Love Crafted, page 19
“No!” you protest louder as Abigail begins to torture you, hard mean fingers poking into your ribs and sides. Your feet thump-thump on the wagon’s floor as you try to wiggle your way out of Abigail’s grasp, the noise is lost under the sounds of Abigail’s giggles. Your own laughter joins in a moment later, even though you’re telling your small body, quite sternly, not to laugh. It’s embarrassing.
“Are you awake now?”
You open your eyes to glare at Abigail. This has become her favourite way of waking you up and it’s mean and unfair. There’s an unspoken rule to the ritual that says that you’re not allowed to just tentacle her away while she tickle tortures you, otherwise you would turn the tables around. “Yes,” you say before sitting up and looking around.
You’re in a town. There are small homes with thatched roofs with plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys and there are people moving around and doing stuff. The laughter of kids and the bark of dogs competes with the distant birdsong from a nearby forest. Water gurgles and splashes nearby.
The other wagons are a little bit ahead, parked before the biggest building in the entire one-street village. “This is it?” you ask.
“It is!”
You turn to find Charlotte pulling a bag out from the back of the wagon and hoisting it onto her back. “Welcome to Twinforks,” she says.
“Like the things for eating?” Actually, now that you think about it, using two forks for eating makes more sense than a fork and a knife.
Charlotte shakes her head. “No, the river that runs through the town forks twice. Silly name, but it works for them.”
You release Abigail and stand up, neck craning to take in the big inn building. You know it’s an inn because there’s a sign that says The Adventur’ Inn Stop dangling from the front with a shield and sword logo above it.
“Wanna see the inside?” Charlotte asks.
“Yes,” you say. This place has piqued your curiosity ever since you heard of it.
“I’ll be with Daphne,” Abigail says. “We’ll pay for the rooms and bring some meals to ours, is that okay?”
You don’t like leaving Abigail all alone, but she does need a little bit of room to spread her wings. You’ve heard this saying a few times already, and you’re really looking forward to Abigail sprouting wings. “Be safe,” you tell her before jumping out of the wagon. “I’ll be with Charlotte, but if you scream I’ll be there before you screamed.”
“Um, okay?” Abigail says before waving you goodbye. She looks a little confused but that’s alright.
“Never been to an inn?” Charlotte asks.
You shake your head and reach up to grab her hand, as you’re supposed to do when walking with a bigger girl. Charlotte tightens her grip on your hand and smiles down at you. “You’re too cute,” she says.
“Yes,” you agree.
The inside of the inn is a big place, with plenty of tables and chairs and some people that look like they’re relaxing. There’s a big fireplace off to one side and the air smells like food and smoke and tobacco from the group of old men with pipes in one corner. A big staircase off to one side leads up to the second floor. “We have rooms three, four, and five,” Charlotte says, “For the entire group.”
You do some quick math. “So we get to sleep together?” you ask.
“I guess so. Just for tonight.” Charlotte nods. “We’ll be setting up a watch just in case too.”
“A watch?”
Charlotte lets go of your hand, but uses her now-freed limb to pat your head, so it’s okay. “One of us will stay awake all night to make sure nothing bad happens while the others sleep.”
You freeze halfway up the stairs and turn to face Charlotte. “You’re not going to sleep just to make sure that we’re okay?” you ask.
She shrugs one shoulder. “I can sleep more later.”
You sniffle, holding back the tears that have sprung into your small body’s eyes before you crash into Charlotte and give her the best hug you can.
Such a sacrifice! To go without sleep just to keep others safe. Charlotte is one of the best mortals. You would gladly call her a friend.
“Hey there, are you okay?” she asks.
You nod into her chest. “Yes. I have good friends. We need to get you better stuff,” you declare. “So that you can keep us safe better.”
Charlotte pats you some more because she’s the second best. “I don’t need anything like that,” she says. “Come on, let’s check out our room?”
Finding out which room is yours isn’t hard. It’s the one with all of Daphne’s stuff in it. She brought more luggage than you and Abigail and Charlotte combined so she must be very ready for anything bad that might happen. The room is small, a bit bigger than Daphne’s own room, but with four small beds and a few dressers taking up a lot of space, as well as a table with some chairs around it off to the side.
Right away, you begin inspecting the beds and mattresses and frown at their quality. Abigail’s stuff is better. But they’re bug free and mostly clean.
This whole inn place is rather disappointing. Still, you push all the beds together so that they form one great big sleeping spot and fluff everything up as best you can while thinking about what kind of equipment you could give Charlotte. The best would be combat tentacles, but mortals, especially girl mortals, don’t like having tentacles coming out of their bodies because they’re silly. The boys are a bit better about it, but they’re very particular about the location of their tentacles.
The solution strikes a moment later. A whip! Yes, that’s a perfect idea and the perfect weapon.
Now you only need to figure out the specifics of it.
Soon, everyone gathers in the room, and there’s much talking and merry making and all that good stuff before finally it’s bedtime.
The next morning, someone rude wakes you up and promises you food from the main floor downstairs.
“More please!” you tell the nice lady.
She’s big and plump and has brown hair tied up in a bun behind her head so that it doesn’t fall into the yummy, yummy food she makes. The woman bends down a little and pinches your cheek. “Oh, aren’t you the sweetest thing?” she asks.
You look up to the nice lady and nod. It’s a very serious question, even if you think it’s not being taken seriously. But you can’t fault the nice lady for asking. In only one morning she has climbed from unimportant background mortal to the fifth most important person in your life. You watch her leave with fondness.
“Still not full?” Abigail asks as she blows the steam off of her teacup.
Everyone is gathered at one of the big round tables on the first floor of the inn. The background mortals taking care of the wagons aren’t there, but all the fun people are around. Daphne is sitting on Abigail’s other side, slowly feeding Archibald bits of bread. Everette and Skinner are at the opposite end of the table. Everette ignoring Wuffles’ pleading gaze for more food while Skinner is frowning at a letter.
Charlotte is right next to you, picking at her eggs and ham with a fork. You hope she’ll stop and give the leftovers to you, but you’re not in a hurry. The nice lady said you could eat as much as you wanted for breakfast at her inn and you intend to make the most of that.
You’re about to explain to Abigail that even with nice lady’s greatest efforts, you still doubt she’ll be able to fill your tummy, not that you don’t appreciate the attempt, when Skinner sighs and raps the table with a knuckle. “Everyone,” he says. “We have a small problem.”
Daphne snorts. “I’m sure.”
Ignoring her, Skinner wiggles the letter in the air. “The supplier the Library Expedition club came here to visit doesn’t, unfortunately, have all the things we came to get. It seems that the bandits that waylaid us were becoming quite the thorn in the local’s side. But, they will have what we need by tonight, tomorrow morning by the latest.”
“Which means we’re stuck here,” Daphne says.
Skinner shakes his head. “Not quite. If you girls wish to leave I would understand. I’ll even allow you to return with one of the wagons. We should be able to rent another under these circumstances. Or we could find you a caravan returning to Five Peaks this afternoon. I won’t hold you back.”
“But we could stick around,” Charlotte says.
“You could, yes, and return with us tomorrow. It’s up to you,” Skinner says.
“What would we do if we just stayed here?” Abigail wonders.
“I’d say shopping,” Daphne says. “I doubt anything in this little town couldn’t be found in Five Peaks and at better price and quality.”
Everyone remains quiet for a moment, Skinner returning to his letters as he begins to write something in a journal of sorts.
Then Everette coughs into a gauntleted fist. “Well, if it’s something to do you’re looking for, there is a board.” He points to the far end of the room where a board is mounted to the wall with bits of paper on it, each one carefully pinned with little ribbons of different colours. “I’m in the Adventuring club, which means I can take bronze ranked tasks without penalty. Depending on the task it might be a bit much for one person alone.”
“That sounds interesting,” Abigail says.
“No Abigail,” Daphne says. “You are not going to do menial labour for a few marks. It’s hardly worth the risk.”
Abigail smiles at Daphne. “But you don’t even know what the tasks are yet.”
“No, but I know you. You’ll see some pitiful message about a farmer whose flock was stolen by some goblins and will want to help the poor fool.”
Abigail sniffs and stands up. “It won’t hurt to at least look. And I’m sure with Dreamer and Mister Everette along I would be perfectly safe.” Abigail nods firmly, then adjusts her glasses which look ready to fly off her face at any moment.
Daphne presses her hands over her face. “Why, why is she like this?” she asked.
You pat her arm. “Because she’s Abigail.”
Charlotte stands up and stretches a little. “Well, I’m certainly ready to join on any adventure. It sounds amusing, and a bit of coin wouldn’t hurt.”
And that reminds you of something you had nearly forgotten. You jump to your feet and grab Charlotte’s hand. “Tell the nice lady to put all the food on my plate,” you tell the others at the table before you drag Charlotte to a quieter corner. She doesn’t resist at all because she’s a good friend and good friends allow you to bring them to dark places. “I made you a gift,” you tell her.
“Did you now?” she asked.
You nod and reach into another place and pull out the gift you’ve been working on all night. It was made while most of you was napping, but it’s still very pretty. “Here,” you hand it to Charlotte.
She stares at the leather-like handle and the metallic, eye-shaped pommel at the bottom. The top part that sticks out of the end is a long coil of thin whippy tentacle and near where the thumb should rest are a few little switches.
“Ah, is this a whip?” Charlotte asks as she turns it this way and that. She lets it uncoil to drape onto the floor.
“Yup!” You say. “It reads your mind to know what to hit, and if you press on the things near your thumb it changes.”
Charlotte blinks down at the whip and, carefully, pressed one of the switches. Hundreds of spikes tear out of the ropey length, some of them digging into the floor with next to no resistance. “Oh my,” she says. “Not my usual kind of whip, but this might be handy. And it reads my mind, you said?”
The whip coils itself back up into a near bundle which she inspects closer. Then your face is buried in her chest as she hugs you.
“Thanks, Dreamer. I’ll be sure to cherish your gift.”
You nod and grin and then leave her hug. “Just remember to feed it,” you say as you run over to Abigail and Everette who are both looking at all the pages on the board with quests written on them. Obviously they’ll need your help picking out the best mission!
Everette explained the way the quest picking system works to you with simple words and big gestures. You suspect it’s because he’s touched in the head. Poor Wuffles, having such a boring summoner.
“So,” you say to recapitulate. “For some reason some metals are more important than others, and so you decided to use that to rank the difficulty of these quest things.”
“Uh, yeah, exactly,” Everette says. “Bronze, then silver, then gold. Each rank is more dangerous, but also pays better.”
“What about the other metals?” you ask.
“Well, they’re not part of the ranking.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the others aren’t as, ah, rare?” Everette says, though it sounds as if he’s asking you a question.
You turn to Abigail because she knows lots of things. “What’s the rarest metal? And what’s the most common one?”
Your Abigail hums a little as she thinks. “Iridium, I think. It’s a very rare reagent and it is a metal. As for the most common, that would have to be aluminium, though it is very difficult to work without the right spells. Iron is probably the most commonly used metal.”
You nod and spin back to face Everette. “Where are the Iridium level ranks? And why aren’t the lowest ranked quests aluminium?”
The boy stutters and gestures a little, then shakes his head. “There aren’t any others,” he says. “Just bronze, silver and gold. That’s it. And of those, we can only take the bronze, which is all they have here anyway.”
“I never actually thought about it,” Abigail says. “But they really should change the system to some sort of rank that doesn’t correspond to a metal. What if large gold deposits are discovered and the value of gold decreases, or a mage finds a gold-substitute for most spellwork. It has happened to some other uncommon reagents before, it could happen to gold. Then the Adventuring Club would be stuck with an antiquated system that no longer makes any sense.”
“Yes, well,” Everette says. “Be that as it may, gold is worth more than silver right now. And there are neither gold or silver options on this particular board.”
You’re beginning to suspect that he might be irritated. “Okay, so which quest offers the most to eat?”
“The rewards are all listed at the bottom,” he says before pointing to some numbers below the quest details. “They pay in Five Peaks Fiat.”
“So the quests that are labelled with gold don’t actually pay in gold?” Abigail asks.
Everette presses his face into his hands.
“They pay in money, but I want stuff to eat,” you explain.
“You can trade money for food,” Everette says and Abigail pats your shoulder which probably means he’s right.
So the optimal options, then, are obviously those where you get to eat something, then make lots of money to get to buy even more stuff to eat. Or maybe there are quests where they’ll need special sorts of tentacles, or that would allow you to learn new ways to use your tentacles like with Charlotte’s sword.
“There are two of them that are right next to each other,” Abigail says as she points to two different sheets. “One is to scout out the location of a bandit camp. The other… oh my, there’s a wild troll on the loose.”
“What’s a troll?” you ask.
“It’s a fearsome beast,” Everette says. “Strong and difficult to fight, with a thick hide and just enough brains to be clever.”
You decide that Everette is an idiot and turn to Abigail for a better answer. “It’s a very big monster,” she says. “They were made by a mad eugenicist hundreds of years ago to fight in a war. They’re very strong and quite large.”
She said words that mean ‘big’ twice, which means it must be a good snack. “Okay, let’s go eat the troll and then the bandits.”
“We only need to scout out the bandit camp,” Everette says, then, after seeing your blank look, he explains more. “We just need to know where they are and then report that.”
“They’ll be in my tummy,” you say. A tentacle reaches out and plucks the two notices from the board and then smacks them onto Everette’s chest. “Do the thing with the papers. We’ll get the others.”
You and Abigail move over to the table where Charlotte looks quite satisfied and Daphne is wearing a very flat, very unimpressed look. Next to her is your third portion of breakfast, all piled up in a big mound of eggs and ham and teeny tiny potato cubes that you dig into with two forks.
“You took a quest,” Daphne says.
“No,” Abigail says, and for a moment Daphne relaxes. “We took two.”
“Damn it, Abi,” Daphne says. “I can’t believe you drag me into these things.”
“You could stay at the inn,” Abigail says.
“And leave you out there without me to look over you? No way. You might get hurt, or injured or lost,” Daphne says. It’s a fair point and the same reason you’d never let Abigail go do dangerous things without you there to eat them.
“I’ll go get dressed. This sounds like a great excuse to take a nice long walk outdoors and enjoy some sunshine,” Charlotte says.
“And we get to eat things,” you add after swallowing the last of your eggs.
The girls all look at you, then as one start shaking their heads. They obviously don’t know what it’s like to go eons without anything new to eat.
“Right. Let’s all get our things and meet up outside in a few minutes? I don’t think anything is beyond walking distance, but maybe we can find some farmer or something to give us a ride closer so that we can save ourselves some walking.”
“That sounds passable,” Daphne says. “A gold mark ought to get any one of the locals to drive us anywhere.”
“A gold mark would be more than what we’d make on the quest. Before we split the profits,” Charlotte says.
“I thought we were doing this to pass the time?” Daphne shoots back.
You roll your eyes and lick your plate clean. For all of their talk about being civilised and such, your mortal friends are big on squabbling about silly things.
