Chapter 228: 229: Getting set up

“I miss having a fireplace,” says Fresh, sighing and sitting against the wall on top of her bed-roll with a blanket wrapped around herself. It gets surprisingly cold here in the east at night, especially near the ocean.

“I mean, I guess we could add one?” asks Basil, keeping her eyes closed as she is already laying down in her bedroll next to Fresh’s.

“Hmm…” Fresh crosses her arms, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself. “I don’t know. It’s really cozy. But I don’t know if this house is ‘fireplace safe’, you know?”

Basil yawns. “I guess you might have a point…” she says, her words drifting away. It’s been a long day today. Fresh spares a glance around the room, looking at the beautiful light-toned curtains that adorn the walls. Jubilee had been learning how to embroider and they’re covered in small motifs of flowers and chickens. They’re literal priceless artworks in Fresh’s eyes.

Deciding that she needs to rest, as there is a lot of work left in the coming days, Fresh lays down and scoots her back towards Basil, in a devious attempt to steal her warmth. An arm wraps itself over her shoulder and she falls asleep more or less instantly.

The next day, Fresh sets to work making a heating mechanism that came to her in her dreams.

It’s essentially just a thin, metal box, lined with crystal-drakonium on the inside for insulation. It’s then filled up with a little bit of moonwater and she throws in a few of her self-heating spheres inside. Closing the top off with a metal-mesh, she then lays a rail over it. The self-heating spheres would heat up the moonwater and, depending on how far the rail is opened, a corresponding amount of heat could exit from the devices.

“It’s very clever,” says Basil, watching her mount another one of these ‘heaters’. This one is going into Jubilee’s room.

“Suspiciously so,” says Jubilee, watching her from the side. “Did you really come up with this?” they ask.

Fresh lifts her nose. “I did! I had a dream about it,” she explains. “It’s basically the same as the heating cabinet we had before, just for our rooms!”

Shamrock and Basil are in charge of finding a stove for their kitchen. Fresh is going to make all of their cabinets and such. Meanwhile, Jubilee is running around the downstairs area with some chalk, marking off all of the locations for the different shelves. They decide to keep a small space on the left side of the downstairs area free, next to the counter, to act as a small storage-room.

As for the upstairs area, they decide to keep the same ‘format’ for their beds as before. So Fresh sets to work making her bed on the wall adjacent to Jubilee’s room. Then there’s a small nightstand and a wardrobe and a waist-high stone-wall that goes out a few feet. Then Basil’s ‘area’ with the same configuration and then Shamrock’s. This time, she remembers to make his bed a little bigger too.

By the time she finishes this all, it’s already well into the start of the night. Pulling open the railing of the heater a little, she lays down in her brand-new bed and falls asleep. Though not as fast as the night before. She really is a communal creature, she’s starting to notice.

The next day comes.

Fresh tries out their new shower. It’s icy cold and definitely a step down in luxuriousness from their old underground-current-bath, but it’s better than diving into the ocean. She makes a note to add a heating mechanism to this as well, but that’s low priority for now.

Today she instead sets to work, making a crafting area for herself upstairs. For this space, she uses the area to one’s left, when one heads upstairs. She makes another walled room and makes herself a workbench inside of it. Shamrock brings her a new cauldron at her behest. It takes until about the afternoon until the workroom is entirely set-up and ready to go. Then, she allows herself the luxury of making a couple of beach-chairs for the balcony as well as a big table with four seats. Then another small table inside, also with four seats.

“It’s really coming together,” says Jubilee, looking around the area. “Good job.”

“Are you feeling better now, Jubilee?” asks Fresh, leaning down to ask them quietly.

“Sure,” says Jubilee, shrugging. Fresh beams with delight, but stops herself from asking Jubilee what the issue was to begin with. Best let it be. Maybe they were just having a bad day or two. “Sleepover tonight?” they ask. Fresh clutches her heart and pretends to die. Jubilee sighs and just walks away, leaving her behind where she lays ‘dead’ on the floor.

For the rest of the evening, Fresh starts making their shelves. But she doesn’t manage to finish. They have a lot of shelves this time. This store is twice as big as their old one. Honestly, she’s a little overwhelmed with how to fill them all.

Basil and Shamrock return with their dinner and since the weather is so nice, they all sit outside on the balcony and eat together. It’s very enjoyable, not only with each other’s company and because of the peaceful sights and sounds of the ocean, but also because of the ‘show’ of the hectic scuffle that is the beach, as even in the evening, adventuring parties are busy at work grinding crabs.

After that, Fresh calls it a night and gets ready for bed, making a point out of it to squeeze Jubilee a lot when they have their sleepover. Deviously, she secretly closes Jubilee’s heater that night, so that they’ll have no choice but to stay trapped in her grip. She does her best not to cackle like an evil witch as her plan comes to fruition and she feels Jubilee pressing themselves back against her front later that night.

The next day comes.

Shelves. There are so many shelves. Dozens of them. Hundreds, even. “Rod ‘A’ goes into slot ‘A’,” says Fresh in a monotone, bored voice, sticking two pieces of metal together. “Rod ‘B’ goes into slot ‘B’,” says Fresh, sticking two pieces of metal together. “Rod ‘C’ -”

This goes on for the entire day.

There are a lot of shelves.

Fresh runs around later that night, mumbling about rods and staring at the walls until she eventually gets thrown into bed by Shamrock. She dreams about getting lost in a labyrinth made up entirely out of empty shelves that night.

The next day comes. Today, she makes the kitchen, which she has been excited about. It’s between the outer wall of her workshop and the large balcony-door. The stove is already there and hooked up. She spends her day making a large cooling-cabinet for them to keep all of their provisions and drinks in, but also makes a small hot one next to the stove too, for any things that need to be quickly warmed up like tea or coughee or bread-rolls for breakfast.

Coughee is a bit of a luxury item here, unfortunately. Mush-mushes, whose caps are the primary ingredient, aren’t so common here. So a single cap costs easily four times what it would have in the west or the north and they certainly aren’t ‘fresh’. She decides that her friends are worth it though and makes several batches of the dried powder for them to keep in storage. If they sell any, then only as an expensive luxury item. Teas seemed to be more common here in this region.

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Deciding that today is her day to spend time with Shamrock, she ‘forces’ him to help her in the kitchen and the two of them spend a good chunk of the day processing hundreds of coconuts that they had in a giant basket by the balcony.

The coconut-water they extract into glass flasks and put into cold-storage. It could be used for all sorts of cooking recipes or for ice-cream or even just to drink as is. It’s very refreshing. The coconut-meat, they mash into a pulp. Fresh decides this would be great for soaps and shampoos, so she puts some of it to the side for Basil. The rest of the pulp, they use to bake a mountain of coconut-cookies, cakes and pastries.

It’s a daunting sight. She has no idea how they’re going to eat it all before it goes bad. But she and Shamrock fight their way through, making a considerable dent in the land-mass as Jubilee and Basil stand together off to the side and watch in curious horror.

The snacks, with a little extra salt, can all be made shelf-stable. So she makes several more batches, packing them into small boxes. The first of their new wares. These would go great with a nice drink for anyone sitting outside on the beach. Same with the coconut water.

She places some cooling cabinets downstairs, the ornate kind with glass windows and starts filling them up with teas, using herbs that Basil procures for her, and coconut-water.

The rest of the day passes and the next day comes.

Today, Fresh is making the special cooling-cabinet for beneath the ‘beach sales’ window, behind the counter. It’s waist-high and sits just below the window. There is a line of empty, rectangular metal-buckets that the ice-cream is going to go into. Basil stands outside of the open window, looking in.

“Can you see everything?” asks Fresh.

Basil looks down at the little signs that are adorning each of the metal-buckets. “Coconut,” she nods, reading the first sign. “Dried apples,” she reads. “…Crab?” Basil crosses her arms. “I don’t think crab ice-cream is going to do so well.”

Fresh sighs. “I don’t know what else to do with all of the crab-meat, Basil,” sighs Fresh. “There’s so much of it!”

Basil looks around, making sure no crabs are sneaking up on her. “There are a lot of crabs, what can I say…” Fresh frowns. “Maybe you can dry it?” she suggests. “Dry it, add some seasonings. We can sell it as ready-made travel provisions for the dungeon.”

Fresh gasps. “You’re the best, Basil!” she says, running upstairs to start doing exactly that. She throws the bucket of crab ice-cream out. Not even Shamrock wants it. She spends the rest of the day processing crab-meat into dried provisions. Jubilee, meanwhile, has been outside in the city, drumming up interest in the business.

The next day comes. Fresh sets up the shopping-carts inside of the store, to the right of the door. Basil is stocking the shelves with the items that Fresh has made, as well as with a large assortment of her own. The priestess has been busy at work, making an entire range of coconut scented creams, soaps, shampoos and everything else imaginable. Jubilee meanwhile has made more of their tote-bags, as well as drawing up tailoring plans for bathing-suits made up out of a blend of cotton and crystal-drakonium. Shamrock, not being allowed to make his little slimes here, instead helps Fresh build the deck outside, in front of the front door. They put up several beach-chairs, tables and umbrellas outside.

The latter object, Fresh has to explain as they don’t seem to be a really common thing in this world. But all of them are convinced with the idea and the demonstration and she ends up making several smaller ones for their wares as well.

The next day comes.

It’s all very exhausting, but the store is really coming together. The shelves are filling up and while their assortment is still a little bare-bones, there isn’t much empty space left. Fresh only needs to find a new ‘series’ of equipment that she can make, as well as to find a use for the gross monkey-paws that they still have laying around and they’re going to be ready to open any day now.

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