Fresh nods, satisfied. She pulls the curtain to the side along the rod and listens to the slight hissing sound as the metal rings run along the bar that they’re fastened around. She pulls the fabric curtain back open again.

And then, a second later, she closes it again.

Fresh blinks, sliding the curtain of the new dressing room open again for another, of easily a dozen, times.

“Will you knock it off?!” barks Jubilee. “You’re such a pain in the ass,” they mutter, sighing.

Fresh turns her head around, staring at Jubilee who is behind the counter. Stepping inside of the dressing room, she closes the curtain behind herself and looks at herself in the mirror that is mounted on the wall there. Her reflection nods to her and she nods back to it.

“No crying at work!” shouts Jubilee, raising their voice.

Fresh purses her lips and opens the curtain again, stepping back outside into the storefront. In that case, she’s decided to postpone her crying until after they close the store tonight.

“Jubilee!” says Fresh. “The dressing-room is done!” she exclaims, gesturing with both of her hands towards the finished dressing room. She had essentially cut their downstairs storage closet in half. The left half by the counter is now a dressing room with a curtain and the right is a small, two by two meter storage space. Jubilee flashes her a thumbs-up and returns to their scribbling inside of the ledger. Fresh frowns. “Jubilee, are you mad at me?”

“I am unable to feel mad,” says Jubilee. “Just like I can’t feel my fucking back,” they say, stretching themselves forward, placing their hands on the back of their hips.

“I don’t think either of those things are true,” says Fresh. “Should I give you a massage later, Ju~ bi~ lee~?” asks Fresh. “Basil has oil for sore muscles.”

“I bet she does,” says Jubilee, shaking their head and looking over their shoulder at Basil who is working the window.

“Huh?” asks Fresh.

Basil narrows her eyes, turning her head around in the middle of selling some ice-cream. “What’s that supposed to mean?” asks the priestess.

Jubilee rolls their eyes and ignores her entirely, turning back to Fresh. “You’re asking a weird thing again,” states Jubilee.

Fresh blinks and then shrugs. “Am I?” she asks. “So.. no massage?”

“No massage,” repeats Jubilee. “Especially not with your weird-ass crab-fingers.” Fresh looks down at her hands, pinching her fingers together.

“I can give you a massage,” offers Basil.

“You can stay at least five steps away from me at all times,” says Jubilee.

Basil nods. “I’ll come by before bedtime then.”

“Bring a knife, you’re going to need it if you try,” remarks Jubilee. Fresh scratches her cheek and decides that she’s causing trouble by staying down here. So instead, she runs around the store, restocking shelves. Shamrock is taking the morning off to work on his project, so she’s covering for him.

“Hey, did you hear about the center?” says a hushed voice from the aisle across from her. Fresh fumbles around with some equipment from the dungeon, pretending to be busy as she eavesdrops.

“Oh, yeah,” says a worried voice. “They say a hero showed up again! Wasn’t it supposed to be another ninety years?”

“No, I mean, that’s great and all, but I meant about the.. you know -” She lowers her voice. “- witch,” whispers the other one quietly.

“Mhm,” mumbles the voice. “I heard she killed a few hundred people with a single curse and flew off.”

“Really? I heard she tried to eat the hero whole and got blasted away!”

“You think?”

“Makes sense to me. My priest told me that a team of exorcists blew her and her cult out of the north too.”

“Hey..” they lower their voice. “..Isn’t there that guy here? Isn’t he..?”

“I saw him too!” whispers the other one back. Fresh’s eyes open wide as she tries to listen more, but the two of them move too far out of earshot.

She looks around, still adjusting the same helmet she has been playing with for a minute now. What should she do? Fresh hurries back around the shelf, wanting to go to Jubilee. But there is a line before the counter, as all of their customers seem to be converging at once to pay for their things and Basil is busy as well, as the line outside seems to be stretching on around the way.

Frowning, she decides to just go upstairs for a moment to calm down.

Sure, it’s not a secret that Shamrock is an obviously noticeable entity. They had talked about this many times before, in fact. But would it be a problem, now that the infamous witch of the north had made a public appearance again? And on such a grand scale? She hadn’t even considered it before.

Fresh closes the door behind herself and heads upstairs, knocking on the workshop door before opening it and peeking inside. Shamrock turns his head around.

“Hey, Shamrock,” says Fresh. The man nods, staring her way to see what she wants. Fresh blinks, not sure what it is that she wanted herself. “Just checking in,” she says, closing the door again.

She sighs, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead with the back of her wrist. She has no idea what she’s doing. What’s she so worried about? Everything is fine. Except for her own blunders, everything is going as well as could be, considering the circumstances.

Looking around the upstairs area, she slaps her cheeks to liven herself up and then heads back downstairs, returning into the fray.

Despite everything going on in her head today, Fresh manages to make the rest of the workday a success. She manages to keep the shelves topped up and the ice-cream restocked. Coconut seems to be the biggest seller by far, which makes her happy as it feeds into the tropical stereotype that she can’t help but create in her own mind’s eye of this place and it makes Jubilee happy, because it’s by far the cheapest one to make.

“Fucking coconuts. They’re everywhere.”

“Like sand on the beach,” says Basil, kicking a coconut that had rolled out of the pile back towards the heap.

Eventually, when the day calms down, Fresh pulls Jubilee to the side and whispers her fears into their ear. But Jubilee just tells her not to worry. Everything is fine and it’s not like they didn’t know this would happen. So, essentially, they tell her exactly the same things that she herself had already thought before.

Hearing Jubilee repeat her own words brings her a lot of comfort. At least until she finds a quiet minute to stare out of the window together with Basil, the two of them looking over the seated crowd, towards the ocean. Watching its crashing waves reach the shoreline, listening to their mind-numbing drone, she can’t help but wonder; are the two of them really having the same train of thought? Or is the fountain at play here, manipulating them in order to force them to stick to ‘the plan’, whatever that might be?

Fresh sighs, staring out over the water. Basil sighs too, but for a different reason. Hearing them sigh, Jubilee also sighs, but also for a different reason.

“We should go swimming,” suggests Fresh.

“Pass,” says Jubilee.

“I’d like too,” replies Basil. “But I think there are monsters in the water.”

“Really?” asks Fresh, looking out over the ocean.

“For sure,” says the priestess. “I’ve heard of all sorts of giant fish and sharks and weird, grabby tentacled hydras.” She shakes her head. “Besides.. uh..”

“What’s up, Basil?”

“She doesn’t know how to swim,” says Jubilee.

Basil turns her head around. “Hey! As if you can.”

Jubilee shrugs, not bothering to turn around, “I can.”

“As if! Prove it!”

“No.”

Fresh blinks. “Oh. That’s not a big deal, Basil,” she reassures. “I can teach you.”

“I don’t want to get eaten, thanks,” says Basil, looking out over the water.

Fresh sighs. Then Basil sighs, but for a different reason and then Jubilee sighs, but also for a different reason.

Razmatazz

New litrpg, crafting-heavy story coming 'soon'. I'll let you know when it pops! =)

Expect owls.

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