Chapter 201: 202: On the road

“Look, see?” asks Basil as she holds out the crushed, wet leaves in her hands. A deeply floral, sharp smell fills the inside of the cart, which is once more parked by the side of the road. It is the morning of the next day and they have stopped for a few minutes, because Basil saw some useful herbs on the side of the road. “You crush them while they’re still wet and all of the oils really start to come out,” she explains, setting the damp, ripped up pieces of the flower down onto an unfolded cloth.

The fairies fly around her, watching excitedly. “Then what?” asks Tarja, sniffing the air. “It smells really nice!”

Basil nods, grabbing the edges of the cloth and folds it up into a small bundle. “Then we put them inside of some cloth, like this, and hang it up,” she explains, rising up and hanging the herb-bundle onto the rafter above their heads. “In about three days, it will stop being bitter and it’ll be dry enough to use.”

“For what?” asks one of the other fairies.

“This kind of flower is called ‘Mentha’,” explains Basil, wiping her hands off on her robe. “Once it’s dried, it’s great for teas for when you get sick, stressed or just for a stuffy nose.” She taps the fabric. “Plus we can use the oil-soaked fabric as a disinfecting bandage. But it stings a lot,” she warns. The fairies nod. Fresh smells the air, noticing that this plant smells exactly like she remembers mint smelling.

Checking that everyone is there and accounted for, Basil sits back down onto the carriage seat and gets the cart moving again. The anqa seems to be enjoying itself and its work, though Fresh does often find herself getting a wary eye from time to time from the creature. She does her best to sit still and to not provoke the large bird any. The last thing they needed was for it to go berserk while attached to the cart.

These days of traveling, despite her deep melancholy at having to leave the west, are all still very fun for her. She spends a lot of time pestering Jubilee, or sitting across from Shamrock and teaching him how to play ‘pat-a-cake’.

“Ready?” she asks. Shamrock nods and holds his hands up with his palms together. Fresh nods back and the two of them start, going over the now, after an hour, well rehearsed ritual.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man! Bake me a cake as fast as- you- can~!” starts Fresh and the two of them start clapping their hands against each other in rhythm as they go through the verses once more.

“I’m going to put myself in an oven if I have to hear that fucking song one more time,” snaps Jubilee from the side, glaring at them.

The fairies, having been watching as well, seem to have formed small groups and have started playing amongst themselves too. Though they have somehow adapted the game to their larger number, clapping their hands together in a large circle, as they sit on top of one of the crates.

“What’s the matter, Jubilee?” asks Fresh. “Don’t you like cakes?”

“I have nothing against cake,” replies Jubilee. “But you’re driving me crazy with that rhyming.”

Fresh gasps, realizing. “Jubilee! Do you want to play too?” she asks, only now noticing that she hadn’t asked Jubilee to join in. Jubilee sighs and lifts their book back up, pretending they didn’t hear her. Fresh frowns but then finds herself wondering about something new. “Hey, do you think we should open a bakery?” asks Fresh. “We could make a lot of nice stuff!”

“No,” replies Jubilee without any hesitation, not looking away from their book.

“What’s a bakery?” asks a fairy from the circle.

Fresh blinks, not having expected this question. Before she can answer, Tarja seems to take the initiative and starts explaining different kinds of stores and professions to the fairies.

A few of them are interested in working together with Tarja in her venture, but after hearing her explanations of the different kinds of businesses that exist, some of them seem to get other ideas, wanting to open just about every kind of venture that they had explained, many of them opting for two or three different things at the same time.

“You can only do one thing, dummy!” says Tarja to one of the fairies who had just finished listing his great, new dream of being a blacksmithing-baker and carpenter, who also does alchemy on the side.

“Huuuh?” he asks, disappointed.

She shakes her head. “Besides, we’re small. So we need to work a lot harder to make human-sized things.”

“So we’ll just make fairy-sized things?” suggests the fairy.

“We’re the only fairies, dumb-dumb,” says Tarja, placing her hands on her hips.

He thinks for a second. “So will you guys buy my stuff?”

“I’ll buy your stuff!” exclaims his neighbor excitedly and the two of them shake hands.

Tarja sighs. “You don’t have any money to buy his stuff with!”

“Oh…” says the fairy, thinking for a second, before looking at her other neighbor. “Hey, will you buy my stuff, so I can buy his stuff?”

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“Sure thing!”

“None of you have any money!” yells Tarja, grasping her hair in exasperation. Lost at the cluelessness of some of the more naive members of her group, she turns around and looks up towards Jubilee for guidance. Jubilee, having watched this scene unfold, shrugs and continues reading their book, as if they had seen nothing at all. Fresh purses her lips and softly nudges Jubilee with her foot, gently nodding her head sideways to the fairies. Jubilee glares at her, but then they sigh, apparently relenting as they set down their book.

“Fine. Fuck’s sake,” they mutter, rolling their eyes. “Okay, listen up you little runts,” says Jubilee, leaning over the fairies. “We’re having a crash-course in economics.”

“That sounds super boring,” says the red-haired fairy from last night. He receives a flick to the head for his trouble.

“Lesson one, don’t hit your employees,” explains Jubilee, pointing at Tarja and Fresh nods in approval with her eyes closed and a relieved smile on her face. Jubilee has really come a long way as a person, since they met. “- Unless you’re running a brothel.”

“JUBILEE!” yells Basil, looking over her shoulder, horrified.

The fairies blink, looking around at each other. “What’s a brothel?”

Basil stops the cart and the curriculum is quickly altered. Jubilee isn’t allowed to teach anymore today. Though they aren’t too understanding of that. “Don’t corrupt the innocent!” scolds Basil.

“What?” asks Jubilee defiantly as Basil’s scornful gaze looks back their way. “She turned out fine too, didn’t she?” asks Jubilee, nodding to Fresh. Fresh supposes that’s true. But she isn’t happy that Basil doesn’t immediately agree to Jubilee’s question, instead turning her gaze back forward to the road. Fresh, a bit awkwardly perplexed, stares at Shamrock, who seems just as lost as she is and the two of them both shrug and play another round of pat-a-cake.

It’s going to be a long trip.

Razmatazz

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