Chapter 177: 178: Stargazer

It is dark outside as Fresh walks through the city, which is still held alight by the few large, shining crystals that float up over it. Their cumulative shine washes over the city with a calm pastel light that seems more than unusual for this dark hour. Glass jangles in her bag; items that she needs for her scheme to work.

Now that summer is coming to an end, night comes faster and faster and the days feel shorter. Not that she ever really notices, since she spends most of her days locking herself up, down in the basement. Fresh follows the river, accompanying the flowing water as it leaves the dungeon-tunnel, both of them heading to places unbeknownst to the other.

Making a stop at the tailor’s, Fresh walks in, only noticing after she had already stepped inside, that she didn’t hesitate in the least to do so. She didn’t get sweaty hands outside of the door, she didn’t have a racing heartbeat that began to grow and to thrash like a caged animal, simply at the prospect of having to talk to a stranger. As Fresh stands in the door of the tailor’s shop that is getting ready to close too, she realizes with unusual clarity that she has grown.

“Can I help you?” asks a shrill voice. “We’re about to close.”

Fresh looks up, half-expecting to see a strange entity like the man from the northern city’s tailor shop. Instead, she sees a fairy, carrying a sack of needles on its back. “Sorry for coming late,” she apologizes to her. “I just need some pajamas to sleep in.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?” asks the fairy, annoyed. Fresh assumes that it isn’t the owner of the store, rather just an employee. Having come all of this way now though, she wants the pajamas. Not only to wear, but also as an excuse. Digging a silver Obol out of her pocket, she offers it to the fairy.

“Here’s a tip for your inconvenience,” she smiles. “Please?” What good is money if you don’t spend it, right?

The fairy quickly changes its tune and takes the coin, setting it up atop a high shelf before helping her find something. A simple, dark-blue, flowing, knee-length night-dress that Fresh thinks is a bit too revealing in some areas. But then again, it’s certainly less revealing than sleeping in just her undergarments. Deciding not to cause the clearly tired fairy any trouble, she takes it with a thanks and heads out further into the city.

Effect: +2 LOV

Quality Effect: +2 DEX

The city hall isn’t too far away, it’s a large building down near the entrance plaza, built in a similar fashion to the adventurer’s guild, with a large, sliding wooden door as the main point of entrance. She has seen it several times before, but never had a reason to go here until now. Straightening her posture and brushing her hair out of her face, she steps inside.

“We’re closed,” is the first thing she hears from an older woman, sitting behind the counter across from the door.

“I’m here to see the magistrate,” explains Fresh.

The woman raises an eyebrow, tapping on the table. “Closed,” she repeats. “The magistrate isn’t seeing anybody. Good night.” She points to the door. City employees sure are grouchy folk. Deciding that this is the time, Fresh takes off her bag and pulls out a bottle.

“I’m here to deliver an order of coughee that the magistrate placed at our store this morning,” she lies, setting a bottle down on the counter for the woman and then showing her the others in the bag.

The old woman looks at the bottle and then at her suspiciously. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

“The magistrate must have been too tired to mention it,” suggests Fresh. The woman seems to be considering this possibility.

“Are you the sheep-people?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Fresh laughs. “Yes, we’re the sheep-people!”

The old woman sighs, leaning back on her chair. “You know, those things have been clogging up the river. You’re causing me a lot of trouble.”

“Huh? The river?!” asks Fresh, horrified. She had never taught her sheep how to swim.

“Dozens of them, just jammed into the grates, sighs the old secretary, shaking her clearly tired head. Fresh nudges the bottle of coughee over with a finger.

“Are you trying to bribe me?”

“Yes,” says Fresh, plainly.

The old woman laughs, taking the bottle. “You’re a charmer. Fine. Take the stairs. Last door on the top hallway. Knock first.”

“Thank you!” beams Fresh, following her instructions.

“And do something about those sheep!” yells the woman after her.

“I’ll look into it, I promise!” she calls back, heading up the stairs. The further she walks, the noisier she notices that it seems to be becoming. Not with voices or with the sounds of fairies or running water, rather, there is a quiet churning of slowly turning metal that grows louder and louder as she heads to the obvious door at the end of the hallway. It’s ornately decorated, engraved with symbols of several suns and moons, winding around each other in a rising spiral that comes to a convergence at a single, blue gem-stone, embedded into the top of the door.

She knocks.

“Come in,” says a familiar voice. Opening the door, she steps inside and stops. The room isn’t what she expected it to be at all. When she envisioned the magistrate’s office, she pictured a mostly brown and gray room with a desk, maybe a lot of bookshelves, maybe some cabinets filled with stacks and stacks of paper. Instead, she finds herself confronted with something entirely alien to her expectations. The room, overlooking the inner courtyard of the city-hall is… colorful, illuminated by dozens of magic-crystals and lined with glass walls on most sides, apart from this one she has entered from. In the center of the room is a slightly elevated stone platform and atop it, hanging from the ceiling, is a large telescope, aimed towards the heavens. It’s not one of hers.

Fresh smiles, seeing a small flock of her sheep fly by, with the anti-dream ram at their lead. She waves to them and they wiggle their legs as they float past her.

“Hello,” says the tired-man curiously, but not sparing her much mind. In fact, he doesn’t seem like the tired-man that she has come to expect at all. He’s busy running around left and right, taking notes before looking through the telescope and then running across the room to move some pieces of some intricately designed boards around. She has no idea what she’s looking at, all she knows is that the entire room feels… enchanted. “What can I do for you?” he asks.

Fresh realizes that he hasn’t looked at her once, not having spared a second from his work to even glance her way. If he buzzes around like this all day, it’s no wonder that he’s tired. Is this what a magistrate does? She was expecting more bureaucracy. “I’d like to ask something,” says Fresh, jangling her bag.

“Huh? Oh,” the magistrate finally looks her way, seeing that it’s her. “Hello, I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he says.

“I wasn’t expecting on coming,” answers Fresh, lifting a finger. “But I’d like to give you these,” she says, setting the rest of the bottles down on the unused desk in the corner.

“Are you trying to bribe me?” asks the magistrate.

“Yes,” admits Fresh for the second time, apparently to her success, as the man simply nods and takes a bottle, before returning to his work. It seems that out here in the west, honesty really is the best policy.

A magical-crystal, carved into the shape of a star, floats past her face as it slowly drifts to the glass wall across the room.

“What can I do for you?” asks the tired-magistrate.

“What are you doing?” asks Fresh, more fascinated by his work than by her own original question.

“Running the city,” explains the magistrate.

“By looking at the stars?” asks Fresh.

The magistrate opens his bottle. “By looking at the sky.”

“Huh? What does that have to do with the city?” she asks, watching as he glues his eyes back to the telescope. He waves her over.

“Take a look. What do you see?” he asks. Fresh, curious now, walks over to the telescope and carefully looks into it, doing her best not to touch it, as it looks very, very expensive. Fresh sees a lot. But she isn’t sure what it is that she’s seeing. Clouds. The moon. Distant stars peeking out from behind the occasional puff of vapor. She even thinks that she sees the shadow of some night-bird flying through the air for a brief moment.

“Just stuff,” she says.

“Exactly,” says the magistrate, pushing a piece on his game-board over another field.

“Huh?”

“Being a leader is stressful, isn’t it?” he asks. “There’s always more to do to protect the people we care about.” He takes a sip from his coughee. “We work in the dark, so they can sleep easy.”

Fresh raises her hands. “Ah, no, I’m not -”

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“Are you the one who secretly doesn’t sleep at night to keep the others safe and fed?” asks the magistrate. “Then you’re the leader.”

Fresh rubs her arm nervously, appreciating the reassuring words, even if she doesn’t feel like they sit entirely true for her.

“What kind of ‘stuff’ do you see?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“In the telescope. What kind of stuff?”

“Uh, clouds and uh, birds and the stars.”

“Why would you see birds in the telescope?” he asks.

Fresh scratches her cheek. “Because they’re flying high?”

“Why would the birds be flying so high, this late in the day?”

“Because they’re going places. They’re probably flying somewhere warmer, it’s about that time of the year,” she assumes.

He nods. “But why are they so high, though?”

Fresh blinks, thinking for a second. “Maybe it’s too windy for them down below?”

“Exactly!” beam the tired-magistrate as the flock of sheep circle past between them. “The air currents are shifting. The birds are flying higher to avoid them. We’re going to have a heavy storm in the near future.”

“Really?”

“Being a leader is sometimes about seeing things that the others can’t or simply don’t want to,” he explains, returning to his frenzied work. “We have to be the ones to make the first cut, when the others are too timid to draw blood.”

Fresh likes the way the man talks, but there is too much on her mind to be swayed by this flattering conversation. She clenches her fists, lifting her gaze to him. “I don’t like the way the fairies are treated here. Everyone is terrible to them!” she says, pointing at him. “And why was there a ghost in our house?!” she asks, getting right to the point.

The tired-man looks away from his work for a moment, before returning to his notes. “What do you do, when you love your family, but they’re terrible people?”

“Huh?”

“What do you do -” repeats the magistrate. “- when you love someone, but they’re a terrible person in dire need of redemption?” he asks. “Do you give them up?”

“No,” argues Fresh. “I’d do my best for them, so that they can become better.”

He nods. “Then what would you do if your beloved family has more than ten-thousand people?”

“Huh?”

“What if you loved ten-thousand people and a quarter of them were terrible? Would you give them up?”

Fresh shakes her head. “I’d stay up every night, trying to make something for them, trying to figure out something for them, so that they can become better too.”

“For every one of them?” asks the magistrate.

“For every one of them.”

“Exactly,” says the tired-man, setting down the empty bottle on the edge of the stone platform as he buzzes around left and right, before sparing another glance into the telescope. “I love the fairies just like I love any of the people here, but I can only save as many as I can manage with my own two hands.” Fresh looks up through the glass ceiling, watching as the clouds slowly part and the stars begin to make themselves seen, now that night has fallen. “As for the ghost, you have my apologies. But that was the fault of my more wayward children.”

Fresh looks around, confused. “What?”

“I hope my repeated patronage has managed to make a small step towards amends for their acts.”

Fresh looks at him. “Who? Why?”

The tired man looks at her, before turning away to stare up at the bright moon that hangs up in the sky above them both, neither of them saying anything for a while as they gaze towards it. “Every family has its secrets,” says the tired-man finally, before returning to his work.

Razmatazz

-) Fun fact, this chapter was written while listening to the Astral Observatory theme from Zelda: Majora's mask. Good game.

-) Tired-man is a cool dude. He's trying his best, okay?

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