Chapter 365: 366: Work in progress

“Hey,” says Fresh, staring at her reflection down in the water of the mineral bath. “Thanks for helping me last night,” she says. “That was a really bad dream.”

“Right?” asks her reflection, shrugging. The girl in the water drifts around, floating upside down. “I know it’s easy to say, but we have to put that all behind us eventually.”

“Mm…” nods Fresh, staring at the reflection for a while and her reflection stares towards her.

There were really periods of her life, years, where she couldn’t bear to look at herself. Anything that was reflective, a mirror, a window, a bottle, a dark screen in a bright room, wherever her own image could be projected, she would avert her eyes from it. Because seeing herself just hurt too much. Every time she saw herself, it would remind her of the feelings she was trying to hide from; inadequacy, lacking, failure, disappointment.

Fresh is reminded of Jubilee’s once shattered mirror, back in their house in the north.

The hiding of one’s true self. Jubilee’s identity as a demon was hidden from the world. Shamrock’s identity as a slime was hidden from the world. Basil’s identity for what she truly feels was and still is hidden from the world.

This act of hiding one’s self in some sense, in some manner, is really the biggest thing that they all have in common. They hide from the world, but they do so together. It’s as if they were field-mice together in a burrow, but at least it’s warm and safe. No matter how horrible things are outside, at least they have each other.

Now, her life has changed so much that she actually enjoys seeing her reflection. Jubilee, she catches doing so as well now and then, trying to get their hair to sit right or to adjust the cuff of their sleeves. Shamrock slips out of his armor now and then, free to roam the house just as he is and Basil, well, Fresh isn’t naive enough to understand what Basil’s dilemma is, given the ample context she has been given so far. She’s dumb, but she’s not an idiot.

Basil will have to just move at her own pace and when the priestess is ready, the three of them, having already come outside of the burrow to sit in the sunlight of a new day, will be there waiting for her.

“Who are you?” asks Fresh.

The reflection shrugs. “What do you mean? I’m you.”

“Sure…” says Fresh. “But how come you’re… you know, alive?” she asks.

The reflection crosses her arms, lifting her nose. “How come you’re alive?” she asks. “What kind of question is that?” asks the girl in the water. “I’m alive because I’m alive. Why does there have to be a reason?”

“Uh…” Fresh stares for a moment. “I mean… I guess I was just expecting something more concrete, is all,” she replies.

The reflection spins around, holding her arms out to her sides as if she were flying. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” asks the reflection.

Fresh blinks. “Oh, wow, uh…” she looks around. It’s pretty early in the morning, this is all kind of heavy, actually. “I mean, I guess I have to?” she says. “You know, with us being here and all.”

“Mm,” replies the girl in the water. “Just think of me as a reincarnation of you. Or uh, you of a reincarnation of me. I dunno, honestly.”

“Huh…” says Fresh. “So how come you’re my reflection?” she asks.

The girl in the water shrugs. “It’s a living.”

Fresh laughs.

“You know, I worry about you sometimes,” says Jubilee, standing in the open doorway.

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Fresh turns her head around, looking away from the bath towards Jubilee. “Morning, Jubilee!” she beams. “I was just talking to myself in the bathwater.”

“Uh, yeah?” says Jubilee, raising an eyebrow. “That’s weird. You’re doing a weird thing.”

“Mm,” replies Fresh, nodding once before looking back to the water. The girl there stares back her way, copying her movements as one would expect a reflection to do. Though she can’t really tell if the smile there is as wide as hers is, or if its not just a tiny bit more-so than her own.

Fresh looks at the heating-bead on her workbench, trying to figure out the puzzle of the mater.

She’s figured out most of it, except for one significant problem. The magical energies produced by the crystal dust just can’t travel through all of the metal to the exterior of the sphere. It’s just too thick, too much metal.

Her fingers tap against the workbench as she looks around the room for inspiration. Her eyes wander up towards the ceiling of the basement. Towards the floor of the ground-floor, through which the metal pipes of their heating system run through.

Her eyes slowly go wide.

- Pipes?

Fresh’s gaze shoots down to the orichalcum bar she had made the other day. “That’s it!” she beams, running to grab some iron bars. Out of those, she makes some iron tubing.

Each of the eight pipes that she makes is about the length of her forearm and has the width of the tips of four of her fingers squished together into a point. Ideally, she would dip these into the orichalcum cauldron, to transform them into orichalcum pipes which could perhaps, in theory, perfectly transport magical heat from one location to the other. But, given that they’re delivering this to the actual orichalcum forge, this would be very suspicious of them to do.

Instead, she does it the old-fashioned way, and coats the pipes inside and out with liquefied crystal-drakonium paste.

It’s a simple construction, the heating sphere.

The core of it is a dense ball of crystal-dust, from their mostly depleted stockpile of magical-crystals from the west. This dust is suspended in a glass sphere, full of moonwater. Surrounding this sphere is a second casing that is full of world-tree mineral-water from their pool. The magical crystal-dust and moonwater heat up the glass-core, which then begins to heat the mineral-water. The treated iron pipes stick out of the core in eight directions and then, surrounding that and encasing it all off is one more sphere that holds it all together.

By the time it’s all said and done, Fresh has created a massive, heavy and yet surprisingly fragile construction.

Fresh stares with pride at the thing she has created. It’s not activated yet, but she knows that the moment she pours some of her soul-points into it, it will start to begin glowing with heat.

Best not to test it here though. Their house is made of wood and partially tree, after all.

Satisfied with herself, Fresh goes upstairs to tell Jubilee and the others the good news, arriving just in time to see the red-wizard come into the store.

Razmatazz

Shiny! =)

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