Chapter 286: 287: Eastwind

Sand. Sand always gets everywhere here and it’s been driving her crazy for a while, honestly. Sure, it’s to be expected while living on the beach. But there is sand on the floor downstairs, despite their constant sweeping and mopping. There’s sand on the lower shelves. There’s sand on the upper shelves. Perplexingly, there is sand in their jar of flour, upstairs in the kitchen. Somehow, there is just sand everywhere.

Fresh feels her eyes twitching as she steps out of the shower, rubbing her hair dry as her foot steps onto a mound of sand that is at the bottom of the staircase.

She hasn’t really minded the sand at all, until now. It just seemed to be part and parcel of living on the beach. But for whatever reason, as of today, it’s starting to get to her. Just a little. Maybe she’s still on edge because Basil is still unwell, or maybe she’s on edge because of the crusade that is in town, still not having set sail for distant shores for whatever reason, or maybe she just woke up an hour too early and is grumpy because of that. But, for whatever reason, Fresh decides that the sand has to go. Enough is enough.

Heading upstairs, she looks around. Shamrock is off on a dungeon run, before they open for the day and the others are sitting around the table. Basil is still pale in the face, but she seems to be awake at least.

“You think it’s going to scar?” asks Basil.

“Are you stupid?” replies Jubilee. “Of course it’s going to fucking scar. You’re lucky you still have a leg, shit-head.” Basil frowns, looking down at her leg and touching it tenderly, before wincing and lifting her hand back up to her cup of tea. “It’s going to be fine,” says Jubilee, sighing. “A few scars never hurt anybody. Smear some cream on it and it’ll be just as normally ugly as the rest of you.”

“Is it vain of me?” asks Basil, ignoring Jubilee’s quip. “Sorry.”

Jubilee rolls their eyes, perhaps having hoped to incite some kind of reaction from the priestess who is still a little out of it. Fresh, still not having stepped into the room, smiles from the staircase as she watches the two of them.

“You only get one body,” says Jubilee. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting it to be good,” they explain, in an odd and unusually consoling fashion. Jubilee sure has gotten soft, since she met them back in the north.

Basil smiles, sipping her tea. “You’re right. Thank you.”

“Finally someone fucking listens to me,” sighs Jubilee.

“Can you help me with it later?” asks the priestess.

“Degenerate,” says Jubilee dryly, lifting an eyebrow.

Basil lifts her nose. “It’s just my leg, you gremlin. And it hurts. I can’t get myself to touch the area.”

“Yeah, years of religious indoctrination will do that to you,” says Jubilee.

Basil takes her turn to glare at them this time.

“Hey guys,” says Fresh, walking into the room. “We have sand everywhere,” she says, sitting down at the table and pulling the canister of tea over to herself, pouring some into an empty cup.

“We live on the beach,” says Jubilee. “Be glad we aren’t on the other side of the city. By the desert. Fucking red dust gets everywhere.”

“Red dust?” asks Fresh.

“Desert sand,” explains Basil. “It’s much finer and smoother than the beach sand. The wind carries it all around.”

“Ooooh,” says Fresh.

“They say it has healing properties, actually,” says the priestess.

“It’s dirt,” sighs an exasperated Jubilee. “’They’ say a lot of stupid shit.”

Fresh scratches her cheek, taking a sip of her tea after. “The sand?” she asks.

“Mhm,” replies Basil. “A long, long time ago, the east used to be a very fertile area, actually.”

“Really?”

Basil nods. “Sure was. But that was ages and ages ago. Back when the gods were still down on the world.”

“That never happened,” says Jubilee.

“It did!” argues Basil. She points at Fresh. “She saw a dungeon-master! She literally has a patron god! Isn’t that proof enough for you?”

Jubilee raises an eyebrow, looking at Basil and then at Fresh. “She talks to crabs.”

“What’s wrong with talking to crabs?” asks Fresh, setting her cup down and crossing her arms. “I was trying to resolve our problems without violence!”

“I’m saying that you’re as much of a kook as she is,” says Jubilee, pointing back at Basil. “Both of you are nutcases, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Have you ever considered that you might be the one who’s wrong?” asks Basil, taking a long sip of her tea, her eyes tightly closed.

“I have and I dismissed the idea, actually,” states Jubilee.

Fresh laughs, but Basil just sighs again.

“I really wish you’d be more open to my beliefs,” says Basil.

Jubilee takes a sip of their tea, pointing at her with a finger from their tea-cup. “I wish you’d be more open to my disbelief of your beliefs.”

Fresh tilts her head. The two of them sure are odd friends. But she’s still happy that the two of them get along, despite their differences. Basil sets her cup down, grabbing the canister and refills Jubilee’s cup, before pouring the rest into Fresh’s and then her own.

“Anyways guys,” says Fresh. “The sand?”

The two of them look at her and then at each other, before looking back at her.

“What about it?” asks Basil.

“Should we do something about it?” asks Fresh, looking around the room. There’s sand up here too.

“You’re starting a war you can’t win,” states Jubilee, leaning back on their chair. “I say we embrace the desert life-style. Let’s just let the sand take us. We belong to it now.”

“The desert sand or the beach sand?” asks Fresh.

“Does it matter?” replies Jubilee.

“You said it’s different.”

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“I can’t do this every morning,” says Jubilee, sounding very exhausted. “I’m going to lose my will to live.”

“Want to pray together?” asks Basil.

“There. There it is,” states Jubilee. “The last resolve I had to stay here, on this mortal coil, just left me. Blown away like the fucking sand,” they say, blowing over the table and wiping a smear of sand off of it. “Actually. Why the fuck is it so sandy?” they ask, looking around. “It wasn’t this bad a few days ago, was it?”

“I think it’s the wind,” says Basil, looking out to the open balcony. “It’s been picking up for a few weeks now. Ever since that big storm a little while back.”

“Hmm…” Jubilee turns their head. “Weird weather. But sure, whatever. I guess we’ll just sweep?” they suggest. “Maybe we can just close the windows?”

“But then we won’t have any fresh air,” argues Fresh.

Jubilee shrugs, gesturing all around them to the sand. “Pick your poison.”

Fresh follows their gesture with her eyes, looking around the room at all the sand, following a trail of it that leads towards Shamrock’s bed. Towards the wooden chicken.

The wooden chicken?

Chickens are birds.

Birds fly.

They fly in the air.

The air?

Moving air is wind.

Wind?

Wind…

Fresh blinks, looking up from the table as she suddenly realizes something that may or may not be very bad. “Uh, I’m gonna go to the roof for a second,” she says, getting up and scooting her chair back.

“Don’t fucking drag more sand in on your way back,” says Jubilee and Basil nods, looking down at her tea-cup. It seems to have some sand in it.

Hurrying into the workshop, Fresh climbs up the ladder, closing the hatch behind herself as she rushes past their table and chairs, towards the little storage box that Basil has up on the roof. Her plants are all doing very well and the roof is turning into a little oasis, but that isn’t important right now.

Fresh tears open the trunk, digging through the different gardening tools and things until she pulls out the crab-repelling weathervane she had made several weeks ago.

Quality Effect:

-) The metal of the weathervane is resistant to rusting

-) Attracts [Wind]-type monsters

Fresh gulps, realizing something. She realizes that the crab-repelling effect is fairly limited and easy to dampen.

The latter effect however, the wind-monster attraction, is entirely independent of not only any line of sight restrictions, but also of any distance whatsoever…

The wind blows over the house, a powerful surge of it coming from over the east-ward ocean, carrying with it a smell that she can’t quite describe. It reminds her of the smell of the burning ship, that one night. It reminds her of the smells of destruction, of wind and fire, carried over the endless waters from some distant shoreline.

Fresh turns her head, looking out over the ocean. She sees nothing there. But she can’t help but shake the feeling that somewhere, on the far side of the world, something very bad has happened.

Grabbing the weathervane, she rushes down to her workshop and then breaks it as fast as she can with a hammer, before running out to the others, to explain that she might have done something dumb.

“Jubileeee~!” cries Fresh, running out of the workshop, before suddenly stopping, Fresh sticks her tongue out. “Pftbtht~” she blows. She had some sand in her mouth.

Razmatazz

Have I ever told you guys how much fun I have writing the four of them? They work so well off of each other +-+

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