Chapter 142: 143: Lightweight

The night comes and goes. Fresh, much to her relief, wakes up early in the morning, having apparently slept her back pain away. The girl leaves the others to fend for themselves, regarding breakfast today, as she hurries downstairs into the basement and sets to work with her latest idea. Basil had forbidden her from doing so last night, the priestess wagging her finger at her again and telling her to go to sleep. She even tucked her in, so that was nice at least.

Fresh pulls open the basement door and hurries down the stairs, past the washroom as she goes over to her table and looks around. Grabbing one of the rubbery crystal-drakonium ingots, she flops it down onto the surface and watches it softly jiggle back and forth like a small slime from the vibration of the impact.

“Maybe…” she lowers her head down, pressing her chin against the table, as she eyes the ingot, trying to get a feel for how much material exactly it contains. If it’s pressed half as flat, then it would pancake out a ways further to the sides. So… she’d need a few. Way more than a glove or a boot, the crafting processes for those seemed to be somewhat more forgiving. “Maybe eight?”

Fresh frowns, Jubilee would probably be mad at her for wasting materials like this. But maybe if she says it was an experiment, then Jubilee will believe that? It’s also technically true, since she has no idea how this will turn out. Though, it shouldn’t be too exciting in all honesty.

Grabbing a stack of ingots from the heap, she starts laying them in a long, multi-rowed grid that takes up just about the entire surface of the tabletop. If this didn’t work, she could always just press them back into ingots, in the worst case. She needed a few more ingots than expected. Twelve in total.

Lifting her hands above the first ones, she sets to work.

The rubbery ingots that her palms are above smush down into flat rectangles, as if something were pressing down on them from above. The compressed material fills the gaps between themselves. Moving along the whole table, she repeats this process for all of them, until eventually, the surface is covered entirely by thick, rectangular shapes which are set tightly next to each other. Taking a moment, she hand-adjusts all of them, pushing them tightly together and leaving no space in between any of them.

This part would be a little trickier, but she thinks she can manage if she stretches her arms out. Fresh holds her arms up above the table, spreading them out as wide as she can, as she tries to reach from one side of the tabletop to the other. But she doesn’t quite manage. She hopes this is good enough.

The gaps between the strange, glittering material grows together, like regrowing skin, fusing into one giant piece of rubber. Even though she knew this would happen, she’s still somewhat surprised at how oddly gross it looks. After a couple seconds though, the process is complete. The long, thick, rubbery mat flops back down to the table with a loud slap, having become one whole unit. Grabbing a handful of crystal-dust, she blows it off of her hand and out over the mat, closing her eyes for a moment as she thinks about her intent for it.

Then, a moment later, it rises up an inch off of the surface of the table. Fresh beams as she grabs the mat by the sides and then pulls it off onto the ground. It’s very light, to her surprise. It flops down to the stone floor and then rises up again a second later.

Lowering herself down, she sits on the edge of the mattress and then lays down on top of it. It immediately sinks to the ground beneath the weight of her body. It’s very firm, far firmer than the down and fluff filled mattresses that she has slept on so far. While her back doesn’t pop, she does feel a satisfying sensation run up along her spine, as if she were stretching out a sore, cramped muscle. It hurts just a tiny bit, but it’s an oddly satisfying, dull pain. She closes her eyes and lays there on the floor of the basement, trying to get a feel for the mattress and for her own body.

It pushes up against her back, but never enough to lift itself off of the ground. It’s a hard sensation for her to describe. But she likes the feeling, the pressure pushing off against the floor, pressing the mattress against herself from below. It’s like being held in a way.

Plus it feels great for her back.

One other thing that she notices, is that despite the stone floor of the basement being icy cold, she doesn’t notice a thing temperature-wise. The fact that the thin mattress is barely a few inches thick doesn’t seem to matter, as the material is so dense and cold resistant that it just seems to stay warm on its own. Smiling, she gets up, rolls it together and heads upstairs to show off her newest creation.

“Hmm…” says Jubilee, poking the floating mattress with a gloved finger. “Why does all of this shit float?”

“It’s magic, Jubilee!” explains Fresh excitedly, leaning in towards her friend. “Mountain-magic!” Jubilee rolls their eyes.

“What’s with this effect though?” asks Basil from the side, somewhat taken aback as she stares at the window.

“Yeah, pretty good. Five-hundred?” asks Jubilee and Fresh gasps, realizing that it’s starting all over again. Basil thinks, her hand on her chin.

“Six,” says Shamrock from just next to them.

“Not you too!” yells Fresh at the giant, her eyes wide and distraught.

Shamrock looks over at her worried features and then nods understandingly, as if knowing her plight, before turning back to Jubilee. “Five-ninety-nine.”

“That’s not what I meant!” yells Fresh.

Basil nods in agreement. “It’s very strong, you know? If word spreads…”

“Yup,” says Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips as they shake their head. “This place will be fuckery-city within a month.”

Fresh looks back and forth between them. “What’s up, guys?” she asks. “Do you think people will like it that much?” She frowns, scratching her cheek. “It wasn’t really meant to be something for sale…”

Jubilee looks at her. “Will people like a levitating, lightweight mattress that never gets cold or wet or worn through and gives you a significant stat boost for free?” asks Jubilee, shaking their head. “In a town full of adventurers and soldiers?” They think for a second, or at least pretend to do so. “Naaah. I can’t see it happening.”

“No, I don’t think so either,” says Basil, also shaking her head ‘no’.

Shamrock joins in also, also shaking his head. “Unlikely.”

“Oh,” says Fresh, somewhat surprised, as she looks back at the mattress. “Well, that’s good then,” she says. “I was worried this was going to become a whole thing.” She looks back up and around the room, at the three pairs of eyes staring her way. Jubilee sighs a tired sigh, Basil says nothing but continues to smile and Shamrock just lets out a heavy breath.

Jubilee claps their hands together once. “Okay, Shamrock. You grab her arms. Basil, you grab her legs.”

“Huh?” asks Fresh, not liking where this is going.

“Which one of these candies raises intellect again? It was the blue ones, right?” asks Jubilee, sifting through a bowl on the table.

“I think it was the blue ones,” says Basil, nodding. “Wouldn’t that double her stat?”

“You think she’d die?” asks Jubilee, looking over their shoulder for a moment. “Like… she’ll explode or something?” They shrug indifferently. “Eh, it’ll be fine.”

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Basil chimes in. “Maybe the purple ones. I think wisdom might be better than intellect in this case.”

“Red,” says Shamrock from the side. The others look at him as he flexes his arm. “Strong.”

“Shut up, meat-head. Get over here and ho- GET BACK HERE!” yells Jubilee at Fresh, who has already slipped past Basil and Shamrock and is running down the stairs, grabbing a sheep from the ‘mountain shelf’ during her escape. She locks herself in the basement to get back to work, having gotten away for now. Fresh sighs, leaning back against the door for a moment, before heading back to the table.

“Having friends can be very stressful, right Mr. Sheep?” she asks the sheep in her hands, setting it down onto the flat surface. The sheep doesn’t respond, simply kicking its legs as it proceeds to walk against the wall at the back of the table and then flops helplessly over onto its side. She frowns, realizing that Mr. Sheep has a hard life too.

Picking him up, she looks at his floppy legs and then gets her next idea.

Beaming, she hums as she sets to work. Today is going to be a great day, she can feel it. Grabbing another ingot, she takes her knife and cuts a thin, horizontal slice of it off. It takes a little wiggling, but the blade cuts cleanly through pretty quickly. Holding Mr. Sheep, she begins the operation, hoping that it won’t hurt him too much.

Fresh waves the knife at him once with a playful smile. “This is going to sting a bit, so close your eyes and count to ten!”

It’s for his own good though thinks Fresh, as she sets to work, pressing the knife into his body.

Razmatazz

Bleeeeeeh~

Trivia - Sheep

Sheep are pretty popular in a lot of mythology, particularly Abrahamic religious mythology. In fact, the use of sheep in religious symbolism and rituals has been a longstanding tradition, given that sheep and ram skulls have been found in ancient proto-religious sites dating all the way back to 8000(!)BC in southern Anatolia (Turkey)

(Note, rams are just male sheep)

In fact, sheep were also used for religious purposes by our very favorite friends, the ancient Mesopotamians. The goddess ‘Ishtar’, who we have spoken about once before in brief, was often depicted with sheep/ram features.  Similar designs can be found in the neighboring Babylonians with the god Ea-Oannes (A water god of wisdom) and the old Phoenician god Baal-Hamon, who may possibly be related to the entity known in Semetic religions as ‘Baal’. In ancient Egypt of course, there were also several deities with sheep characteristics, most notably Amun in the form of a fertility god, though that last one isn’t relevant for this story. Don’t even think about getting any funny ideas.

If you are one for zodiacs, Aries, the ram, is the first sign of the ancient Greek zodiac and is of course, the coolest one. You might not agree, but that’s just because you aren’t an Aries. Sorry, better luck next time.

*Climbs up on a rock*

Anyways. Sheep were regularly sacrificed for religious practices among most of these ancient religions, but that also includes modern religions. Remember that most of our Abrahamic religions seem to find their roots in these ancient cultures. In the biblical story of Abraham, when he was asked to sacrifice his son, a sheep was offered in his place. In Islamic tradition, Eid is still celebrated as an annual festival in which sheep are sacrificed in remembrance of this event as well and the meat is distributed to the poor and the hungry. In Judaism, sheep were once sacrificed as what is called a ‘Korban’. As you can see, there is a strong root connection between all of these religions and sheep. Though the poor sheep seem to always get the short end of the stick.

That last sentence is of course, what is relevent for this story.

On a more fun note, sheep are pretty smart. Almost as smart as pigs. They can recognize faces and voices and remember them for years. But not only that, they can also read facial characteristics. There has also been a bit of anecdotal evidence that they have strong problem-solving abilities, though this has yet to be ‘laboratory tested’  =)

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