Chapter 323: 324: It’s in the cards

“Wow,” says Jubilee, looking at the thing on the table. “That looks like shit.”

Fresh frowns, her lips quivering as she looks away from her drawing and down towards Jubilee. “But… but Jubi…” she starts, her throat starting to tighten up. She had been working on these all morning.

Jubilee raises an eyebrow. “If you cry, I’m leaving.”

“Don’t always be so mean,” says Basil, walking over and rubbing Fresh’s shoulders. “I think they’re very cute.”

“You’re just trying to butter her up,” says Jubilee, rolling their eyes. “They look like shit and I’m sparing her from the pain of rejection and failure by telling her that to her face now.”

Basil lifts her nose. “As if. You’re just being a bully. Like always.”

“Shut up, Basil,” sighs Jubilee. “I wish we still had a shower so you’d lock yourself inside of it for a few hours again.”

Fresh turns her head, looking down at the drawings scattered around the table while Basil and Jubilee get into one of their daily fits of ‘banter’. Okay, so, maybe they aren’t exactly the best drawings ever. She doesn’t actually know how to draw. They’re kind of like the sketches that she made in Jubilee’s old demon-book, but ironically these are more esoteric.

Her finger slides a sheet of paper over towards herself. It’s cut into a small, rectangular shape, like a card.

Well, in fact, it is a card. A tarot card. She figures that since they’re living in a ‘witchy nature house’, that she should really embrace the image that they’re going to be selling to the people. So, she decided to make decks of tarot cards.

But this is a challenge, since she can’t draw and especially not well enough that people would buy them. She tilts her head, looking at the squiggly image of a moon on the card.

“- And that’s what I think,” finishes Basil.

“Yeah?” asks Jubilee. “I’m surprised you have any room left in that head of yours to think, since you’re such a perverted degenerate,” remarks Jubilee.

“You’re a nasty, mean redemptionless jerk!” yells Basil.

“Weirdo,” is all that Jubilee replies with, shrugging.

Fresh lifts her head, looking at the two of them as they’re practically at each other’s throats.

“Hi,” says Shamrock, grabbing them both with a large hand. He lifts Jubilee and Basil into the air, pressing them against each other.

“Shamrock! Fuck off!” barks Jubilee.

Basil kicks her legs, trying to reach the floor. “Put me down, Shamrock!”

“I will not,” is all that the man says as he stands there, holding them in front of each other. He tilts his helmet, looking at Fresh. “Lunch?”

“Can we afford lunch?” asks Fresh.

“Not after we pay for Shamrock’s grave,” snaps Jubilee, their face squished against Basil’s shoulder.

The man just nods, looking at her. “Will you?” he asks, turning his helmet to the other two. “I’m busy.”

Fresh smiles, collecting her ‘cards’ together into a neat stack and getting up. “Okay! Thanks, Shamrock,” she beams, sparing a hug for the man as she grabs her bag and heads downstairs, listening to the bickering come from behind her as she leaves.

The spriggan runs after her, at least until she gets to the front door of the house where it waves goodbye. She waves back to it.

Half an hour later, Fresh returns, her bag full of salted and cured meats, some fresh vegetables and bread and a single bottle of milk, which is unfortunately not from a dragon.

“I’m home!” she calls, heading upstairs past the library.

“Welcome home,” says Shamrock.

She stops, looking at him. He’s still holding Basil and Jubilee. Fresh blinks. The man is certainly strong, not only physically, but apparently also in his nerves. He imagines that the two of them have been bickering non-stop at each other and him this entire time.

“Can you please tell him to put us down?” asks Basil, looking hopelessly her way.

“Uh…” Fresh stares for a moment. “Shamrock? How come you’re holding Jubilee and Basil?”

The man looks at her for a while and then shrugs. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Like fuck it is, you fucking freak!” snaps Jubilee, striking against his armor again with their fist.

Fresh scratches her cheek. “Okay. Well… sorry Basil,” she says, shrugging. “Are you guys gonna figure it out?” she asks, turning around to show them her full bag. “I gotta get lunch ready.”

“We will,” affirms Shamrock, entirely ignoring the protests of Basil and Jubilee.

Fresh nods, heading upstairs and listening to their continuing arguments coming from below. She’s not really sure what’s up with them today, but it’s probably just more of the usual, honestly.

Humming, she unloads her bag. The kitchen needs a cooling cabinet, despite it being cold in here. Perhaps ironically, at the same time, the building needs heaters. She wonders how the previous owner handled this issue in winter? There’s no fire-place as far as she’s seen. Fresh nods. That’s her project for the day. With all of the loot from the dungeon that Jubilee and Shamrock had been collecting, they’re slowly getting back onto their feet. So they can afford some expenditures again.

“Say ‘aaaaaaah’~!” beams Fresh, holding out the sandwich.

Basil, having accepted her fate, obliges. “Aaah~” says the priestess with a crushed soul, opening her mouth to take a bite of her sandwich.

Jubilee however, is not so cooperative. Fresh sets down Basil’s half-eaten sandwich, picking up Jubilee’s. “Say ‘aaaah’~!” she says.

“The only one who’s going to be saying ‘aaah’ is you, after I take that sandwich and shove it up your ass!” they bark. “Shamrock! I’m fucking sick of this!”

Shamrock shrugs, looking back towards Fresh. “Ah~” says the man. Fresh slides Jubilee’s sandwich in through the slits of his helmet.

“Fuck off! That was mine,” snaps Jubilee.

Fresh points down at the plate. “It’s okay, Jubilee. There’s another one here. They’re all the same. Everybody gets one.”

After a little more coaxing, she does manage to get everyone to eat their lunch, including Jubilee. Though, she did have to suffer an earful of swears with every attempt at bringing their sandwich closer to their face.

Shamrock is still holding them up in the air.

“I have to use the washroom!” protests Basil. “Shamrock! Please!”

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“No.”

“Shamrooock!” howls Basil, kicking her legs.

“Fine,” says the man, carrying both of them downstairs.

Fresh watches as they go, shrugging to herself as she continues working on cooling cabinet. There isn’t really space for it in the kitchen, since the wall is already full of cabinets. But she’s just going to take one of the old cabinets out and slide it in there. The principle is the same as always. A box lined with crystal-drakonium and cooling beads. It doesn’t take long and she’s finished.

By then, the three of them and the spriggan return upstairs and are all oddly silent except for Basil who is red in the face.

Fresh scratches her cheek, looking back down at the floor. She squints, seeing something. Bending down, she pulls at one of the boards and peeks below. There’s something here. A root?

No, it’s a pipe.

Fresh tilts her head. A pipe?

She flicks it, listening. It sounds empty. But the construction of it reminds her of their shower in the east, actually. There’s something about the method used to attach these segments of pipe together. It looks familiar. It’s like seeing a new painting from an artist that you’re familiar with. The image is different, but the strokes and the movements used to create it have left marks that are vaguely familiar.

Fresh is downstairs now, in the cave.

After some exploration and some literal digging, she found that every floor of their house had pipes running through it in a criss-cross pattern. It seemed very inefficient for anything really, unless the point was just to cover as much floor-space as possible, which they certainly did manage.

A floor heater?

She assumes so. But the only place that something like that could source its heat from would be here, from this natural source of rising warmth.

She looks around, not able to see a pipe here anywhere. Unless…

Fresh lifts her gaze, watching the rising vapors of steam drift away from the pool of hot-water, rising up to the ceiling of the cave. She squints, seeing it. There’s a small grate in the ceiling. She assumes that steam is supposed to go up through there and then the heat will run through the pipes all by itself. But… for some reason, it isn’t doing that.

“Hmm…”

Fresh heads back to the ground floor, trying to solve this latest mystery.

This latest mystery was far more easily solved than she had been anticipating.

There on the ground floor, a section of the floor had been broken up by a segment of root from the world-tree, which had pushed the stones away. Lifting them to the side, she then finds the issue. The pipe is crushed, having been flattened by the growing root. Any of the steam that had been trying to go through there simply got stopped after a meter in and then likely dripped back down as condensation into the underground pool.

Making a pipe is easy enough. But she needs Shamrock’s help to replace it. Not only is the old one stuck, but it’s very hot and she doesn’t have her gloves anymore. She doesn’t think that the dragon ate them, but she certainly left them at home.

“Shamrock, please?” asks Fresh, finding the three of them upstairs a minute later. “I really need your help to fix the heater.”

Shamrock looks at her and shakes his head. “My hands are full.”

Fresh looks at Jubilee and Basil, who are both still hanging there, both of them reading a book together. She’s somewhat surprised that they’ve both accepted their fate so well.

Jubilee sighs, slapping the book shut.

“Hey! I wasn’t done yet,” protests Basil.

“I am,” says Jubilee. “Sorry,” apologizes Jubilee, throwing the book to the library table and crossing their arms as they look away.

Basil stares for a moment and then sighs. “I’m sorry too.”

Shamrock nods and sets them down. That was all that it took.

“Sorry that you’re such an ugly freak!” barks Jubilee immediately, placing their hands on their hips.

“Sorry that you’re such a disgusting goblin!” replies Basil, leaning in to them.

Fresh sighs, watching as Shamrock picks them both back up again and it all starts over from the beginning.

Razmatazz

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