Chapter 184: 185: Location Development

Fresh darts around behind the counter, running past all of her friends as she works on carving the delivery-chute into the rock surface behind the wall. It’s an odd construction project, but Jubilee is right in their assessment that it will optimize their repair process. Plus, with the new deliveries of herbs coming in today from the first fairies, they needed a way to get the baskets out of the way quickly. The idea is simple enough.

A hole will go into the wall behind the counter. On the other side of the wall is the empty head-space above the basement stairs. She’s going to build a small slide out of wood. Together with some small mechanisms to keep things from getting stuck.

“Just set it down here,” barks Jubilee at the first group of fairies flying in, carrying a tiny basket filled to the brim with assorted flowers and herbs. Their first delivery.

“Yes, your majesty,” says the lead fairy, as the four of them lower the basket down onto the counter. They all have such bouncy hair. Fresh is really jealous.

“Stop calling me that, you little shits,” barks Jubilee.

“Sorry, your highness!” squeak the fairies, hiding behind the basket in fear.

Basil calms them down, telling them not to worry about Jubilee as she rummages through the basket, inspecting their delivery and gauging its value. The list of plants she had made for them offered different prices for varying types of herbs, the rarer and harder to collect, the more the shop would pay for them. It seems like the obvious thing to do, but Fresh can’t help but wonder, as she scratches against the rock to mark it, if other vendors wouldn’t just try to scam them by paying them the same for the rare herbs as for the cheap ones? It’s not like the fairies would know, if nobody told them.

“It looks good,” says Basil. “A lot of common herbs, but there’s one good flower here.” She runs the numbers in her head. “Normally this basket would be worth about twenty-five Obols, but let’s double it up to fifty since it’s their first.”

“Like hell!” snaps Jubilee, glaring at Basil.

“Jubileeee~” cries Fresh from the side.

Jubilee’s eye twitches. But they relent with a sigh, pulling open the drawer and taking out the coins. “Fine. Fifty Obols, but just this once,” they say, turning their head away. “Good job.”

The fairies pop out from behind the basket, looking at each other and then at Jubilee warily.

“You want it or not?” asks Jubilee, getting annoyed.

“Yes!” says the green-haired leader, the rest of them follow her and they all collect the coins, putting them back into the now-empty basket. Basil sets the herbs down into a cloth bag for now, setting it to the side. “Thank you!”

“Hey! Hey!” says one of them, pulling on the other’s sleeve. “Let’s buy candy!”

“Veli! Veli!” calls the one who got tugged on, cupping their hands by their mouth to throw their voice. Veli looks over from his work. “Which candy is the best one?”

“Uh…” Veli looks around, apparently not having an answer. His gaze falls on Shamrock. “Red,” replies Veli. Shamrock gives him a proud thumb’s up. Fresh, however, feels a small bout of nausea rise in her. She still can’t look at the red candies for more than a few seconds. Jubilee takes the money for a piece of candy back out of the basket and the fairies fly off, carrying their basket and pay with them, as they load up a piece of candy as well for all of them to share together.

Fresh thinks that they’re adorable.

“What’s with this crab?” asks a human voice, talking to Shamrock. Fresh tries to blend it out, holding her hands to the wall. She hopes that she doesn’t break their house. Is this wall load-bearing?

She stops, blinking for a second. It’ll probably be fine, right?

“Shamrock,” she calls, turning around. “Can you push this through please?” she asks, pointing at the loose stone cube that is still sitting inside of the wall. It’s too heavy for her to budge. “Careful, it’s heavy,” she says. Shamrock turns around, places his hand on the cube and pushes it through with relative ease.

There is a loud crumbling sound on the other side. Fresh isn’t sure, but she has the feeling that she might have broken the steps down to the basement.

“Woops…” she mutters.

“Woops?” asks Jubilee suspiciously.

“Ah, nothing! Thanks Shamrock!” she beams, quickly heading down into the basement and locking the door behind herself. Looking down, she sees that the two steps, that the heavy brick fell down against, are indeed chipped and broken. Jubilee is going to be so mad at her if they see this.

Quickly, she sets to work hiding the evidence, sweeping away the broken bits of stone. The cracked stone steps, she does her best to refinish. Using a mixture of rock dust, ash and some plain, old, everyday moonwater-mud, she makes a mortar and redoes the cracked parts of the staircase.

The gray goo hardens into place as the magic leaves her hands, leaving an uneven, bumpy surface there. She sands it down smooth.

Sighing in relief, she dusts her hands, having successfully hidden her crime.

“Psst -!” calls out a voice. Fresh jumps, looking around for the source. Her eyes rise up, to the large square hole. Jubilee looks down at her. “I saw that.”

“AH~!” Fresh yelps, scrambling away, running down to her workbench to make a shutter to cover the hole with, so that her future crimes could go undetected.

This is simple enough. A piece of wood with a sliding rail and a latch to lock it with. Though, she does take a second to etch some ornate decorations into the wood panel, so that it looks nice at least when it hangs there in the store. She takes her time, engraving dozens of small, flying sheep, who rise up in a spiral with a ram at their lead.

There are also one or two crabs among the flock.

Satisfied with her work, she heads upstairs and back out of the basement, sheepishly scuttling to the hole in the wall, avoiding Jubilee’s gaze as best as she can by hiding behind Shamrock, as she attaches the panel to the stones with the sliding hinge and with a set of screws that she pushes deep into the rock.

Satisfied, she tests it by sliding it back and forth a few times. It’s oddly satisfying to do, actually. The panel always has a little momentum when you tug on it, as the rails are really sleek, so it always slides for a second longer than it feels like it should. She spends a minute standing there, just sliding it back and forth in fascination.

“Do you mind?” asks Jubilee in a deeply annoyed tone.

“Crab!” yelps Fresh, quickly scooting back down into the basement to make the ramp. The idea is simple enough. An angled wooden ramp, screwed deeply into the stone wall with some long screws and angled brackets. To allow the items to slide down easier, she simply makes a series of rollers; hollow metal cylinders which she attaches to either side of the frame with nails that poke into the hollow rods, so that they can spin. She remembers this principle from grocery stores in her old life.

Fresh stops, looking up as she recalls the idea of a cash-register. Jubilee would really love something like that. But… she honestly doesn’t have the faintest idea where to begin. Oh well, one project at a time.

She spins the roller, watching it go. Fascinated by this too, she spins it again, then again, then again.

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“Hey!” barks a voice from above. Jubilee, having opened the shutter, looks down at her again from above. “Get back to work!”

“Yes, your crabbiness!” relents Fresh, going back to her bench to make the rest of the rollers. She needs about a hundred, though maybe less if she makes the single tubes really big instead of a lot of small ones. But maybe small ones would work better? She thinks for a second and then decides to put in the work of making a bunch of small tubes out of their surplus iron.

Basil eventually comes downstairs too, carrying loads of herbs. The fairies are apparently hard at work, having already brought a second basket and it all needs to be processed. So she sets to the task and the two of them hustle around each other for a few hours as they both do their work.

Business is really picking up again these days. Fresh smiles as she thinks about it, fastening the last screw of the construction.

She wipes her sweaty forehead, beaming with pride as she looks at the ramp.

From the hole up above the stairs, it runs down past the half-way point landing and then down to the side, where it then ends in a flat table-area. From there, they can sort all of the goods themselves into different categories. She’s already made three sections, marking them on the floor with chalk for now. Repairs. Herb delivery. Miscellaneous.

“Ta-da!” she says, presenting the finished project to Basil.

“It looks really good,” says the priestess approvingly. “Does it work?”

“Does it work?!” asks Fresh, laughing as if this was a hilarious question. Though, in truth, she has no idea.

Does it work?

“Shamrock~!” she calls up the stairs. A second later, the shutter opens. His head sticks through the hole and stares down her way.

“Crab me, please!”

Shamrock vanishes.

“How does he even know what that means?” asks Basil, perplexed. She squeaks as Fresh pinches her again.

“Crab!”

“You’re really energetic today, huh?” laughs Basil, rubbing the sore spot on her stomach.

Both of them look up as a very loud fuss can suddenly be heard from upstairs. “- OU FUCK!” A second later, Jubilee is placed through the slot and slides down the slide, bumping their way down the rollers. Fresh yelps, catching them as they come around the bend.

“Are you okay, Jubilee?” asks Fresh, trying her best not to laugh. Though she is a little jealous. She wants to slide too.

Jubilee pushes her hand off of themselves, as they grab their bag of dirt and stomp back upstairs. “Get ready to look for a new employee, because we’re about to lose one for good!”

Laughing, Fresh runs up after Jubilee, doing her best to prevent a murder during work hours.

Razmatazz

-) Tomorrow - …Nyah?

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