“Jubilee,” says Fresh. “There’s a mushroom here,” she explains rather emotionlessly, pointing at the left-hand wall, just past the door.

“Pull it out and throw it away,” sighs Jubilee, stepping in after her. “Well. I guess we can add replacing the floor to the list of renovations already,” they say, looking around the entrance area. For whatever reason, the stones of the floor have been broken and shattered in several places. Grasses and mushrooms have started to sprout up through the cracks, inside of the house.

“Look at this,” says Basil, bending over and looking at a large crack in the floor. Fresh turns her head and stares from where she is. There’s a segment of one of the giant roots running below the house and it looks like something caused it to shift. That’s likely what broke the floor here, as the roots lifted the brickwork up.

Fresh lifts her gaze, looking around the ground-floor area right by the front door.

The house downstairs has an odd shape. With the inward set front-door, the room here is shaped like an upside-down ‘u’ with a prong on either side of the door. The room itself is, well, it’s not as gigantic and massive as their house in the east. It’s also not quite as cozy and compact as their ramshackle shop floor back in Jubilee’s old house in the north, being a smidge bigger.

Fresh shakes her head, correcting herself.

Their old house, back in the north.

It’s certainly an interesting design though. The blueish gray bricks of the floor are uneven because of the disturbance below the house, running along to meet the timber-framed and white-plaster walls and stonework that make up the exterior. The overgrowth gives it a vibe that she can’t quite explain. It’s.. secluding. It feels like being in a secure forest grove. It’s not safe in the same context as four walls would be, but it’s safe in a different way.

She holds up her hands, framing the area with her fingers, trying to get an eye for how the store here is going to look. It’s going to be tricky, with the unusual shape of the room to set up the shelves and counter in a good way.

The frame she makes with her fingers hovers over each of her friends as they examine the area, until she lands on a spiral staircase in the back.

“It’s quaint,” says Basil. “I think we can make it nice,” she states, looking around the room, watching a little dusty particulate drift in the air, caught in a sun-beam that shines in through the little window above the door.

“Well, I’ve seen worse shitholes,” sighs Jubilee, following Fresh to the spiral staircase. It’s made out of strong wood and goes in both directions.

“Up or down?” asks Fresh.

“Let’s look up first,” says Jubilee. “Is this thing safe enough to hold you people?” they ask, wiggling the staircase. It doesn’t budge.

“One way to find out,” says Basil, taking the first step and heading upstairs. Fresh and Jubilee look at each other and then hurry after her, not wanting to be the last one up.

Shamrock slips out of his armor through his helmet and slides up the pole of the staircase, moving past all of them. “No fair!” argues Fresh. She’s the last one upstairs on the first floor.

“Oh, wow!” says Basil, clearly excited. Fresh sticks her head up, looking over her shoulder as Jubilee pushes past the two of them.

“Stop blocking the staircase with your fat ass, Basil,” sighs Jubilee.

The four of them look at the upstairs. There’s a room here with one large table in the middle. All around the room, lining the walls are old, dusty bookshelves, filled to the brim with all sorts of paperworks and manuals. But, also with the same overgrowth as on the ground floor.

Roots and plants seem to have found their way into the walls and stick out through the cracks in the stone, into the room, dotting the shelves with just as many colorful flowers and sprouts as with books.

“This is going to be a problem,” says Jubilee, rubbing their forehead.

Fresh shakes her head, having a tradition to fulfill. She plucks a flower from the wall and hands it to Jubilee. “Here you go, Jubilee. This is for you!” she beams.

Jubilee sighs and takes the flower from her. “Thanks.”

“Look at all of these books,” says Basil, picking one up that a vine seems to have gotten hold of. She pulls it free, setting the vine back down onto the shelf and flips through some pages. “Are we allowed to keep these?” she asks.

“For the money we spent, we’re allowed to fucking burn them,” replies Jubilee, looking around the room.

Fresh looks around the room, seeing something oddly familiar. She gasps in surprise, running across to the shelf and picking up a colorful book that she had seen once before. “Shamrock! Shamrock!” she calls. “Look!” says Fresh, holding the book open to the man. It’s a copy of the same book she had seen in the north, upstairs in their old house. The picture story about a little slime who undergoes various adventures with his friends. “Wanna read it together later?” she asks.

“There are no words,” replies Shamrock, looking at the book.

“Yeah, that sounds like her reading level alright,” quips Jubilee.

“It’s a picture book!” explains Fresh, flipping a page to the next one. The adventurous, heroic slime is fighting the deadly butterfly-king on this one. It’s a good story.

“Sounds like a lot of fun,” says Basil.

“You wanna join us too, Basil?” asks Fresh. The priestess nods with a smile and then looks around the room. There’s a window that looks out over the plaza and from here, they can see the world covered in snow, reflecting sunlight into their home.

“Where are the beds?” asks Basil, looking around. “This is just a library. It’s nice, but there’s nothing really ‘homey’ here.”

“One more floor to go,” says Jubilee, pointing up to the second floor that they make their way towards, heading up the spiral staircase one more time. Though, reaching the second floor is a little harder, because of all of the foliage overgrowing on the staircase. “We need to do something about this,” says Jubilee. “Imagine how many bugs there are.”

“I haven’t seen any bugs yet,” says Basil, looking around and lifting a leaf. “Shamrock?”

“No,” replies the man, sliding up the banister behind them.

They clear the foliage and head upstairs to the last floor. The roof comes to a high angle above their heads, connected together with several beams and breaking through the center of the construction, is a hole. There’s a giant hole in the roof.

“Wow,” sighs Jubilee. “We bought a shit-heap alright,” they sigh, looking around. Upstairs-upstairs is apparently where the living area is. This room which carries the same shape as the others, has a divided segment to the left, where a few cabinets stand. A kitchen. It’s a bit run down and old, but it’s a kitchen.

Jubilee points up at the hole, looking at Fresh. “We need to fix that as soon as we can, before the snow causes any water damage,” they say, looking around. “Though, it might be too late for this place either way.”

“I don’t think it’s so bad,” says Basil. “Sure, it’s a little.. wild,” she says, having found the word she was looking for. “But I’m positive there’s something to be done here with a little work. It has good bones.”

“Yeah, it has good bones like a fucking necromancer,” replies Jubilee. “’Work’ is the right word,” they say. “Because we’re going to be doing it, since we spent our last coin to buy this place.”

Straight ahead, beneath the hole in the roof, is a single bed. Which Fresh doesn’t really like, honestly. That seems like a great way to get a cold. Whoever used to live here must have been a real, literal moonbather. Though.. did they really destroy their own roof? Looking back up towards it, it really does look like it was broken, rather than being simple decay or a deconstruction.

“Well. I’m sleeping in the creepy-library,” says Jubilee. “Bit too drafty up here.”

“There’s always the guild?” suggests Basil.

“Fuck that.” Jubilee shakes their head. “We paid for this place and we’re damn well sleeping here. It’s fine, I’m sure there’s a good corner downstairs.”

“We still have to find the washroom,” says Fresh. “Let’s go all the way downstairs now,” she suggests. The others nod and head back down the staircase. Fresh turns her head, looking at the empty bed, sitting square in the middle of the room, bathed in sunglow.

The four of them head down the staircase, past the first floor and the ground floor as they head into the basement, in hopes of finding a hint of civilization in their new house.

“PAKEW!” yells a strange voice from the darkness of the basement.

It only takes a second before Jubilee spins and sends a shard of glass flying straight into the shadows. “P-PAKEW!” yells the voice again, clearly not dead.

“What the fuck?”

“Wait, Jubilee,” says Fresh. “It sounds like a spriggan.”

“I know it fucking sounds like a spriggan, what’s it doing in our fucking basement?” they ask. Fresh tugs on their arm, pointing across the room at the pile of rubble. One of the walls looks like it collapsed. Beneath a heap of rocks sticks out a chubby, little, stubby arm, waving.

“Oh no! The poor guy’s trapped,” says Basil.

“Hello?” asks Jubilee. “That’s about to be the least of its problems,” they say, rolling their eyes and getting another piece of glass ready. “I wanted a fucking washroom, not a damned spriggan. What the fuck kind of shithole is this place?”

“Shamrock!” calls Fresh, trying to pull on a rock. “Help!”

“What? Shamrock, fuck off,” says Jubilee. “We’re killing it.”

“I vote we don’t!” yells Fresh at Jubilee, trying to pull a rock up a bit higher. Shamrock comes over and lifts the rock up with no trouble at all, simply setting it out of the way before grabbing another one. “I don’t want our house to be a murder-house, Jubilee!” argues Fresh.

“Have you looked around?” replies Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips. “People have clearly been murdered here already.”

“It’s not that bad,” sighs Basil. “Oh. Look,” she says, pointing to the side. “I think I found the washroom,” she says, opening the door and peeking inside. Her face lights up and she quickly closes the door again, having seen something exciting apparently.

“Basil!” calls Fresh.

“Huh? Oh! Sorry!” apologizes Basil, rushing over as Fresh pulls the spriggan out of the rubble.

“Hold it right there,” says Jubilee.

“Jubilee! No!” argues Fresh.

“PAKEW!”

“We’re not doing this,” sighs Jubilee. “What the fuck are we supposed to do with a monster? We can’t keep it.”

“Let’s bring it back to the dungeon?” suggests Basil. “We can just drop the little guy off there,” she says, bending down and healing the creature.

“But what if he lives here?” asks Fresh, looking at the struggling, confused creature in her hands.

Jubilee’s eye twitches. “That’s not a thing. It’s a spriggan. They don’t live in houses, they live in dirt.”

“Pakew!”

Fresh nods in agreement. Pakew. She looks around the room, trying to figure out where the odd creature could have come from?

Razmatazz

Thank you kindly for reading!

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