Chapter 231: 232: Beachfront

“Coconut, please!” says the elf, covered in pinchy crab scars. He lays the coins down onto the counter and Fresh nods, grabbing the big, round spoon and dipping it into the rectangle of coconut ice-cream, which is already almost sold out. It’s not even mid-day yet.

Fresh sets the ice-cream onto a waffle-cone, which she had made out of a baked, simple wet batter mixed in with a generous drizzle of honey for color and flavor. They’re made in a custom ‘cone tray’ that she cobbled together out of some iron. Handing back to him, she watches as he returns to his group, sitting down in a circle on their beach chairs.

(Fresh) sold: 1 [Ice-cream]{Coconut}(Excellent)

for

[{9} Obols] !

“It’s so good!” says an excited orc, who is a little too big for their chairs, lifting her hands up into the air.

“You’re gonna get fat, eating that stuff,” says a man to their side, drinking an unsweetened cold tea.

“And you’re gonna die old and bitter, if that’s all you ever drink,” replies the orc, crossing her arms.

Crystal-drakonium coated wheels roll around behind her as someone pushes their cart through towards the counter and begins unloading their selection of items down in front of Jubilee. It took a little while until people started ‘getting’ the concept of the carts. But after the first ones started rolling, everyone else seemed to catch on.

“I really like these bracelets,” says a voice from behind the shelves, as Jubilee starts tallying the price of the man’s purchase.

“Look! If you take four of these, you can get eight intellect!”

“Wow…” comes an excited gasp from next to the voice. Hearing this, Jubilee flashes her a look and Fresh quickly averts her gaze.

Sure, she could wear a bracelet that would double her intelligence in the blink of an eye. But she doesn’t like that idea. What if that makes her too smart? What if ‘smart Fresh’ is a total jerk and her friends end up hating her? No. Best not to play around with it. Life is going pretty well as it is right now.

Grabbing her bottle of coconut-water, she takes a long drink and sighs, it’s so refreshing. Someone clears their throat in front of her.

“Ah! Sorry!” she says, realizing she was ignoring their next customer. “What would you like?” she asks, looking at the familiar face. Tarja the fairy. “Tarja!” beams Fresh excitedly. “How are you?” she asks. “I missed you guys!”

Tarja smiles and waves back at her. “Hey, we’re doing good,” she says. “It’s been a little weird here. It’s an adjustment, you know?”

“I bet,” says Fresh, preparing a tiny scoop of ice-cream off of a broken chip of waffle for her. “Has anyone been mean to you? Do you need any help?” she asks. Tarja shakes her head.

“I just wanted to stop by, say hi and look around,” she says.

Fresh nods, gesturing over her shoulder for the fairy to just fly in. She hands her the tiny bit of ice-cream. “Here, try this,” she says.

“It’s nice seeing you again! Hi Jubilee!” says Tarja.

“Fuck off,” says Jubilee, looking over their shoulder for a second.

“Thanks!” says Tarja, taking the ice-cream and flying inside. Fresh beams, looking out over the beach. The sitting-area seems to be working just as intended. The deck is slowly filling itself up with people. The chairs and tables are all long-since full and now people are sitting on the edge of the wooden platform, with their feet in the sand. Everyone is either just sitting back and enjoying a minute off of the anarchy of the crab-beach in quiet, or they’re talking loudly with their friends and companions, drinking their drinks and eating their snacks to recharge.

This seems to have a beacon effect of sorts. People saw everyone gathering here and sitting around, lounging in the shade with their refreshments and this had enticed more people to come by and look. They too sat down and took a rest, likely having been crab-hunting for much of the night. Then others came and saw them sitting around. It’s a cycle that feeds itself and results in excellent free-marketing for them. This is their first day open and the store is already as busy as their old ones were during strong hours.

Location really is everything, isn’t it? Not just being near the dungeon or the crab-beach, but just by being on the beach itself. There is so much foot-traffic here. It’s really fortunate that this house was available for them to have.

Someone winces to the side, drawing in a sharp breath of air and Fresh looks, watching as a laughing elf rubs some of Basil’s sun-burn lotion onto a man’s frighteningly red back. “You’re such a wimp,” laughs the elf, slapping him once and leaving a white hand-print on his back.

The man pulls in a quick breath of air. “I’m from the north, we’re very sensitive to sunlight!” he says. Fresh quickly straightens up, turning to look away from the window.

“Hey! Do you have a dressing room?” asks someone by the counter. A dark-elf.

Jubilee thinks for a second. “Uh, no, but you can use that,” they say, pointing to the left, towards the downstairs, small storage-room.

“Okay, thanks!” says the dark-elf, running to the room with a bunch of sun-dresses.

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Jubilee turns back to her. “Hey, goo-brain. Add a dressing room to the to-do list.” Fresh nods. She isn’t sure about the hygienics of bathing-wear and public dressing rooms, but things like that don’t seem to be a large concern in this world. She decides not to worry about it.

“I’d like two scoops of the sweet-fruit one and a coconut water, please,” says a voice in front of her. Fresh, having lost track of her attention again, jumps back to work, serving the next customer.

Occasionally, a crab sneaks up towards the deck, but Shamrock doesn’t even have to take care of them, as more than one idle adventurer is ready to shoot a spell or an arrow at them from their beach-chairs.

“This is the life,” sighs a caster, putting his feet up, a bottle of coconut water in his hands. His finger is still smoking from the bolt of lightning that he had shot out to the side a second ago, without really even looking at the encroaching crab.

Tarja eventually comes back, stopping to talk to Jubilee for a few minutes. Fresh hears from the conversation that the fairies are all doing well enough, but the three groups have little contact with each other now. The combat-fairies have apparently been grinding day and night, almost obsessively and are slowly becoming a real force to be reckoned with. Given their ability to fly, the crabs are entirely helpless against them. As for the fairies working under Tarja, they’re running an ‘off the books’ clothing repair-stand, also down the beach, but in the other direction. People apparently had many fashion-accidents around the very snippy claws of the crabs and on-spot repairs are needed every day.

The fairies who wanted to open a clinic apparently managed to convince a local alchemist to take them all in as trainees. The condition is however that all six of them only get the pay of one, single human, all together, which Fresh thinks is horrible. But the fairies are making it work somehow, opting to fight their way through until they are trained enough to open their own healing practice. The greatest relief to her is that so far, none of them have gone ‘missing’, keeping hawkishly sharp eyes on each other.

There is a small buzz about them amongst the public and Fresh notices as much, listening to the people outside when Tarja flies past, waving goodbye to her. But the scenes aren’t as dramatic as she was expecting them to be.

“Hey!” says the wizard with the smoking finger, who had zapped the crab before. “Aren’t you a fairy?”

“Sure am,” says Tarja, hovering in the air, turned half-way around.

He rubs his long, gray beard that runs over his shirtless chest, staring at her quizzically. “Never seen you guys off of the mountain before.”

Tarja shrugs. “It sucked there. So we left,” she explains.

The wizard stares at her for a moment. Then he just shrugs too, leaning back again and closing his eyes, apparently convinced. “Fair enough.”

That’s essentially it. Nobody really asks any hugely dangerous questions. People here seem very content in a lot of ways. It must be the sunshine, thinks Fresh.

The rest of the day runs like that. The deck is full the entire time and all of their carts are gone, being pushed by people running through the aisles. Fresh’s snacks get a lot of high praise, as do Basil’s creams from all of those who are in need of them. Jubilee’s clothes also receive a lot of excited gasps and squeaks and whispers. Fresh can tell that Jubilee is pretending to ignore it, like they aren’t hearing them. But looking at their posture, leaning in slightly over the counter, she can tell that they’re listening very intently to every kind word being said.

Only Shamrock’s section doesn’t seem to get the attention that she thinks it deserves, which makes her a little sad, but the man doesn’t seem to notice. Fresh makes a mental note that when she cooks dinner today, to make him an extra large portion. Just in case.

Razmatazz

-) Tomorrow we get some numbers again and then... well, don't worry about it   =)

-) New shameful Fresh picture up on the latest patreon chapter

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