Chapter 309: 310: Do you know?

“Muffins!” yells a loud, jovial sounding man out into the market-square, outside of the dungeon. “Get your muffins!” He doesn’t seem to have any takers though. People are just walking right past him to and from the dungeon.

“I want a muffin!” exclaims Fresh, running over excitedly towards him as if his call had been meant for her personally.

“Stop wasting our money,” sighs Jubilee, walking up after her.

“It’s not a waste, Jubilee!” argues Fresh, putting down some coins and pointing at a big, blue-speckled muffin that she likes the look of. “It’s breakfast!”

(Fresh) bought [Blueberry-Muffin]{Masterwork}

for

[{20} Obols] !

Jubilee rolls their eyes.

“Sounds like someone didn’t have breakfast!” says the man jokingly behind the stall, handing Fresh her muffin. Jubilee turns their head, glaring at the baker through the slits of their mask. “Oh!” says the man, lifting his hands. “I know that look!” he says playfully. Fresh bites into her muffin, turning her gaze back and forth between the two of them.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” sighs Jubilee.

“Not without a muffin you aren’t!” says the man. “No grumps allowed in my part of the city!” Fresh nods. She likes this guy.

Jubilee waves them off, shaking their head. “Fuck off, muffin-man.”

Fresh chews on her muffin, staring at the large muffin that the vendor is holding out over his counter to Jubilee. “On the house!” he sings.

Jubilee stands there, their arms crossed, looking at him and at the muffin. “You’re in a stall. Can you even afford a house?”

“Jubilee!” says Fresh. “Don’t be rude to the muffin-man!” she protests, looking back at the stranger. “I’m sorry. Jubilee’s just cranky without breakfast.” She nudges Jubilee’s boot with hers, nodding towards the muffin.

“That’s what you get for skipping breakfaaaaast~!” says the man in a sing-song voice, turning the muffin from left to right. “You know you want it.”

Jubilee sighs, taking the muffin.

“Thank you!” says Fresh to the fun salesman.

“Don’t forget to have breakfast every day!” says the man, waving to them as they leave.

Fresh smiles, biting into her muffin again. It’s very good. She chews, staring at it for a moment. She could eat it all now… before they meet up with Basil and Shamrock. Fresh slowly continues chewing, looking down at Jubilee who has still been wearing their mask, despite not needing to in the central-city.

“Fucking muffin-man…” mutters Jubilee. “What’s his fucking game?” they ask, looking at the muffin.

“It’s just a muffin, Jubilee,” says Fresh. “You really do get cranky when you don’t eat.”

Jubilee sighs, lifting up their mask to take a bite of their muffin. Despite the blue of the muffin contrasting the red of their face, despite their unusual stature and appearance in the middle of the city, during this early morning hour, nobody really cares.

“Hey, Jubilee?” asks Fresh, still not having eaten any more of her muffin. She wants to share it with the others.

“What?” asks her friend, chewing on their mouthful.

Fresh thinks for a moment, trying to find her words as she squishes the muffin in her hands with her fingers. It helps her think. “How come you guys lied to me about this place?” she asks as they walk down a long, curvy street to go back home. “I’m not mad. I just… I dunno, I wanna know,” she explains, feeling Jubilee’s questioning look.

Jubilee keeps walking, taking another bite of their breakfast, perhaps to buy themselves some time. But those few precious seconds of silence-bought come to an end quickly and then there is nothing left for them but to answer her.

“Do we have to talk about it here? This early in the morning?” they ask.

Fresh frowns, realizing that Jubilee had found a way out after all. She could force them, of course, by pushing the topic more. But… she looks down at the muffin in her own hands. That would go against the muffin-codex. No grumps allowed in this part of the city. She shakes her head. “No. It’s okay,” she says. She shouldn’t pry anyways. She had decided back then to let her friends come to her at their own pace.

Jubilee nods and bites into their muffin again and the two of them go back towards the adventurer’s guild.

“Remember what we talked about, back in the west?” asks Jubilee. “Down in the basement?”

“We talked about a lot of stuff there, Jubilee,” says Fresh, surprised that they’ve kept on talking. But she supposes that they’re referring to back when she made the flying sheep and they had been worried about her applying such a property to a human-sized object.

Jubilee sighs. “We’re dead weight,” they say. “You don’t need any of us.”

“Jubilee!” says Fresh, surprised at her friend saying something like that. “That’s not true and you know it!” she argues.

“Pragmatically speaking,” replies Jubilee, shrugging as they walk. “You’re basically the store. Any of us three could be replaced with some other schmuck and the day by day would run just fine,” they explain. “You’re the only thing that ‘needs’ to stay for the store to work.”

“The only reason I want to do a store is so that we can all live together,” says Fresh. “I don’t care if we have a store. We could also go to the dungeon or we could learn to make muffins too!” she argues. “The point is that we’re doing it together.” She picks at the unbitten side of her muffin. “I thought you’d know that by now.”

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“Things like that -” they start, ignoring her stated feelings. “Things like that are a one-way ticket to this place, even if you can’t beat a dungeon,” explains Jubilee. “There are talent scouts everywhere outside, picking out the best to bring them here.” Fresh frowns. “That’s why it’s so nice here,” explains Jubilee. “Because people like us, like Basil, Shamrock and myself, we’re not welcome,” they finish, looking down at their muffin, as if considering throwing it away.

Jubilee shrugs and keeps walking, biting into it again instead.

Feeling a little confused, Fresh watches her friend walk on ahead for a few steps. So it was similar to what she thought. They had been afraid that if she knew how nice this place was, that if she knew that every dream of hers for the world could be found here, that she would leave them with packed bags to come here and to start over without them.

Is the core of their friendship really so fragile? That they’d lack this kind of trust in her, to stay true to her deepest promises of staying together with them for as long as she can live in this world? That she’d leave them behind?

Fresh stands there, half-way left behind, as she realizes that that is exactly what they feared. To be left behind again.

Jubilee had been left behind by their old party and family after whatever fate might have once befallen them. Basil had been left behind by her dearest companion and friend, after his grisly murder. Shamrock had been left behind by the people who gave him both origin and meaning after the witches and their followers all but left to the south.

Only she herself has never really been left behind and perhaps that is exactly why she was unable to really foresee this clear core of her friends’ feelings.

“Hey!” barks Jubilee, snapping their free fingers. “Stop dozing off in the middle of the street,” they say.

Fresh blinks, waking up from her train of thought as she stares at her friend who, despite having only been five or six steps ahead of her, had come back to get her.

She starts crying in public and grabs an annoyed Jubilee, who is unable to get her off of themself, despite the many curious eyes and expressions looking at them from all around.

“Fuck off! You’re getting my muffin wet!” barks Jubilee.

It takes a little while until they finally get back home. Fresh breaks her muffin apart, giving the remaining halves to Basil and Shamrock and, much to her delight and to that of her empty stomach, Jubilee gives her the remaining half of their own.

By the time their meager breakfast is done, Fresh isn’t able to say much about any such topics as heavy as the ones before. But what she can say for sure, is that at the very least, in this part of the city, in this adventurer’s guild, in this room, there isn’t a single grump left.

And as the days would come to pass, they would walk to the market-place every now and then, hungry for another muffin like the one from that odd, emotional morning. But no matter when they decide to go, if it’s in the morning or in the afternoon or at night, there is no trace of the stranger who had sold them to them.

The stall sits empty and it looks oddly dusty, honestly. The woman running the one next to it shakes her head, telling Fresh that she must be confused.

The friendly baker who had once run that stall has long since passed and his booth has sat empty since that day.

The wind blows down through the streets, tousling her hair and sending a soft chill up her spine. Fresh clutches herself and looks at the lonely stand, feeling sure that she, if only for a few minutes, knew the muffin-man.

Razmatazz

Trivia'ish - The muffin man

The nursery rhyme 'The muffin man' doesn't have much of an occult background, unlike many other nursery rhymes. They can get spooky fast. This one is just kind of dumb though, honestly. The song originated in England somewhere around 1800. The muffins in question aren't referring to sweet muffins, such as a blueberry muffin for example. Rather, they're referring to 'English muffins', a flat, often toasted piece of round bread. Though, in our story, we're using muffins as they are referred to in American english and more importantly for our context, German. In a sense, a muffin man was a similar concept to a milkman.

On a weirder note, the Dutch version of the song doesn't speak about muffins, but mussels. So... gross.

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