Chapter 53: 54: Restlessness

Fresh tosses and turns in her bed, pulling the blankets around over herself uncomfortably as she fidgets, entirely unable to fall asleep. It’s the middle of the night and she turns over again on to her other side, having lost count of how often she had already unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep in this position tonight.

Her eyes open as she presses her head down into the pillow and stares out across the dark room, which is dimly illuminated by the glowing potions she has scattered around it. Her eyes fixate on the blank wall, separating her room from Jubilee’s.

She sighs, sitting upright and tosses the blanket off of her chest. She can’t sleep. Any tiredness or exhaustion present in her body is simply over-toned by the thoughts that are buzzing around in her head. The visage of the friendly giant, the orc, laying there in a pool of blood. She hadn’t asked any further details of Jubilee, but her own mind is happy enough to fill in the blanks for her, even if she doesn’t want it to. Grisly images of mutilation and viscera fill her thoughts and no matter how often she dispels them by forcing herself to think about something else, they always come back; returning to haunt her like the faces of laughing ghosts. No matter how often she tries to get the lifeless expression of the friendly man out of her mind, it always returns, covered in red.

Fresh turns to the side, uncovering her feet and planting them onto the ground as she stands up. She hadn’t known the orc for long, but somehow it bothers her. A lot. This wasn’t her first encounter with death here, in this new world. Since her first day here, she had heard whispers about it, lurking in the dark streets of the city. But…

That was always just a rumor. Some murderer somewhere.

Then, Mr. Mushroom and the goblin… they were monsters. She can justify that to herself somehow, if she tries hard enough. As for Donata, the old woman had dug her own grave in the end. Fresh didn’t want any of that to have happened. But it did.

But the orc? He was just a friendly person. She didn’t actually know him, apart from their few brief encounters in the store. But something about the simple fact that the darkness in this world was able to take something so… clean and to befoul it, that is what keeps her up tonight. The fact that this evil force is in the same city as them. Whatever or whoever it is, is near her new home. Near her new friend.

She puts on her dress, taking a potion with her for light as she walks barefooted, out into the hallway. Apart from that, Fresh can’t help but wonder, did the orc buy a necklace? Did he buy the necklace? The cursed one? She should have read her grimoire more about curses. Maybe it’s her fault? Maybe it’s her fault that he’s dead? Maybe it’s her fault that Basil is so run down? What’s the woman going to do, without her only party-member? She can’t get far in the dungeon alone. She’ll have to find a new party, but… is that so easy?

Fresh shakes her head. She doesn’t know anything. Opening the pantry door, the girl strains herself, grabbing a long plank of wood and heads downstairs to set to work.

Looking at the window, she half-expects a shadowy face to be pressed against it, staring back at her from the outside. But there is nothing there save for her own reflection, her pale face illuminated by the soft glow of the potion, causing her features to look recessed and shadowy. She tilts her head, looking at her own distorted features, shining back at her.

“There’s a witch in the window,” she mutters to herself, sleep addled, as she walks closer towards it. The haunting, eyeless apparition is dispelled as she approaches, banished into whatever night lays on the other side of the mirror-glass.

Setting the wood down, she begins to process it.

Hours pass and she has to run up and down the stairs several times, though she does her best to be quiet, not wanting to wake Jubilee. Her friend is a cold person and she doesn’t like how emotionless their statement about using Basil was, but she understands that Jubilee is Jubilee for a reason. Maybe that’s what living in this city does to you? Or maybe Jubilee is just… Jubilee and always has been?

She fastens the wood to the wall, quietly yawning as she uses her abilities.

Fresh is Fresh for a reason too, she thinks, not quite sure where her thoughts are going. Maybe if Jubilee is the cold one, emotionally, then she’ll just have to be the warm one? Maybe that would even things out. Fresh steps back, swinging the wooden shutter closed to test it.

Satisfied, she stares at the, now fortified, downstairs-window, feeling only a little bit better as she stands alone down in the dark shop, listening to the whispering draft that is still seeping in through the walls. Her eyes scan the distant, dark corners of the room, down beneath the shelves. She listens as she hears the quiet hiss of air seeping in from all manner of cracks and crevices. Fresh shudders as she feels the outside air run up her already cold, clammy skin, as it reminds her that it still has her in its clutches. She remembers this feeling, from her last night in her old life. This is that very same, dark, heavy cold that loomed with her in her room, in her bed, in her heart.

It quietly reminds her, whispering into her ear, that it doesn’t matter if she has a roof over her head today, a light at her side this second, a friend… for now. It doesn’t matter and it tells her as much with its midnight whisper, that it will always be here. Creeping. Crawling. Coming. And one day -

Fresh narrows her tired eyes, watching the darkness suspiciously, as she collects her materials to go back upstairs.

- And one day, she can’t help but hear the promise of the cold draft, no matter how many obstacles she builds, no matter how many walls she fixes and friends she tries to make to surround herself with, one day, it’s going to swallow her whole again. And that little candle that she feels burning in her heart for all of these things that she thinks she has? It’s going to snuff that out with a single, quiet, cold breath. Just to make the point. Just so that she’ll remember that sentence it had told her, that sentence she had told herself back then, when the fountain offered her the ring.

That this is too nice for someone like her. She doesn’t deserve it.

Fresh stops on the staircase, holding the rest of her materials under her arms as her gaze lowers down to her feet. She listens to the wind howling outside and she stands there, frozen for a time. Frozen in body and in soul as a familiar, old tiredness makes itself felt in her mind. An old feeling tells her the simple truth. Go to bed. It’s over.

Just go to bed and sleep.

She quietly lifts her gaze, walking up into the pantry and stows away the leftover materials. Returning to her room, she looks down at her bed, down at the sweat-stained, knotted and twisted sheets and blankets.

Without letting the dark thoughts get another word in, Fresh clenches her fists, grabs her bag and goes back downstairs, taking one of her bone-daggers, a necklace and a bottle of moonwater with her, as she unlocks the door and marches out over the empty plaza, ignoring the laugh of the cold wind on her skin, as she stubbornly stomps towards the dungeon.

The blue aura envelops her as she walks inside and the girl takes a deep breath to calm herself down, as she feels the dank, earthy and familiar air of the dungeon enter into her lungs. Opening her eyes, she marches down the stairs, taking her grimoire out of her bag.

There isn’t much she can do. She isn’t strong, smart, charming, pretty, clever, brave, nimble, wise, or talented. Or any of that. If anything, the only reason she has made it this far is because she has had luck on her side, but she can’t rely on that forever. She can’t rely on luck to protect her and her friend when the bad times come. She feels it. That sensation. That… dull edge of a knife, rubbing itself against the back of her mind like when it was raining during the ‘vampire night’.

Maybe it’s something from her class? Some sense for the happenings of the world after the sun has set. Like when she felt the vampire coming. But something -

No matter where it stems from

- Something tells her that one day, one day in the future, that darkness will fall. It hasn’t forgotten her and no amount of luck in the world is going to stop it once it arrives.

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She drops her bag down off of her shoulders, letting it fall to the last step as she stares at Mr. Mushroom’s burrow. Her other hand lifts up the damp grimoire, as she flutters through the sticky pages, looking for something to help her. She doesn’t know what it is yet, but there has to be something, anything that can help give her an edge.

She has to be strong enough to do it herself. She has to be able to face whatever that looming specter is when it arrives.

Her eyes dart over the page that the grimoire is showing her. A section on her own abilities and she reads the text, detailing about curses and the modification there-of.

Curses - Modification

By the nature of the beast, curses are inherently negative in their conjurations and are intended to bring harm to the recipient in some fashion. Curses can never be removed. However, a curse may be modified through one of three methods.

“Hair of the dog…” mutters Fresh as she rubs her head. Are there even dogs here? Actually, isn’t that a saying? ‘Hair of the dog’? It probably didn’t mean a literal dog. The girl taps her chin, mumbling. “A hair of the dog that bit you,” as she remembers the whole phrase.

She looks at the second option for modifying a curse, tilting her head. “True loves’ kiss?” Nervously, looking around the empty floor, flush in the face, she looks at the last line, but to her dismay it is smeared away. Fresh frowns and guesses that there’s only one avenue open for her then. She isn’t sure she appreciates the comparison, but…

Fresh gulps. Her eyes wander down to the dagger in her hands as she sets the grimoire back into her bag. Should she…? Jubilee won’t forgive her. They hadn’t even forgiven her yet for the first time. “…Jubilee doesn’t have to know.”

The girl plucks three of her hairs from her head, and wraps them around the blade of the dagger.

Razmatazz

Trivia'ish - Hair of the dog

 Originally, rabies was ‘treated’ by literally placing the hair of the attacking dog into the bite-wound. I can’t speak to the efficacy of such a treatment, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it was probably something near 0%. Though this rabies connection seems to have been born in Scotland later on.

Far before that, the earliest utterance of the phrase ‘hair of the dog that bit you’ originates back to the port city of Ugarit, which was a key part of ancient northern Syria that existed at its height between 1450-1200 BC. It is said that the city was destroyed by the ‘sea people’ who you, if you are familiar with ancient history, know are a giant mystery in and of themselves. But that’s for another day.

Getting back to the dog, the first story from Ugarit tells us of a dog named Ilu who drinks far too much alcohol and becomes deathly hungover, he locates a text depicting a cure. The ingredients?

- A plant (We don’t know which one)

- Hairs from a dog

- Olive oil

After mixing these 3 ingredients into a salve, which he then applies to his own forehead, Ilu is cured of his suffering. From there, the story gained its immediate connection with alcohol and spread around the world over generations. =)

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