Chapter 76: 77: A quiet night

Fresh stops at the door to the downstairs area, looking at the lantern and tilting her head, as her own thoughts stop her in her tracks.

“Maybe this is too much?”

The girl taps her chin, thinking. This is obviously an expensive item and she put so much work into it… is that creepy? Is she being creepy? Fresh turns around, looking down the upstairs corridor towards Jubilee’s room. Didn’t she want to make something for Jubilee? Fresh crosses her arms and leans against the wall, the lantern floats next to her, bobbing up and down.

“Jubilee’s already jealous…” she mutters, not entirely sure if that’s true, but it might be. Wouldn’t it be unfair of her to give something like this to Basil, especially in front of Jubilee? Fresh tilts her head. She just doesn’t understand these sorts of social situations at all. At the very least, her excited mood is ruined now. Walking towards her room, she goes inside and grabs the lantern out of the air, setting it down.

It rises back up as she turns to walk away.

“Stay there,” says the girl, placing it back down onto the floor of her room and then walking to the door. The lantern rises up again, following after her. She purses her lips, grabbing it and setting it down again, trying to scoot to the door before it can catch up with her.

She doesn’t manage. The lantern bumps against her back, coming to a stop. Fresh sighs and looks around for an idea. She quickly finds it, a small iron chain that she had been using for crafting and then forgot in her pocket once. It eventually landed on her floor and it had been laying there ever since, as she hasn’t had time to properly clean since they opened the store. Grabbing it, she ties one end around the handle of the lantern and then the other around her bedpost.

“Stay there!” calls Fresh and runs outside, closing the door behind herself. She wants to do something for Basil, sure. But maybe she really should put Jubilee first. Though, she rubs her head, maybe she’s just reading far too deeply into the dynamics of her friendships?

The word makes her stop for a moment and she smiles as she looks out of the upstairs corridor window that hangs over the backstreets beyond the dungeon plaza. If this is a ‘problem’ that she is having, then maybe her new life is pretty good after all? For the first time, she takes a moment to just look out of the window and admires the tight, weaving world behind it. The narrow alleys winds off in several directions, all of which she has never explored.

“What does Jubilee even like?” Sure, she’s bought some things for the house and done some work here and there. There was the new mattress too. But… she wants to make something. “Hmm…”

Lost for now, Fresh simply heads downstairs to see if there is anything left for her to help with.

The rest of the day is fairly uneventful, apparently the crowd never returned after the usual midday lull. The sun is coming out more and more, which apparently makes things uncomfortable for adventurers. Fresh had never really considered it before, but she supposes since most of them are either going to or coming from the dungeon, they were all dressed in armor of some kind, apart from the casters. That made dwelling in the summer heat a nightmare, let alone shopping. Maybe that’s why the mornings are so much more active than they used to be.

“Good night, Basil!” calls out Fresh to Basil who runs down the street, heading home in a hurry as the clouds above them seem to have started leaking droplets of water. Fresh only now realizes how unfortunate bad weather must be for priests and priestesses with their white cloth robes. Basil is too far away to respond, but waves over her shoulder.

“Storm’s coming,” says Jubilee as she closes the door.

“Agaaaain?” moans Fresh. “Does it always rain here this much?”

Jubilee tilts their head. “Late spring to early summer? Yeah? Have you ever been outside before?”

Fresh sighs, not sure how to answer that. The girl stops in her tracks and shudders, a chill running up her back as a sudden wind outside sweeps down the street, the gale seemingly blowing away the summer heat in an instant, as it seeps through the cracks in the walls. She looks behind herself, glaring down at the draft that creeps just past her ears and ankles, as if mocking her for her failure to keep it at bay.

“Jubilee?” asks Fresh.

“Yeah?”

“What kind of stuff do you like?”

Jubilee looks up the counter, gazing at her warily. “Huh?”

“You know? Like…” Fresh thinks for a moment. “What do you like doing? What do you like thinking about? What’s -”

Jubilee interrupts. “- If you ask me what my favorite color is, you’re closing the store on your own tonight.” Fresh quickly closes her mouth and stands there. Jubilee looks back down to the ledger, continuing their calculations for the day.

Rain starts to fall outside. Lightly at first, but then the wind picks up and the downpour seems to fall harder still. Not only on its own, but also through the pelting of the gale storm that smashes the droplets against the windows. Fresh rubs her arms. “It always gets so cold here at night, even in summer,” she remarks.

“Yeah?” says Jubilee. “Sharp senses as always. That’s what night is, dummy.” Fresh sighs. Jubilee is being snarky again. Giving up for now, the girl sets to work, restocking the shelves. The two of them work in silence for a while.

“Do you need another blanket?” asks Jubilee, rather suddenly after a good half hour has passed.

“Huh?” asks Fresh in surprise, looking over towards Jubilee who broke the quiet.

“A blanket, goo-brain, do you need another one? For your bed?” asks Jubilee, not looking up from the book. Though Fresh notices that they aren’t even writing anymore. Jubilee is just sitting there with the pen and their eyes both down onto the page. Fresh tilts her head, surprised at Jubilee’s asking.

Her eyes grow wide. “Will you make me one?!” she asks, clenching her fists in front of herself.

“What?” Jubilee looks up now, their eyes more than skeptical. “I have blankets. You can just -”

“I want you to make me one!” protests the girl. “Pleeeeease?”

“Why…?”

“So I won’t have any bad dreams and wake you up again,” explains Fresh, making something up on the spot that sounds believable. In truth she just wants one in the hopes that maybe Jubilee will open up a little more. It’s nice to feel needed, after all.

At this thought, Fresh has a sudden realization. Her eyes scan her friend up and down as she thinks she understands Jubilee’s extra snarkiness as of late.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” Jubilee fidgets uncomfortably, but then relents. “Fine, I’ll make you a blanket, you giant baby.”

Fresh smiles, her somewhat manipulative scheme has been successful. She returns to her work, finishing up for the night. The storm begins raging outside, the heavy winds and rains accompanied now by the familiar crescendo of rolling thunder. The clashing in the sky and the water streaming down the glass windows remind her of the promise of the bad dream. That this is all temporary, this is all fleeting. If anything at all in her life was a dream, it was th-

Stomping over to the window, the girl slams the shutters tightly shut in protest, making a show out of it, so that the storm will see that it isn’t welcome here and that neither are the pessimistic thoughts it’s trying to imprint on her.

The rest of their work finishes quickly, as they are more than versed in this routine now and the two of them head upstairs to go to bed, the upstairs window rattling behind the shutters, as if sharp fingers were tapping against it. Like a haunting spirit asking to be let inside.

“Go away, ghosts!” yells Fresh at the window.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” asks Jubilee, looking back at her from their bedroom door.

Fresh looks over to them. “I was talking to the ghosts.”

“There aren’t any ghosts, goo-brain. Even if there were, Basil made a seal, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Fresh smiles a smug smile at the window and at any ghosts that may or may not lie beyond it, this night is hers. Thunder cracks outside and she jolts together and quickly hurries to her door. “Good night, Jubilee!”

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“Good night.”

Fresh opens her door, stepping a foot inside of her room. She turns her head, looking back at Jubilee who is still standing there in their own door. She blinks. Thunder cracks outside again, louder than before. The girl looks inside of her room, towards the floating lantern that slowly begins to rise back up and then back towards Jubilee behind her. Fresh really does think that she understands now.

“Jubileee~?”

“Yeah?” asks Jubilee.

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” asks Fresh. “Pleeease~?”

Jubilee turns around, walking inside of their room without any further protests. “I’d say no, but I don’t want you to wet the bed because you had a bad dream again.”

She pulls her door shut, walking into Jubilee’s room. “That’s not what happened!”

“Sure looked like it to me,” says Jubilee, setting to work, pulling the mattress off of the bed to make the room divider.

Fresh relents, letting Jubilee have this victory. After all, her friend is feeling insecure about themself. This is her realization. With a little money, the store could practically run itself without Jubilee. After all, Fresh makes every single item of theirs, except the bags. Sure, Jubilee made the glass for their potions. But at this point, she could afford to buy glass if she really needed to. Same with an extra person to run the counter. She understands that Jubilee had realized this too, probably far earlier than she had, since they did the math every night. If Fresh really, really wanted to, she could run this entire operation without Jubilee, with a little money and charm.

Their plan of Jubilee going into the dungeon to find things for her to make simply never worked out in the end, it wasn’t an economical use of their time when they were needed here and the adventurers would simply bring them all of their materials and then some anyways.

Five minutes later, Fresh lays on her pile of blankets on one side of the upright mattress and Jubilee lays on the bare box-spring on the other side. The storm rattles on outside, the winds howling as they shear along the glass beyond the shutters.

“Jubileee~?” starts Fresh, wanting to ask a question.

“What?”

“I’m glad I went left.”

“What?” asks Jubilee.

“Ah, nevermind. Uh… what’s your favorite color?”

“Go to sleep, goo-brain,” calls a tired voice from the other side of the ‘wall’.

“Jubileee~?”

Jubilee sighs. “What?”

“Can we get a kitchen?”

“…For what?”

“Because I want to make us some real food, so we don’t always have to eat street food and dried stuff!”

“You think I trust you around fire?”

Fresh shrugs, perhaps only to herself. “Then you can help me cook things! We can make things together! Like for our breakfasts.” Jubilee doesn’t respond with more than an unsure groan. “Please?”

Jubilee groans again.

“Pleeeeease~?”

“Are we fucking married or something? Just go to sleep,” says Jubilee. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“Promise?” asks Fresh.

“Sure. Promise. Good night,” says her friend dryly.

“Good night, Jubilee!” Fresh pulls her blanket up and rolls to her side, huddling into a ball and closes her eyes, listening to the storm outside that seems to be just a little further away than it was while she was outside of the room. A deep exhalation leaves her, as her body starts to fall slack.

“Green,” says a voice from across the room.

Fresh smiles, huddling together as she falls asleep.

Razmatazz

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