the store--and in several languages, too. They also taught him magic--something he hadn’t even known he wanted to learn, back when the violence at the guruklava had been his only path to it. With a wand they’d acquired in Cairo, he dutifully learned magic alongside learning the “family business.” He showed an affinity for charms, and particularly for altering objects slightly--which came in handy over the course of the next few years as he can subtly manipulate some of their wares to get them sold more quickly, or to make them appear more valuable than they are. Making something seem heavier and more substantial than whatever it’s actually made of it a pretty regular occurrence. The spells don’t last forever, but the shop doesn’t issue refunds, so that isn’t really his problem.
A few years later in 1876, the rag-tag “family” grew again with the inclusion of Valentino, a runaway teen from Buenos Aires. Rush was very interested in having another male around the shop, especially since Valentino is the same age as him. Yasmina had gotten sulky over not being able to attend school (despite Rush assuring her that his experience of ‘school’ at the guruklava kind of sucked), and while Mei hasn’t been consumed with any inexplicable moodiness, she is making the transition into being considered an adult, which makes something of a gap between the two of them, at least in his mind. He takes immediately to his new “brother” and personally takes charge of getting him settled in to the shop.
Yasmina starts learning magic in 1877, shortly before Rush’s studies in the various subjects would peter out. Without a formal course schedule it’s not as though he ever really finished; he just reached a point where he knew everything he thought he’d reasonably need to know, and only read further on things that he thought were particularly interesting. By the end of 1878, his sycamore wand decided that it could take no more of merely being the companion of a shopkeep and spontaneously combusted. Which wouldn’t have been quite as big of a deal, except that it decided to give up the ghost while he and the rest of the crew were asleep, meaning that the lodging area over the shop nearly burns down. It doesn’t, though for the first half of 1879 Rush doesn’t have a wand of his own and has to borrow someone else’s any time he really needs to use it, which, thankfully, is infrequently. Whether out of annoyance at having to lend him his wand all the time or out of genuine affection, Valentino eventually “finds” a replacement wand whilst out on an errand for Mei. The second wand takes to Rush much better, though due to the nature of its acquisition he doesn’t know anything about it.
During the wandless months near the end of 1878, the shop also acquires another member in the form of runaway Chicago teenager Farrah. This is theoretically the last time they end up finding and subsequently adopting a magical stray orphan, but since Mei, Val, and Farrah weren't really planned (and neither, for that matter, was Rush himself) it's hard to say that it definitely won't happen again. At least Farrah is a bit older, and doesn't take too much of their time up in learning magic.
Sort of An Adult [1879-1887]
Around the time that Rush was starting to consider himself an adult, Yasmina was hitting the bad-decisions part of puberty, and boy does she make some bad decisions. Rush is particularly worried when she disappears for three days and comes back home obviously drunk, but it's not as though there's anything to be done about it, and at least she did come home. It seems to just be a phase, luckily, and after a few "acting out" occasions she seems to mellow out, at least from his perspective.
Aside from Yasmina's teen angst, life continues on quietly for several years, although Krishna is beginning to get noticeably older and his eyesight has started to decline. In 1883 he decides to retire from the business side of things, and sets himself up in a (stationary) house to comfortably live out his old age. Since this occurs less than a year after Reva and Mei start not-so-subtly sleeping together, Rush sometimes jokes that Krishna was so sick of their public displays of affection that he had to quit the shop. To Mei, anyway. He’d never say that to Reva.
With Reva and Mei being an item(tm) and with Valentino's never-exactly-chaste lifestyle, there's plenty of prompting for Rush to think about finding somebody, but he spends so much time at the shop that he doesn't tend to interact, socially, with anyone except their customers (who he obviously can't be honest with). He does have a brief flirtation with a girl in Buenos Aires in 1885, but it never goes anywhere very serious as she wanted to know more about his life than he was really comfortable telling her. Aside from the store (which is a secret to most of the world), there isn't much to tell, and the relationship really fizzles out before it has a chance to begin.
1886 goes down in store history as the year of the storm cloud. After accidentally breaking one of Mei's new acquisitions (a dusty-looking mirror that probably wouldn't have sold for much anyway), Rush is cursed with bad luck. This wouldn't have been so awful if that bad luck hadn't manifested itself in a literal storm cloud materializing over him and following him around every time he's outside. For several months he's more or less confined to the shop unless he's going out at night or in a pre-existing thunderstorm, because otherwise he would be rather conspicuous. The curse is supposed to last seven years, presumably, but luckily for him they find a way to dispel it after several months, and life continues much as before (except for some added safety precautions when dealing with Mei's new shit).
The next year stretches on and is almost boring by comparison. There are, of course, always hijinks to be had - Mei's collecting keeps them all on their toes since she tends to prioritize things that are cool over safety, and Valentino tends to get himself into trouble quite frequently in his personal life - but mostly, life continues on as it always has, which suits Rush just fine.
