Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 139: Comfy (Patreon)

The rest of the day passes. Fresh, after getting both Jubilee’s blessing and praise, spent the last of it making more gloves. Though now, for both hands and in different sizes. Jubilee, having appraised the item, had said that it was decently strong for just a single glove. With one on each hand, the bonuses would stack nicely. Especially if she figured out how to make more of it. Some chest armor or some spaulders, or just a whole outfit really. They could sell it as a set then, rather than individually.

Given the lightweight, almost cloth-like properties of the material, it seems to be well suited for the casters here in this town, most of whom didn’t wear anything heavier than fabric. Basil makes one suggestion, to add some of the kobold fluff to the trim of the gloves. It’s cold up on the mountain after all. Fresh thinks that’s a good idea and makes sure to do that with each pair. It drives up the crafting price a little, but as always, they have such a huge profit margin that it makes next to no difference. Plus, they look a lot comfier and professional now.

As she sets a few of them from her first batch down onto the counter in the late evening, shortly before their closing, the crowd around the front all come over, curious about these new items.

“They’re so stretchy!” says a hooded caster, covered in trinkets and hand-crafted ornaments that dangle from his robe as he pulls on the fingers of a glove and watches it snap back into place. “What’s this material? I’ve never heard of this before.”

“It sounds expensive…” says an elf, leaning over his shoulder to look.

“I really like that they sparkle,” adds the woman next to him, staring at his hand as he slips it on, pulling the fluff attached to the back of the long glove down to past his wrist before wiggling his fingers.

“They have pretty good stats too,” says the man, still wiggling his fingers and nodding in approval. He ends up buying the pair he is wearing. Fresh doesn’t know who he is, but apparently the people here take a lot of stock in his words and actions, as they then rush the counter, picking out every last pair of gloves that she had made today. Though, most of them go out of their way to try and pay Shamrock for the gloves, rather than walking over to an annoyed Basil who stands by the money drawer. He lifts a hand, pointing towards the priestess.

“Over there,” is all that he says to the crowd, most of whom walk away dejectedly to pay for their items by the priestess.

Happy at the praise she receives from all of her friends, Fresh feels a new burst of energy that washes away any melancholy that had still lingered from the morning and heads straight upstairs, throwing together some food from the pantry so that they could eat a hot dinner tonight.

“Need any help?” asks Jubilee, to her surprise. In truth, she doesn’t. But Fresh makes up some work for Jubilee to help her with in the kitchen.

[Cooking: 5] {Too many cooks}

They still don’t have a table to eat at, but they simply make a circle on the floor. Jubilee sits in their room with the door open and the rest of them just outside.

Once they finish, Basil and Shamrock take care of the clean up, heading down to get some water, for which she is more than thankful. Though she would have done it herself anyways if nobody had offered. Still, maybe a bit of extra sleep will do some good to brighten her spirits a little more.

Fresh looks down at her bed which she had made this morning, noticing that there is a lump underneath the blanket. She looks around. Jubilee is locked inside of their room as far as she knows and Basil and Shamrock are outside. Her eyes wander back down to the square disturbance beneath her thin sheets and she lifts it up, looking at the sky-blue heap of fabric. Reaching down and lifting it up, she unfolds it in her hands. The bottom ends of the thick, hand-made blanket fall down against the bed, as she feels the material between her fingers, squishing it. It’s thick and fluffy on the inside, but the fabric itself is expensive and sleek. Looking closer, she stares at the stitching, noticing the imperfections. It’s hand-made, not with magic. Holding it to her face, she takes a deep smell of the material, noticing that it carries a faint scent of the yellow flowers outside of town.

Quickly throwing her robe off while everyone is gone, she jumps into her bed and buries herself underneath the blanket. Pressing her head underneath her pillow so that nobody can hear her cry, though this time, happily. The blanket is very heavy and warm and it presses down against her with a weight that she can’t help but feel is deeply comforting.

That night, she dreams of a sunny spring day, in which the pristine, bright-blue sky is filled with beautiful colors and feelings, as if the entire world were awash with a floral paint.

Waking up early, she leaps into the next day with high spirits.

After getting ready, the first thing she does is restock their shelves with as many items as she can. The glass weapons are by far the easiest. The snacks are a little trickier, since cooking is a time intensive process, even with magic to speed it up, so she tries to juggle both tasks at the same time, to her success; much to her own as well as her friend’s surprise.

Fresh doesn’t say anything to Jubilee about the blanket, but Jubilee doesn’t say anything to her either. But that’s okay, the silence. Not because she’s embarrassed to show emotionality around the others or anything like that or because Jubilee might expect something. But because it’s just what it is. Not every kindness had to be turned into a giant show, sometimes, the simple act of knowing that your friends care is enough in and of itself. You do things for other people to show that you care, not because you expect something.

So to show that she cares, she promises herself to try extra hard today.

Once the food and the weapons are done. She makes a few extra gloves, asking Basil to try buying as many scales as she could. They’ll need them if she is going to make an entire set of armor out of the new material.

In the short while they have left before they open, Fresh sits upstairs, tinkering with some wood that Shamrock has carried up for her from the basement as she makes a table. This time, already in its end position. Given the tight constraints of the square room that is already filling up with furniture, she has to make the table longer and rectangular and sets it against the railing of the stairs, so that one side is inaccessible. But that’s fine. It’s big enough for one person to sit on each end and long enough for two to sit on the sides. She supposes Jubilee will never use it with them, but there’s a chair for them here anyways.

Maybe one day. Fresh nods to herself, taking a sip from her bottle of sweet-tea as she looks over to the cabinet next to Basil’s bed, seeing the weak glow coming from inside of it. Basil had locked the lantern in there, so that it didn’t follow her downstairs. Fresh feels really bad for it though. Basil said she liked it, in the end, but that it’s simply too creepy and unsettling for the customers. Fresh supposes that she has a point, but still. Calling downstairs, she gets Basil’s permission to open her cabinet and then catches the lantern before it can fly away.

Holding it against herself and petting it as if it were an animal, Fresh walks to the pantry and sets it inside.

“You’ll have more room here, but you gotta leave Basil alone when she’s working, okay?”

The lantern doesn’t respond, simply flying back towards the door as soon as she lets go of it. Fresh sighs, not sure if the lantern can even understand her. Maybe it can and it’s just ignoring her? She doesn’t know and walks out backwards, pushing the lantern back with one hand while she quickly closes the door with the other. Grabbing a sheet of paper, she makes a little sign by drawing a picture of a lantern and hangs it up onto the door.

Finally, Fresh quickly makes her bed, taking a minute to make sure that the new blanket is straight and tucked in neatly, before she heads downstairs just as Jubilee opens the shop. Excited people run inside, flowing in like a stream and heading straight towards the counter, grabbing up the pile of gloves. Already feeling their strange gazes, Fresh scoots downstairs to her basement and sets to work, making as many new gloves as she can.

If she’s counting right, tonight is a new moon. The next time she heads upstairs, she asks Shamrock if he can run into town and get her a cauldron. The biggest one he can find and also manage to carry. He lifts a hand, pointing at Basil and Fresh stares at him and then at her. “Ah! Uh, sure,” says Fresh. “Basil! Can you go with Shamrock on some errands?” Basil agrees and as the two of them walk out, Fresh can’t help but notice that the crowd seems to go with them.

Still. She stands behind the counter, standing next to Jubilee, now that they had next to no customers inside of the empty shop. “Just like old times, huh?”

Jubilee looks back up to her and nods. “Just like old times.”

Fresh closes her eyes, smiling as she lazily leans forward over the counter, listening to the distant sounds coming from all around the tunnel. She pretends that the voices, that the trickling of the river-water, that the humming of the magical crystals, that it is all a single buzzing of lazy cicadas. As if it were a warm summer’s day.

For a moment, she is sure that she can smell the indistinct, dusty odor of the old house and that same calmness and warmth that she had always felt back then, in that strange memory of an old life returns to her now.