Chapter 65: Basil-eeee~

“Basil! What’s it like to be a priestess?” asks Fresh excitedly, walking past behind the counter on her way to collect another load of armor to bring upstairs.

Basil thinks for a moment, before answering with a smile. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding,” says the priestess.

Fresh tilts her head, speaking without thinking. “Weren’t you broke, though?”

Basil flinches, twitching together at the question that stabbed straight into her heart. “I… I don’t mean financially rewarding,” she adds with a somewhat strained smile. “Healers are generally treated very kindly in adventuring parties.”

Fresh thinks for a moment. “Then how come -”

Jubilee clears their throat, interrupting her. “Stop bullying the employees!” snaps Jubilee without a hint of sarcasm in their voice.

“Huh?!” Fresh puffs out her cheek. “I’m not bullying Basil! I really wanted to know!”

“Get back to work, you goo-brain!” barks Jubilee and Fresh sticks out her tongue, grabbing another load of armor and carrying it upstairs, keeping her tongue outstretched towards Jubilee the entire time. Even after she goes upstairs and is out of sight. Simply out of principle.

A few minutes later, having arranged everything, she comes back down, her tongue back inside of her mouth. “Basil?” asks the girl.

“Yes?” asks Basil, looking over towards her from behind the counter.

“Where does magic come from?”

“Magic?” Basil thinks for a moment, she raises a finger, explaining. “From your soul-points, which were granted to you from birth, by the divine.”

Fresh thinks for a moment, stepping down to stand next to the counter. “So what are soul-points?”

Basil shifts her hands as she explains. “They’re a representation of the energy inside of your soul.”

“So I have a soul?” asks Fresh, philosophizing.

“Of course,” affirms Basil. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have soul-points,” says Basil with a smile. “Would you like me t -”

“Get back to work, you slackers!” yells Jubilee at both of them. Basil jumps back upright, returning to the counter. Having nothing to do, she shuffles through the ledger to at least appear to be busy. Jubilee turns their gaze back towards Fresh, who sticks her tongue back out at them again a second time. She grabs another load of armor and walks up the stairs, looking at the anti-ghost sigil on the door as she passes it.

“Having soul-points means you have a soul, huh?” mutters the girl to herself as she returns to her room.

Five minutes later, she comes back down again. “Basil?” asks Fresh, thinking.

Basil turns towards her uneasily, perhaps hesitant about being yelled at again. “…Yes?”

“If monsters sometimes come out of the dungeon, why doesn’t the church have people outside watching it at night?”

Basil fidgets nervously, not averting her eyes, but clearly wanting to. As her head turns an inch to the side, as if she were in the process of starting to look away but never quite managed to finish.

“The only thing that needs to be watched at night is you,” says Jubilee from across the store, breaking the tense silence. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” they ask. “If you’re bored, go to town or something and buy some more materials. Or fix the walls up or whatever.”

Fresh sighs, going back upstairs to get her bag to take with her.

Coming back down, she wonders about something else however. “…Basil?” The priestess nervously looks up towards Fresh, who has her finger on her chin, staring up towards the ceiling. Fresh looks over, checking to see if Jubilee is busy right now. Seeing them arguing with a customer, she turns back to Basil. “What’s your favorite color?”

Basil tilts her head, surprised by the rather simple question this time. “Hmm… if I had to say, I guess it would be orange.”

“Orange?” asks Fresh.

Basil nods. “A lot of nice things are orange, no matter what season it is. You know? The colorful cakes in spring and there are exotic fruits in summer -” The priestess goes on, gesturing with her hands as she explains, apparently very excited. “- In autumn you have fresh breads and pies and then in winter, a nice, warm orange fire to cook heavy stews over.” She nods, as if reaffirming all of these statements for herself. “That’s why orange is my favorite color.”

Fresh scratches her cheek, somewhat taken aback at the specifics of the priestess’ explanation. “You’ve really thought about this a lot, Basil.”

Basil laughs quietly, waving her off with an idle hand. “When you spend as many hours as I have cleaning and doing chores in the church, you have a lot of time to think about these things,” says the priestess, grabbing her stomach out of instinct, as if to keep it quiet.

“You sure have a lot of time to think right now,” says an agitated voice next to them. Basil pulls together in a jolt, clears her throat and faces back towards the open ledger, even if there are no customers.

“Ju-bi-leeeee~!” protests Fresh. “There’s nothing going on, don’t be a jerk!”

“I’m not being a jerk!” argues Jubilee. “We’re trying to run a business here, so -” they shoo her away. “Go do something productive.” Jubilee points at Basil. “That’s why we hired someone in the first place, so you could get more work done. Not so you could have someone to gossip with!”

Fresh crosses her arms. “I want to talk to Basil though! So I will if I want to! Right, Basil? You want to talk too, right?” Fresh turns towards Basil, who looks somewhat troubled. Jubilee glares up at the priestess who had opened her mouth to speak and she quickly closes it again. Fresh clenches her fists and leans in towards the priestess who looks back at her with scared eyes. “Basil! Tell Jubilee!”

Jubilee glares at them. “Yeah Basil, tell me.” Basil nervously fidgets, unsure what to do.

“Basil!” cries Fresh.

The leather of Jubilee’s gloves creaks as they clench their fists. “Basil.”

The priestess’ head turns back and forth as the two argue for her. She sighs, relenting, her shoulders drooping as she has come to a choice.

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Fresh pouts, puffing out her cheeks as she walks down the main street of the city alone, towards the central plaza. Basil had chosen Jubilee, though Fresh can’t help but feel like it was only because the priestess is afraid of her friend. She sighs, releasing the tension in her own body as she walks. She supposes Jubilee can be a really scary person, if you don’t know them well. Though her friend wasn’t entirely wrong about the reasons for them having hired someone, she still wants to talk to the priestess, to get to know her better. Jubilee seemed to have some issue with that, though Fresh supposes she understands why. Given Jubilee’s reluctance to invite the priestess into the business to begin with.

The girl scratches the back of her head, looking down the alley to Donata’s store as she passes it by.

The old building sits hauntingly empty and vacant on the end of the way. Walking down towards it, she looks in through the dusty windows. Everything is gone. The potions, the shelves, the cases that were full of strange ingredients. The whole building is simply an empty shell. She hopes the plants were taken out by someone who will water them but… she isn’t optimistic about it, as she goes back down the way towards the general store.

She has a little money now, so she wants to get some more materials for her renovations and an actual cauldron for the armor repairs. It’s a little cliché, perhaps; a witch with a cauldron. But the tiny pot is dangerous to repair things in. She had almost knocked it over several times and if she did, she’d have to wait until the next moonless night to make a new one. They could lose up to two weeks of repair-work in the worst case, that would be a disaster.

She enters the general store and talks to the man about cauldrons, eventually deciding on one.

Bought: 1 [Iron Cauldron]{50L}(Normal)

for

[{600} Obols] !

Waving goodbye to the man from the small store, she goes over to the tailor’s and stands in front of the door. Even now, she needs to muster her courage a little before opening the door and stepping inside of the odd store.

The many mannequins, perhaps now somewhat familiar with her, stand as time-frozen as ever. While their posture is a little looser than last time, she can’t help but notice how guarded and wary many of them still seem to be. Approaching the counter, she greets the strange, lanky man, as he comes out and discusses how she wants a few rugs for the upstairs part of the store and to ask what he recommends. In the end, she opts for one large one for each of their rooms and a long, thinner one for the upstairs corridor. She realizes that they need new curtains too, because the old ones are ghastly. But she opts to make those herself.

Bought: 2 [Rug (200x290cm)] for [{250} Obols] !

Bought: 1 [Rug (120x290cm)] for [{200} Obols] !

The tall man nods to her as she leaves, promising that they will be delivered by the time she is back. The decision of the color, she had left up to him, as the girl is growing to trust the odd tailor’s judgment on such matters. She had also asked him about some new clothes for herself and he had said to come back in a week, he would have something by then.

Passing by some stalls, she stops, looking at the colorful arrays of fruits lining the rows. She tilts her head, realizing something as she looks around the busy plaza, her eyes rising up to the trees, where she hears something else in the air. A lazy buzzing, like that of cicadas, mixes in with the whistling of the birds.

“It’s summer,” she says to herself, realizing suddenly how much time had passed. Smiling, she buys a large basket of mixed fruits for them to share from one of the stalls. Carrying it under her arm, she beams as she walks through the sunlight, heading back to her home, expertly maneuvering her way through the busy crowds of adventurers. Maybe Jubilee would be less cranky if they got some vitamins? They had been eating nothing but street food and dried provisions for so long now. Fresh quietly wishes that they had a kitchen to prepare real food in. But until Jubilee finally opens up a little, literally, and lets them use the other rooms, she would just have to make do like this.

Summer, huh? They would have to change out the color of their bags, away from the spring-yellow tone. Maybe orange? She looks down at the basket, double checking that there are enough orange fruits for her to give Basil. There are. “I wonder what Jubilee's favorite color is?”

Entering their store, she looks at Jubilee, who is lecturing Basil about something else now. “Jubileee~?” asks Fresh and the two of them turn to look over to her. One in relief and one in annoyance. “What’s your favorite color?”

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “Oh, sure. Now you ask me.”

“Mm!” She stops for a moment, placing a hand to cover her gasping mouth as she suddenly realizes a possible explanation for her friend’s snarkiness today. “Wait, Jubilee! Are you jealous that I was talking to Basil?”

Her friend puts their hands on their hips. “The only thing I’m jealous of is how much free time you apparently seem to have!”

Fresh tilts her head, lifting the basket to display it. “I got fruit for us to share, Jubilee!”

Jubilee shrugs. “Good idea. Maybe something healthy will help cure your goo-brain.”

Fresh narrows her gaze. “Maybe something healthy will help your goo-brain!” pouts the girl, mimicking her friend and walking in to set the basket down onto the counter. “Here, feel free to take some too, Basil!” smiles the girl to the priestess, whose eyes light up.

“No eating behind the counter during work hours!” says Jubilee to Basil, who was already reaching for one of the long, orange fruits

Fresh wags her finger in the air. “As party-leader, I explicitly allow eating behind the counter!” She crosses her arms. “In fact. I expect it.”

Basil looks to Jubilee and then back up to Fresh and then back to the basket. The priestess makes her choice and rubs the piece of orange fruit onto her robe, before taking a large bite out of it. Fresh flashes a smug, victorious smile to Jubilee who just sighs, shaking their head.

Razmatazz

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