Chapter 89: 90: With friends like these

Fresh stands downstairs, staring at Basil who is standing behind the counter and fanning herself with a single piece of paper. The priestess sighs, perhaps lamenting the heat and then opens her eyes to look back towards Fresh, who is watching her closely.

“Yes…?” asks Basil, somewhat nervously.

“Oh. Uh. Nothing,” says Fresh as she thinks about the idea she just had. Returning to work, she finishes sweeping downstairs. It’s the middle of the afternoon and it’s getting hot again, however some adventurers had tracked in a thick streak of crumbling mud from the dungeon this morning. Finishing up, she sets the broom against the wall and goes upstairs to get a piece of wood. Fresh comes back down a moment later and sets the crafting materials down onto the counter in front of Basil. She also has some glue with her.

“What are you doing?” asks the priestess.

Fresh looks at her, raising a finger as she explains. “I have an idea.”

“Oh boy,” comes a tired sigh from across the store and Fresh turns her head around, sticking her tongue out at Jubilee who is adjusting the glass-chickens. There isn’t a single customer and there hasn’t been since the morning rush.

“Bleeeh~!”

Under Basil’s watchful eye, Fresh grabs the piece of wood and uses her abilities to saw a small piece of it off, which is about two fingers in length and one in width.

Setting that small piece upright, she then saws that in half again lengthwise, creating two flat and long sticks. Holding her hands above them, she closes her eyes and smooths them down to get rid of any rough edges and splinters.

Smiling, Fresh holds an open hand out to Basil. “Can I have your paper, please?” Basil looks at her warily, apparently not happy about having to give up her only source of cool air. But the priestess relents with little more than a bitter smile as she hands the girl the page. “Thanks, Basil!”

Fresh sets the paper down, folding it together into thin segments in an alternating pattern. Wait… she thinks for a moment. It won’t work like this. Looking around, she grabs a pair of scissors from the shelves and cuts larger corners off of the bottom half of the paper. Basil flinches as she watches the piece of paper, her only source of relief, become mutilated. “Don’t worry, Basil!” reassures Fresh, understanding the priestess’ pain. “Wait - hold on.“

She grabs the two sticks and then fastens them together at the base with a single thin, metal nail, which she saws off at the end. The small thing looks and works almost like a pair of elongated scissors. Then, she takes one side of the paper and glues it to one stick and then glues the other side of the paper to the other stick. Finally, she glues another piece of wood on top of both sticks, sandwiching the paper between them.

“Ta-da!” says Fresh excitedly, as she holds up the little construction, presenting it to Basil, who just stares at her, somewhat lost.

“What is it?” asks the priestess, doing her best to hide her upset expression.

“Ah!” Fresh flips the thing open. “It’s a fan!” she says, beaming. She waves it towards Basil, who closes her eyes in relief as the air comes back to move around her face, tossing her hair up a little. “Here!” Fresh hands it to the priestess and then sets to work, cleaning up all of the scraps. But not before also making one for Jubilee.

Basil sighs in relief as she waves the small hand-fan against her face. “This is really nice,” exclaims the priestess. “It works really well.”

“Mm!” beams Fresh, happy to have brought some relief to one of her friends.

Jubilee takes the other fan, as Fresh hands it to them, but seems less excited. Fresh supposes that their mask sort of ruins the point of the fan. “Thanks,” says Jubilee, examining the thing. Fresh rubs her head. Making anything for Jubilee is really hard. They’re so peculiar. “We could probably sell these,” says Jubilee and Fresh winces.

“I knew you’d say that,” she sighs.

“Nineteen Obols?” asks Jubilee, opening the fan and trying it out, ignoring her distressed sighing.

Basil chimes in from the counter. “That sounds reasonable. Whatever happened to the sweet-teas?”

Jubilee thinks for a moment, looking up at Fresh. “Yeah, whatever happened to those?”

The girl crosses her arms and purses her lips in frustration. “I’m trying to make things that you two like, not things to sell!”

Jubilee shrugs. “I like having things to sell.” They look around Fresh towards the counter. “Right, Basil?”

“Mhm,” says the priestess, fanning herself. Her golden bangle jangling on her arm. With drooping shoulders, the heat suddenly gets to her after all, Fresh grabs the rest of the materials and heads back upstairs to stow everything away. At least it’s nice and cool up here.

“Stupid Jubilee. Stupid Basil,” grumbles Fresh as she steps into the kitchen. Why can’t her friends just accept her presents as they are? Why do they insist on being so… mercantile about everything? She just wanted to do something nice and she would have been thrilled with just a thank you and a smile from them, but here they are, trying to make a profit.

The pot clinks as she sets it down against the metal stove and gets ready to make more of the sweet-tea.

She sighs again, if only just to make herself feel better. Grabbing some of the fruits from the basket, she rubs them against her dress and throws them into the pot. They splat down against the metal somewhat unceremoniously. “Jerks,” she mumbles to herself and tears open the kitchen window. Immediately, a streaming heat blasts into the fairly sheltered kitchen. Any coolness that has managed to come together and seep through the walls from the golem-core, to keep this room cool, immediately dissipates and is blown away.

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The sweltering summer scorch surrounds her on all sides in an instant. Feeling uncomfortable again, this time on purpose, the girl sets to work making the sweet-tea, grumbling to herself the entire time as she works.

As she does so, she listens to the only noise coming from the outside world. The trickling fountain, whispering to her with its gentle splashes. There are no voices, no birds and not even any cicadas or any other kind of buzzing insect. All there is, is the sound of her working in the kitchen and the sound of the fountain. It’s just the two of them, as if they were the last things around in the whole world.

Fresh stirs the pot of boiling water, thinking as she gazes down into it vacantly. Her curses; after she had had the idea in the pantry earlier, she quickly brushed it aside, deciding that it was too risky and too dangerous. She would rather do something simple and productive to make her friends happy, because that’s what makes her happy. But…

The spoon clinks, as she strikes it against the rim of the pot a few times.

But maybe she needs to get more serious about this witch business? Curse-magic seems to be incredibly powerful and potent, so much so that it’s an object of dread in this world. Making potions and paper-fans is great and all… but is that what’s going to keep her and her friends safe when their time comes? When the hero rises, to destroy all things that have stemmed from darkness, as the nightmare foretold? As the prophecy foretold?

She listens to the fountain and to its clear answer.

“No.”

Grabbing a few scoops of the tea mixture, she pours it into the water.

She’s going to need more than a few glass-chickens and a fistful of Obols. Jubilee had told her what they would need to do, if it came down to it and in a sense, she’s really happy that there is someone in her life who would promise to go so far with her if they had to. But at the same time, Jubilee can also be a little inconsiderate sometimes. “People are complicated,” says Fresh, shaking her head. She takes the mixture off of the stove to let it cool off.

Her eyes rise up towards the dungeon as she stares out of the window. In an odd train of thought, she supposes that if anyone ever finds out that she’s a witch, she can just… hide inside of the dungeon forever? It’s not like anyone could ever get to her then, since only she and Jubilee can go inside her instance of it. She’d be safe. She could live off of cave water and mush-mushes for a few years. Maybe people would even forget about her eventually and the hero would just go away on his own then? She could sneak out in the middle of the night and leave town once things have cooled down. But that doesn’t really seem like an appealing way to live this new life, honestly.

Her eyes wander back down towards the swirling mixture before herself. No. She just has to keep doing what it is that she’s doing right now. The fountain put her here for a reason, for a purpose and she’s moving towards that goal. Even if she doesn’t quite understand what it is herself. As the sweet-tea spins, the remnants of the leaves seem to slowly rise to the surface. Curiously, she watches them float up to the top of the thick soup. She watches their petals drift and float around, as if souls carried down the river of the dead. They come together, the black mass converging into a vague shape. Round. Empty on the inside save for a few odd leaves here and there that make up the details.

A face with no eyes.

She tilts her head the other way, trying to figure out if the heat is getting to her. As she examines the pot closer, the leaves all seem to sink away, floating down to the bottom where they dissolve entirely from the heat.

She blinks. It looks like an apple now.

How odd.

Razmatazz

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