Chapter 268: 269: I, bakaw

It is late at night and Fresh is sitting upright in her bed, staring across and over the waist-high, stone walls that separates her bed from Basil’s and from Shamrocks. Her eyes wander over Basil’s thrashing form, over to Shamrock’s bed against the opposite wall.

But she isn’t looking at him.

She’s looking at the wooden figure of a chicken that he had carved. It stands there on his nightstand, looking at her, mockingly, judgmentally.

“Bakaw…” mutters Fresh under her breath.

“Sleep,” says Shamrock, turning his head towards her, but not getting up.

Fresh points at the chicken, not wanting to speak too much, so that she doesn’t wake up Basil. Shamrock follows her finger with his gaze towards the chicken and then stares at it and then back at her for a moment. Lifting his arm, he turns it around so that it looks the other way.

This brings a new problem with it, however. She might now be free of the chicken’s wrathful glare, but… well… Fresh blinks and then snorts. “Chicken-butt.”

“Sleep,” repeats Shamrock, placing a large finger to his helmet in a shushing movement. Fresh presses down her smirk, laying back down in her bed and covering herself up with her blanket.

Now, the waist high, stone walls separate them again. But that doesn’t help. She knows that it’s there. Just standing there on the nightstand with its back turned to her.

Fresh does her best to press her smile closed, trying not to laugh.

“Sleep,” says the heavy voice a third time, as if he had known even without seeing her that she was still laying there and fighting the chicken-giggles.

Doing her best to be an adult, Fresh closes her eyes and thinks of other things. She thinks of spring days both bad and good. She thinks of the long, dreary summer and its bitter end. She thinks of the mild autumn that they now find themselves in and before her thoughts can get to what the winter to come might be like, she finds herself asleep without so much as a single feather in any of her dreams.

Fresh wakes up.

There is a noise. Given the slackness of her body and the weight of her eyes, she feels like she has been asleep for several hours already.

Footsteps.

Fresh listens intently. Those are Jubilee’s feet. She knows the sounds of each of her friend’s feet against several different surfaces, both barefoot and with shoes. Well, except Shamrock. Her sound catalogue of him is always only with shoes.

Anyway, is that weird?

She blinks, squinting her eyes to get the dew out of them.

It might be weird. Maybe that’s one of those things that she just shouldn’t tell the others about. It sounds like Jubilee is getting a drink, she can hear the cooling cabinet and the rattling of bottles.

She hear’s a quiet ‘will you fuck off’ come from the kitchen and she envisions Jubilee shaking their leg, trying to get the clingy bear off of themselves. The bear is likely offended that they had to leave the bed at this late hour.

“Fuck’s sake,” they sigh, closing the cabinet again. Fresh assumes that they’re going to go back to their room now, but instead, an oddity occurs. Jubilee’s footsteps come closer to their beds and in a secret moment, she hopes that the bear is going to share Jubilee with her for the rest of the night, but instead, Jubilee makes a beeline towards Shamrock’s bed.

There is a slight sound of wood scooting over wood as something is turned a few times. This goes on for a minute and Fresh just lies there, listening, until eventually Jubilee walks back away towards their room.

Blinking, she sits upright and looks.

The chicken is staring right her way, its beady, black, soulless eyes gaze her way, hungrily, angrily, terrifyingly.

Fresh yelps quietly and hides herself back under her blanket and pillow. The chicken is mad at her for laughing at its butt. In her sleep dazed state of being, she’s absolutely sure of it. At least until she falls back to sleep and forgets all about it.

The next morning comes and Fresh finds herself running around the upstairs area with wet hair, having just gotten out of the shower.

Standing in the kitchen, she now cooks a big pot of tea. “Green or yellow?” she asks Basil.

“Let’s do yellow today,” says the priestess, yawning and leaning back on her chair.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” asks Fresh, getting the bag of yellow tea-leaves.

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Basil, rubbing her eyes. “I had weird dreams.”

Jubilee sighs, sitting down at the table. “That’s to be expected when you spend all day cooped up with these people,” they say, shaking their head.

Basil plays with her empty tea-cup. “I think you’re a part of ‘these people’, you know?”

Fresh listens to the two of them get into their usual early morning spat and smiles. The two of them really care about each other, it’s really cute how they always bicker like an old married couple.

Her gaze rises up past Shamrock, who is on egg-duty today, towards the curtains that Jubilee had made. Fresh’s eyes narrow as she sees them. The chickens. Jubilee had detailed the curtains with dozens of chickens.

Lowering her gaze, she looks at the eggs that Shamrock is frying up for breakfast. Chicken eggs.

The hairs on her neck stand on end as her eyes slowly turn towards the side of her head, which moves just as stiffly as the rest of her frozen body, as she looks back behind herself towards their beds, towards the chicken which is still there on Shamrock’s nightstand. Except now, it is turned their way.

Fresh yelps, grabbing Shamrock and hiding behind him.

“What’s wrong?” asks Basil, getting up. “Did you burn yourself?” she asks, concerned.

“The chicken!” yells Fresh, pointing at the wooden chicken. “It’s haunted!”

Jubilee sighs. “I don’t know if I can keep living like this.”

Basil turns her head. “…The chicken?”

“The chicken!” repeats Fresh, shaking Shamrock’s armor beneath her fingers.

“Eggs,” says the man.

Fresh blinks, looking at him, realizing that she was getting in the way of his cooking. “Sorry,” she apologizes and then steps to the side, deciding to hide behind Jubilee instead.

“Basil!” yells Fresh from across the table at the priestess, as she is now still hiding behind Jubilee. “There’s a ghost in the chicken!”

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Basil sits back down, sighing. “I really don’t think that’s likely,” she says. “Are you okay? Do you need to sleep more before we open?” she asks.

“A good whack over the head is what she needs,” says Jubilee, pulling her arm off of themselves. “Maybe we’ll knock whatever’s loose back into place?”

“Bakaw!” protests Fresh.

“Mhm,” nods Basil, taking a long sip of her tea. “Bakaw.”

“Bakaw,” says Shamrock, setting down the plate of eggs onto the table. Eggs that are clearly superior to the ones that she makes, but that isn’t important right now. Fresh focuses her attention on the chicken.

“I’m not gonna say it,” says Jubilee.

“You really should,” argues Basil. “But then again, maybe having fun for the third time in your life would cause you to explode?”

“I fucking wish it would,” sighs Jubilee. “Will you let go?!” Feeling herself being removed, Fresh, like a parasite, clamps down tighter on her host, draining them of their warmth.

“I don’t trust it,” says Fresh, still not having lost the staring contest with the chicken.

Shamrock walks around and grabs her, pulling her free from Jubilee and setting her down onto her chair. “Trust it,” he says.

“What the fuck are we even talking about here?” asks Jubilee. “Is anyone ever going to acknowledge that she’s clearly hysteric and delusional?”

“Oh hush,” says Basil. “We haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“That’s sort of my point,” says Jubilee, lifting an eyebrow before taking a drink of their coughee.

Fresh stares at Jubilee, considering their actions from last night. “Hey Jubilee? How come you messed with the chicken last night?”

Jubilee coughs, setting their cup of coughee down and hitting their chest. They shoot a glare her way, but then shrug as if nothing had happened. “It was facing the wrong way,” they say, grabbing a slice of toast.

“I turned it,” explains Shamrock, lifting a hand. “Scared,” he says, pointing at Fresh.

“You were scared of a wooden chicken?” asks Jubilee, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, well, no. Forget I asked.”

“Chickens can be super scary, Jubilee!” argues Fresh. “When I got to this world, I got attacked by a chicken!”

“Sounds about right,” says Jubilee. “That’s the natural order at work. Chickens are higher than you on the predation ladder.”

“Now that I think about it,” says Basil, spreading some butter onto a piece of bread and then lightly salting it. “I remember you always playing with those glass-chickens, back in the north,” says the priestess, looking up towards Jubilee.

“They were facing the wrong way,” explains Jubilee, tapping against the table. “Have some fucking respect for the chickens, you slackers,” they bark. “They’re hard-working animals.”

Fresh scratches her cheek. “Do you like chickens, Jubilee?”

“I appreciate them more than I do you three.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Basil. “Tell it to someone who believes it.”

“I’ll tell it to the fucking chicken after I shove it up your -”

Fresh sighs, tuning out of this morning’s conversation that has drifted into the usual direction. Basil and Jubilee continue bickering with each other and Shamrock is just as delighted as always to eat real food.

She, meanwhile, stares at the chicken as she bites into her egg-toast, making sure not to break eye-contact with it. She has to assert her dominance over it, after all.

Razmatazz

Bakaw

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