Chapter 93: 94: Dungeon Toy Shop

It is the middle of the night. Fresh and Jubilee sit downstairs together at the counter of the store. The girl fumbles with a few scraps of fabric and fluff as she tries to get her mind off of things. Despite the roaring summer that is currently underway, Fresh can’t help but notice how particularly dark the world feels as of late. But at the same time, she isn’t really sure if it’s the world itself, or just the old blues from her last life that are finally catching up with her, now that she has slowed down a little. Now that she’s found a place to dig in her heels and she’s stopped running, it’s all catching up with her.

Jubilee snaps their fingers in front of her face a few times. “Hey! Pay attention, you goon.” Fresh looks up from the counter, staring at her friend and blinks a few times. “This was your idea, but if you’re just wasting my time, then I’m going to bed.”

“Ah! Wait! No, sorry!” apologizes Fresh, slapping her cheeks to rouse herself from her daze. “I’ve just been a little stressed lately and my mind’s wandering.”

Jubilee stares at her, their fingers tapping against the counter and they sigh, leaning back against the chair. They lift the piece of fabric, holding it out to her. “Look. You wanted to start with the legs, right?”

“Mm!” nods Fresh.

“How would you make them?”

“Me? Uh…” Fresh grabs a piece of the fabric, holding the edges together to make a hollow cylinder. “I’d start with the legs like this?”

Jubilee shakes their head. “That’s fine and all, but what about the foot?”

“Huh?” Fresh lifts the hollow fabric tube up, closing one eye and looking at Jubilee through it.

“You gotta close off the foot, otherwise all of the stuffing will come out.”

“Oh.” Fresh looks back at the tube and then simply presses the edges together on one end, closing it off. “Like this?”

“That looks like shit.” says Jubilee, lifting up a piece of fabric. “Look, you want the bottom of the foot to be smooth, not some knotted jumble.” They take the fabric. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Watch.”

Fresh watches as Jubilee sets the fabric down onto the counter and begins drawing the silhouette of a cute bear with round ears on it. A moment later, they take a pair of their iron scissors and fold the sheet of fabric over itself, before cutting out the silhouette. A minute later, two small, flat bears lay on the counter. “See? You could make each joint one at a time and then sew it all together like some undead freak.” They lift up one of the cloth bear cut-outs. “Or you just make two of these, sew the edges together and then fill it with fluff. “Draw. Cut. Sew. Fill,” says Jubilee, wagging the bear cut-out left and right, giving it the impression that it’s walking. “Four steps. Easy. After that we can detail it.” Fresh does her best to hold in a quiet laugh as she watches her friend wag the bear around.

“What’s so funny, goo-brain?” barks Jubilee, setting the bear down on top of its twin again and neatly arranging them. “Get to work.”

Fresh beams, humming happily as she mimics Jubilee. The two of them spend the rest of the night making a large batch of teddy-bears. Jubilee had made fun of her and called her a giant, baby-hearted, goo-brain when she asked them to help her make them. But she can tell that they’re having fun making them too. Even if their smile is hidden away from the world, she can still see it in her friend’s loose, but excited posture and in their unusually giddy eyes, which Jubilee does their best to hide by staring at the teddy-bears as they work.

The girl has had enough of the horrible world for now. Her entire life is built around death or misfortune in some sense. She makes weapons and items out of dead things that are used to make even more things dead. It’s a cycle that she’s fueling and while she does see that necessity of it, for now, just for tonight at least, she wants to make something nice, together with her friend.

She looks as Jubilee sews the edges of another teddy-bear shut. Setting down her current one, she takes two of the cutouts and does her best to copy Jubilee.

“So why are we doing this again?” asks Jubilee, inspecting her work. “You missed a corner there, here, let me see - “

“No!” says Fresh, pulling the unfinished bear in her hands back. “I want to make this one,” she says, setting the fabric down to fix the corner. Jubilee stares at her curiously, but then shrugs and returns to their work. “- Because I want to spend time with you, Jubilee,” says Fresh, answering the first question.

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “Thanks.”

“Mm!” says Fresh, ignoring her friend’s snark as she begins gently stuffing more fluff into the one that she’s making entirely on her own. She had sewn a little too much of it closed, so it’s arduous work, pressing the fluff into the feet and the arms from the little hole that is left on the head. Fresh purses her lips, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she focuses on making this one perfect. It takes a while and as she still sits there, working on the same single one, Jubilee has long since finished cutting out and stuffing a handful of the little creatures. But she doesn’t let that bother her.

She and Jubilee are working with two different mindsets. Sure, Jubilee is having fun and so is she, but she’s putting more than just some fluff into the little bear. Every press of her fingers to adjust the filling and every tuft of fabric that she tucks neatly into place is set there with a warm feeling in her heart. It’s a cruel world, filled with horrible things and she can’t change any of that -

Fresh carefully sews the hole shut by hand, after filling in the rest of the stuffing into the inside of the nose.

- But even if she can’t change that. She can make something that is the opposite of that. Even if she can’t hide herself from all the terrible facts of this new life, she can still put out something else into the darkness. Instead of perpetuating it, for tonight at least, she can let something warm be born from this feeling in her heart. It’s not a feeling born out of a desperate survival drive, or out of a yearning for escape. Rather, it’s a clean feeling that stems from somewhere deeper, somewhere purer.

Setting the bear down, she turns it to face herself and digs into her pockets, feeling for the glass marble that she had made in advance and then carefully cut it in half. The trick to coloring the glass was to sand it to a rough state, then rub in a pigment and then reheat it again until it became smooth, before then matting it a second time so that it doesn’t shatter. Smiling, she takes a dab of glue and coats the flat back surface of the eyes, before pressing them against the material.

Staring at the green eyes of the smiling bear that is looking back up her way, Fresh tilts her head, inspecting it carefully. She narrows her eyes, looking at its innocent smile that is made out of a sewn-on black thread, checking carefully that there isn’t a hint of smugness or fakeness to its arc. It has to be real.

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Her gaze softens, her expression is proud and tired as she nods to the bear that is fulfilling its role in an admirable manner. The bear nods back.

Fresh rubs her eyes, blinking a few times as she looks at the small, green-eyed teddy-bear that is filled with nothing but cotton and her warm feelings. Her eyes raise up towards the shuttered window of the storefront. She can’t see through it, but she knows that it’s very late. She blinks again. Her tired mind must just be playing tricks on her. Looking down, she watches as Jubilee sets down the last of the eleven bears that they made in the time she’s made one.

“You’re really good at this, Jubilee,” says the girl, feeling less proud about her one bear now.

Jubilee shakes their head, adjusting the bears on the counter so that they all sit next to each other. “I sew a lot of things.” They sigh, leaning back against their chair before letting out a long yawn. Fresh watches, wanting to comment as her friend covers their ‘mouth’ as they yawn, despite the mask being there. But she doesn’t say anything, realizing that that might be rude. Instead, the girl takes a deep breath, mustering up the courage to give Jubilee the bear that she’s made for them as a gift.

“Come on, let’s go to bed,” says Jubilee, scooting their chair back and jumping off rather abruptly. Fresh looks up, surprised at her friend’s sudden exit and her eyes shoot back down to the single bear before her that stares up and back at her, almost expectantly.

“Huh? Uh -”

Jubilee starts walking up the stairs and Fresh feels her heart beating faster and faster. She feels her skin grow clammy and her fingers become jittery, as the nervousness runs through her. A cold sweat forms beneath her arms in an instant. It’s a familiar anxiety. A fear of what happens next. A fear of repercussion, a fear of being laughed at. Fresh remembers this feeling, this familiar feeling that crawls through her body as she listens to Jubilee walk up the staircase by themselves, as she listens to them vanishing away. Is this stupid? Is she just being stupid again, like always? Just being weird again, like always? Why is she so afraid, all of the sudden? Because she doesn’t want Jubilee to think that she’s odd?

Something taps against the counter and she looks as a droplet from somewhere leaves a wet spot next to the green-eyed bear.

Why does her throat hurt?

Fresh clenches her fist and jumps up to her feet, the chair scooting back behind herself loudly and crashing into the wall, as she grabs the bear tightly with the other hand and runs to the bottom of the stairs before Jubilee can go.

“Jubilee!” yells Fresh, far too loud. Jubilee stops on the stairs, looking down at the wet-eyed girl. “I made this for you!” she cries, as she holds up the bear towards them. “Be- because you’re my friend!” howls the girl, her head lowered down to look at the steps.

“Are you crying?” asks a voice from above.

“Noooo~!” howls Fresh, as she feels the weight in her hands grow lighter. She’s clearly crying.

Razmatazz

;_;

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