Chapter 250: 251: Up for debate

The four of them sit around the inside table, staring at the mangled teddy-bear that they had placed atop it. Despite lifting it up and setting it away from themselves several times, the bear keeps dragging itself forward as it shuffles straight towards Jubilee. One of its beady eyes hanging just as loosely from a thread, as its disconnected, tattered arm that only remains in place because of some fluff that has been knotted up with gunk and some twigs.

“It kind of smells,” remarks Basil, tilting her head and watching it shuffle back towards Jubilee with its arms held open, as if it were expecting a hug. Fresh nods in solidarity with the little thing, feeling its pain as it gets rejected for the dozenth time.

“Why the fuck is it walking?” asks Jubilee, pressing their palm against its face to hold it away as they turn their head to stare at Fresh.

“It’s a bear, Jubilee,” explains Fresh. “Bears can walk.”

Jubilee stares at her for a moment, letting out what might be the longest sigh Fresh has ever heard come from them. “Basil,” says Jubilee, annoyed. “Hit her.”

Basil blinks, staring at Jubilee and then over at Fresh. “Me?”

“You’re the closest person and somebody really needs to,” remarks Jubilee.

“Please don’t hit me, Basil,” says Fresh, looking nervously at the priestess, unsure if she’s going to do it or not. Basil shrugs and lifts her tea-cup to take a drink instead.

“I mean, why the fuck is the stuffed bear walking when it clearly couldn’t walk before?” asks Jubilee, annoyed. They press a finger against the bear’s forehead, pushing it down. The bear falls onto its bottom and is trapped there as Jubilee squishes it down.

Fresh leans in. “Jubilee! Don’t be mean to the bear!”

“The bear is creepy as fuck!” yells Jubilee. “Why is it alive?! It wasn’t alive when you made it!”

Fresh frowns, pushing Jubilee’s hand away as she picks up the oddly damp bear with both hands and runs her fingers over its fur, reminiscing about the strong feelings she had while making this. “We made it together, Jubilee. Remember?” she asks, looking at it. The bear turns its head to look at her, but then it turns back, reaching out for Jubilee from across the table.

“It’s breaking my heart,” remarks Basil.

“It’s probably fucking haunted,” says Jubilee. “Do a ghost check.”

Fresh shakes her head. “I think it was always uh…” She tilts the bear around at an angle, looking at it. “- ’alive’,” she finishes. “I remember it nodding to me,” explains Fresh.

Jubilee’s fingers tap against the table. Fresh recognizes the sound as one of clear agitation. Jubilee does this a lot when they’re bothered. “And you didn’t think this was an important detail to mention? That the stuffed-bear moved?”

“I thought I was just seeing things,” she explains. “I didn’t think it was really, you know, moving,” replies Fresh, ogling the little bear as its legs wiggle in the air.

“Maybe it’s like with the sheep?” asks Basil. “From the west? They always had a certain uh… liveliness to them.”

“They were fun,” says Shamrock, perhaps just wanting to say something. Breakfast is canceled today, past a few ready-made things that they could pull out of the kitchen and eat.

“Wasn’t that because of the mountain-crystals though?” asks Jubilee. “This little fuck is nothing but stuffing and mold.”

“Maybe the mold is magical?” suggests Basil.

Jubilee glares at her. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and I think less of you as a person for having said it.”

“Sounds like someone needs a hug,” suggests Basil, taking another sip of her tea and nodding to Fresh. Fresh nods back and sets the bear down. The two of them watch as it makes its next approach towards Jubilee. “It sure does like you,” says the priestess.

“It’s Jubilee’s bear, after all,” says Fresh.

Basil smiles. “It’s cute that a grump like you has a teddy-bear,” she says. “I didn’t know you had such a delicate side, Jubilee.”

“I didn’t ask for it and I left it behind to be burnt,” says Jubilee, making a point out of it as they cross their arms. The bear walks across the table towards them, standing at the edge. It lifts its one good arm open towards them, like a child hoping to be picked up.

“Jubileeeee~!” complains Fresh. “Think about how hard it worked to find you!” she says, staring at the thing. Not only must the creature somehow have managed to escape their house in the north unscathed, but it also managed to leave the city, wander through the forest, perhaps straight towards the west and then, after their departure, straight towards the east. Since that day, it must have been outside in the elements, fighting its way through the storms and the rain to get back to its owner.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about,” says Jubilee. They reach across the table, grabbing the fruit bowl. Haphazardly, they turn it over, throwing all the fruits down as they shove the bear back and trap it beneath the upside-down bowl.

“Jubilee!” complains Fresh.

Jubilee slams both of their open palms against the table. “Don’t you get it, you idiots?!” shouts Jubilee, looking at the three of them. They lift a finger, pointing at the trapped bear. “If this fucky thing managed to find us, then how do we know someone else can’t?” they ask. Fresh and Basil look at each other, apparently only now realizing this. “How do we know this is even your magic?” asks Jubilee. “What if somebody looted it from the north, enchanted it with some kind of scrying spell and is using it to track us?!” asks Jubilee.

Basil sets down her tea-cup, looking over to Shamrock now instead of Fresh. The two of them nod, having come to an unspoken understanding.

“I’ll get the oven ready,” says Basil, getting up and sliding her chair away.

Fresh blinks. “We don’t have time for breakfast anymore, Basil,” she says, watching as the priestess throws some wood into the metal stove, looking around for the fire-starter.

Basil shakes her head. “We need to destroy it,” she explains.

“What?”

“The bear,” says Basil. “It has to go. If Jubilee’s suspicion is right, this could be dangerous,” says the priestess. Fresh’s eyes widen in horror as she looks at the little, trapped bear that had undergone a greater adventure than any of them to find its home and now, having finally arrived, it will get its reward.

Basil strikes the fire-starter together, igniting a small blaze inside of the oven.

Fresh jumps up to her feet, placing her hands on the table as her chair slides back. “You can’t!” she says, horrified. “You can’t just kill it!”

“It’s not alive,” says Jubilee, shaking their head.

“Look at it!” argues Fresh, pointing at the bear that is trying to lift up the bowl, but unable to as the glass thing is far too heavy for it to even budge. “It’s wrong!”

Basil obliges and watches the bear for a while. The sad expression that is already painted on her face stays just the same, before she turns to look at Fresh. “This is one of those times,” she says. “Remember what we talked about? Back when we arrived here in the east?”

“It’s innocent!” argues Fresh, starting to walk around the table. “We can’t j -” A large hand grabs her shoulder from the side. She turns her head to look at Shamrock who is stopping her from leaving.

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“- So was the hero,” says Basil. “But you did what you had to do.” The blood leaves Fresh’s face. “Shamrock! Let me go!” argues Fresh. Shamrock does not let her go, simply shaking his head once. “That’s such a horrible thing to say!” yells Fresh at Basil, feeling her eyes become wet. “I didn’t want to do that!” she argues. “JUBILEE!” she yells, crying now.

Jubilee doesn’t respond, sitting there with crossed arms.

“I don’t want to do this,” says Basil, walking towards the table with a hurt expression on her face. “You know that I don’t.”

“I won’t forgive you!” yells Fresh, trying to fight her way out of Shamrock’s grip. “Or you!” she yells back at him, crying. “Ever!”

Shamrock is as quiet as always, but now, so is Basil, apart from the emotions present in her throat and eyes that she shares with Fresh, but which she tries to suppress. After standing there quietly for a second, Basil has come to her decision and lifts the glass bowl up, grabbing the bear.

“JUBILEE!” howls Fresh. “I MADE HIM FOR YOU!” she yells, far beyond ugly-crying now, watching as Basil carries the bear away. In that instant, she feels everything that she had felt back then, during that dark night in which she had gifted her companion the bear as a sincere token of her true friendship, fighting through the terrors of her violently shaking heart and resolve to do so. That flood of emotions, that flood of uncertainty, that panic of doing the wrong thing and of being rejected, all of those sensations return to her, but now in a painfully different way.

Unlike the first time, now, she is being rejected. This time, she is doing the wrong thing, at least in the eyes of everyone else. Droplets strike against the wood of the table, thudding down as the only other ambient sound present in the room, apart from the crackling of the growing fire in which the bad-thing hisses.

The cosmic joke is, however, that the bad-thing is also present in her tears. The bad-thing is everywhere. It has found their home, it has found them. Even after they had gone with a lightning pace away from the north, away from the west, away from the core of the forest where she had felt it last, it has, like the bear, found them and the bad-thing has set a trap.

“Basil,” says Jubilee. “Leave the bear.”

“You can’t be serious?!” yells Basil, clearly upset.

Jubilee raises an eyebrow. “It’s my bear. Leave it.”

“This was your idea!”

“I changed my mind,” says Jubilee.

“Because she cried?!” yells the priestess, clearly beyond vexation. “She always cries!” she exclaims, pointing at Fresh.

Jubilee nods. “You’re crying too.”

“Because I’m scared!” yells Basil. “I want us to be safe!”

“Understandable. Give me back my bear,” repeats Jubilee, tapping against the table.

Basil lets out a frustrated half-scream, clutching her hair with one hand. In an instant, she turns around towards the oven and arcs her arm back and Fresh knows that in that time-slowed second, that it’s too late. Jubilee won’t be able to get up in time to stop her and she certainly can’t. Shamrock has chosen his side of the debate and Basil has chosen hers.

The bad-thing hisses and Basil’s arm moves.

The priestess falls to the ground in front of the oven, hiding her face down in her knees as she breaks down and cries, like any mentally healthy adult would do in the middle of the kitchen, before going to work for the day. As she wraps her arms around her legs, and sits there, Fresh watches as the bear turns around and stares up at Jubilee, who has scooted their chair away.

Fresh expects them, it being Jubilee and all, to walk over and snatch the bear away. But instead, Jubilee stops next to Basil and grabs the traumatized priestess from the side in an unexpected hug. The bear joins in, finally reaching Jubilee.

His part being done, Shamrock lowers his hand, letting go of her and the two of them look at each other for an emotionally confusing moment, before turning back to look at the unusual scene unfolding before themselves, knowing that right now, neither of them belong to it.

Razmatazz

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