Love Crafted, page 22
Soon enough, the wagons bump and rattle all the way to the Academy’s front gates and Skinner and the mortals he hired to care for the wagons hop off. The young man moves over to your group of friends, Sigmund draped over his shoulders. “I suspect that that is that for this adventure,” he says. “I’d appreciate it if you could stop by the library tomorrow afternoon. We… have things to talk about.”
Daphne tenses a little and stands up tall before her seat. “We will do just that,” she says. “In the meantime, these last few days have been taxing, I think we’re all going to call it a night.”
Abigail hops off the wagon and then makes grabby gestures at you. When you come close and prepare for a strange hug, she instead grabs you under the arms and places you on the ground.
“Very well,” Skinner says. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Have a good evening, ladies,” he says before backing up.
“Bye mortal!” you call out to him politely while Daphne leads the group away.
You walk along down the block, as a small group with Daphne at the head and the rest of you trailing behind like those ducks that you sometimes find in the void. That is, until Daphne stops before a pretty building covered in climbing vines and lit from within by a bunch of candles. There’s a small patio that goes around it with couples sitting at tables and enjoying food that smells great.
Daphne waves to a man in a vest by the door. “Are there any private rooms left?” she asks.
“Indeed, ma’am,” he says. “Does the lady wish to use one?”
“I would, yes,” she says. “Seats for four.”
You’re all ushered into the pretty building so fast that you hardly get to look at the paintings on the walls or into the vases on marble plinths before you’re climbing up a staircase. Then it’s into a room that’s a bit bigger than your home with Abigail, the only furniture, the table and chairs in the middle and a bench next to a bay window overlooking the streets below.
Four menus are placed on the table by a waitress lady who then scurries off with instructions to ring the bell in the middle of the table when she’s wanted.
She’s the person bringing food, which means… but then Abigail takes the bell out of your hand and places it at the far end of the table without even looking.
“So, before our drinks arrive,” Daphne says. “Should we pick what to toast to?”
“To loot?” Charlotte asks.
Daphne throws a napkin at her which makes them both giggle a moment later.
“Ah, I think we should toast to a weekend spent with good friends,” Abigail says.
“And to somehow convince Dreamer not to eat the world like one of those gods in the old stories?” Charlotte asks.
You harrumph. You would never eat the world. Abigail lives on it, and it’s been nice so far. The moon, on the other hand… “I’m not a god,” you pout.
“Aren’t you?” Daphne asks. “I’m not well versed in the myths that existed before the Inquisition came around and swept everything away, but your actions so far…”
“Nuh-huh,” you say with a shake of the head. “Gods are little things that bumble around and come from things like mortal imaginations and stuff. They’re merely conceptual and can usually only do stuff that has to do with their own… stuff.” you frown. The mortal tongue has too many words for some things and none for others. “Like, a time god can only do things with time. Make it go faster, stop, go backwards and stuff like that. It’s weak.”
“Weak,” Abigail says. She sounds a little faint. Maybe she needs to go to sleep sooner.
“Yeah,” you say, happy that your friends are so clever. “The bigger gods are better. There’s more to chew on.”
The door opens and the waitress returns with a tray that has a bottle and some glasses on it next to a pitcher of water.
You only get water, but the others, especially Daphne, fill up their cups to the brim with strange smelling juice. “A toast then, to…” Daphne pauses, then shrugs one shoulder. “To many more drinks to come.”
“Aye,” The others say before drinking.
You do the same, but all you get is water. Oh well, you have good company to make up for it.
The waitress brings two more bottles before the main course is even served. There’s only one left now and it’s halfway empty.
You watch Daphne while your fork twirls around and around in a plate full of long stringy noodles (they’re like teeny tiny tentacles!) sometimes the twirling noodles grab onto a lump of tomato-covered meat and you like to imagine that the meatballs are tiny planets and that the noodles are some of your many tentacles. Then you plop the whole thing in your mouth and get to slurp in the noodles that stick out.
It’s fun food!
Daphne is making it even better.
“I,” she begins while pointing a finger at Abigail. “I think that you, you Abigail, are very cute.”
Her words are coming out a little slurred and you’re beginning to suspect that there’s a reason Abigail didn’t want you to drink the juice they’re drinking.
“Thanks,” Abigail says. She’s a little wobbly too, with flushed red cheeks and a big smile on. “But you’re beautiful. It’s not fair being so pretty.”
Daphne waves her hands as if in denial and you think that maybe she forgot that she’s holding a cup. “No no, see, beauty isn’t everything Abi. There are like, a lot of girls that are just so, so pretty. Look at Charlotte. Actually, no, don’t look at her. She’s too pretty, it’s not fair. But you Abi, you’re cute, and that’s good enough because you’ve got such nice, nice.” Daphne made more gestures. “Traits.”
Abigail’s cheeks are both very red now, and so are Daphne’s. You’re not sure what’s going on, so you go back to eating your noodles.
Abigail reaches for the bottle in the middle of the table and instead of grabbing it tips it over. It almost crashes into your plate, but thanks to your quick tentacular action you catch it and set it straight.
“Oh, thank you Dreamer,” Abigail says. “I’m a little… a little into my cups, I think.”
“You’re not the only one that thinks so,” Charlotte says. She’s already done eating and is sitting back, a half full cup in one hand that she’s slowly swirling around, the juice twisting in circles within. Unlike the others she seems perfectly normal.
“Maybe a little,” Abigail says. She leans to the side and hugs you close. You can’t eat like this, so you let go of your fork and nestle into her arms. Also, you wipe your face on her sleeve. “I have the best, best familiar,” Abigail says. “I wasn’t sure at first, and I was scared, but you’re the best Dreamer. So, so nice.”
Abigail keeps hugging you, and you shift to the side to make the hug even better.
Then she starts snoring and you feel some wetness slipping into your hair as she drools all over you.
This is wonderful!
You carefully help Abigail sit back up, then lean her down with a few tentacles so that she’s resting on your fluffiest tentacles with her head down on the table.
“Shh,” Daphne says. “Abi’s sleeping.”
“Yes,” you say.
Now that she’s sleeping… you reach over and grab the bottle of juice the girls have been drinking from and give it a sniff. It smells fruity and kind of tangy.
“Oh, I can’t imagine this ending well,” Charlotte says. She raises her cup to you. “Enjoy.”
You shake your head. “I can’t drink this. Abigail told me not to,” you say before replacing the bottle in the centre of the table. A teeny tiny tentacle slips in and pokes at it, then it touches your cup full of water and turns it into the same stuff.
“I think that might be cheating,” Charlotte says.
You roll your eyes. There’s no such thing as cheating. Not when it comes to hugs, eating or tentacles.
“Oh, let her have a bit,” Daphne says. “It’ll loosen her up.”
“I’m plenty loose,” you say. Tentacles need to be wiggly to work. You ignore Daphne’s sudden bout of giggling laughter as you pick up the cup and take a big gulp. It’s okay, you guess. Not as good as some other things you’ve tried. The acids at home tasted better, more of a tingle to them than this has.
Still, you finish your cup, refill it with water, and turn that into more juice. You want to be like your friends.
“I can’t wait to tell Abigail in the morning,” Charlotte says as she takes the bottle and refills her cup. “To Dreamer! For being herself and not eating us,” she raises her cup in the air.
You’ve seen them do this before and get to your feet so that you can clink your cup against theirs. “And to Abigail,” you say. “For inviting me to your planet so that I could taste all the stuff on it and make a bunch of friends.”
“To Abigail!” Daphne cheers.
Abigail raises her head and looks around. “Wha?” she asked.
“It’s okay,” you tell her before gulping down your second cup. “You can go back to napping now.” You pat-pat her head. It’s not nearly as nice as being the way getting the headpats, but there’s a certain satisfaction to being the patter.
“We should get her home,” Charlotte says.
“She… she can sleep at my place,” Daphne says.
Charlotte eyes her, then shakes her head. “I think Abigail should go to her own home tonight. You too Daphne. Do try to remember to drink some water, we have classes tomorrow morning.”
“But I don’t wanna,” Daphne says.
“Abigail will be there…”
Daphne pouts. “Fine.”
Grinning, you begin to move things around so that picking up Abigail will be easier. It’s time to go home and to bed.
Abigail needed help getting up the steps, and even more help opening the door to your home. You’re a little worried when she flops onto the bed and goes right to sleep without so much as taking off her dirty travel clothes, so you do the nice and responsible thing and undress her and find a sleeping gown in her things for her to wear while sleeping (sleeping gowns are a kind of clothing you very much agree with).
And then you watch Abigail as she snores, a bit of droop slipping out of the corner of her mouth.
She’s extra cute while she’s napping, but just in case, you push some happy dreams into her mind. And then it’s your turn to go to bed… but you’re not sure if you feel like it.
Oh, you’re always ready for a nap, but your small body is all excited and wants to move, not sleep.
So you come to a simple solution! You’ll go around and take a walk. Stretch your tentacles a little, maybe find some nice night-time snacks.
But that would leave Abigail all alone, which is unacceptable.
Two new Dreamers spawn from the abyss in a flurry of flappy-flappy tentacles. You face yourselves and waggle your fingers at you. “Okay. So you and you, you’re going to sleep with Abigail.”
Both of you look very excited at this.
“No funny business, and while tentacle hugging and tentacle cuddling is okay, Abigail doesn’t want anything more than that, okay?” you say.
You both nod, ten there’s a mad scramble to get onto the bed and as close to Abigail as possible. Abigail is a very lucky summoner because she’s getting hugged from two directions, she even sighs and cuddles closer.
That done, you pat down your pretty dress to make sure it’s clean then head out of the door.
The city of Five Peaks stretches out before you as you use a couple of tentacles to fling yourself into the roof. It’s quite pretty at night, with the flicking of candles in a thousand windows appearing like blinking eyes in the dark. It’s become a sort of home for you, you guess.
You contemplate improving the city while you walk across the rooftops, occasionally using a tentacle bridge to cross the gaps between homes and shops. Eventually you reach the end of the road and the gap between homes is a lot bigger because there’s a sort of square around a large fountain. There are stalls all around the area, but they’re closed at this hour.
This is your first time in this corner of the city. Most of the time you and Abigail head out the other way, towards the Academy and Daphne’s house.
You walk off the edge of the roof and crash into the ground feet-first, knees bending into a courtesy like Daphne does when introducing herself.
There isn’t too much to do in the city when everything is closed down, you realize. All the little mortals are asleep, and you can feel plenty of them dipping their toes into the land of dreams. It’s kind of nice, like a sort of compliment, you figure.
Skipping ahead (because when you skip your dress floofs and it’s the best) you move over to the fountain in the middle of the square and look within. It’s just normal water, but it smells a little ickly and it’s probably not very good for drinking. At least, not for mortals.
The fountain has a bunch of water spouts hidden in the mouths of monsters and for some reason babies, and above it all are statues of a man and a woman with crowns on their heads. The man has a sword above his head, and the woman is holding a scroll. There’s a plaque at the base of the fountain with some words about ‘doubting and therefore knowing.’
Very boring.
You want more of that fruity juice that you drank at the restaurant with your friends, so you turn the fountain into a fruit fountain.
Juice gurgles out of the little baby faces and the weird monsters carved into the stone. But soon it turns back into water.
You frown at it.
The water has to come from somewhere. Most things in mortal places come from somewhere.
You frown extra-hard at the fountain and now all the water coming out of it is juice, all the way down to wherever the water used to come from. Then, because you find the monsters and babies ugly, you make them look more like you.
The guy with the sword can become…Charlotte, and the lady can become Daphne. More or less. It’s tricky to work with stone.
Then you replace the sword with a whip and the scroll with a tentacle. And the plaque with the date and stuff now says ‘Dreamer was here’ but in a True Tongue.
Art is fun!
You drink lots and lots of juice, until your little tummy is aching with pleasure, then you waddle off. You’re a bit more tired now, more than ready for naptime.
As you walk back towards home and Abigail, you cross over a nice little river that smells like grapes and then you splash into a few purple puddles alongside the road.
You can’t wait for tomorrow when everyone discovers your art. They’re going to be so proud!
Chapter Twenty
You don’t want to wake up. Waking up in the morning is just not the way things are meant to be. Everyone, mortal or otherwise, should get used to the idea that the perfect time to wake up is somewhere around night time. That way you can hop out of bed, eat a bunch, then jump right back in.
But no, mortals are all busy bodies that want to do stuff right away because they know that they might die at any moment. Even Abigail, who will never die because dying is for other people, is up at the crack of dawn and shaking your shoulder for you to get up.
You consider pushing the sun away. Or maybe spinning the planet in the other direction to make the night last longer, but Abigail would get all huffy and you’re pretty sure you already considered and dismissed that plan once before.
“Okay, okay,” you mutter and you push the blankets covering you away. Abigail is standing on the side of the bed. She managed to escape your cuddles at some point and even had time to get dressed.
Was she trying to give you as much sleep time as possible?
This is why Abigail is the best Summoner.
She raises a hand, and presents a clear glass cup to you filled with sloshing juice. “Explain,” she says.
“Juice?”
“No. Wine,” she says. “Wine that I got from the tap when I went to get some water.”
“Okay,” you say.
She makes a little spinny gesture with her hand that means ‘get on with it’ in mortal. “Well, how did this happen?”
Sitting up on the side of the bed you rub your eyes to get rid of the eye crud you accumulated (one of the best parts of the morning!) and then yawn really big. “Oh, I think that comes from my art project.”
“Your art project?” Abigail asks. “I’m… too hungover to deal with that.”
“But it’s really pretty,” you say.
Abigail looks at you for a bit, then takes a long swallow from her cup. “Go on.”
“I found an ugly fountain down the road,” you say while pointing a tentacle more or less in the right direction. “It was very ugly.”
“You mean the statue of the king and queen of Five Peaks? The one with the fountain?”
You shrug. “The ugly one. I made it better. Now there’s a Daphne and a Charlotte and they look really cool. And also there’s my face and I replaced all the water with juice.”
“All the water?” Abigail asks.
“All the water going to the fountain,” you say.
“Which is fed by either the river or the city reservoir. Brilliant.”
“It isn’t brilliant. I didn’t think of making it glow, but I can change that.”
“Please don’t,” Abigail says. She looks around, then with a shrug of her own finishes her cup. “We should head out.”
“Breakfast?” You wonder.
“I have some change, we can pick something from a street vendor. If they’re not too drunk.”
You hop off the bed and are dressed so fast that even time doesn’t know when you went from wearing nothing but a nightgown to one of your pretty dresses. “Let’s go!”
Upon stepping out onto the street, you notice that things are a bit different in Five Peaks this morning. There are a whole lot more people on the roads, and a lot of them seem to be in a very good mood. There are wagons rolling past with barrels behind them and people are singing and dancing, though they don’t seem to be very good at it.
Abigail, who knows where all the best foods are, leads you to another street that you never visited. This one is much wider, and the sides of the street are lined with carts and stands where people that smell like those cows you saw once are crying out the prices of the stuff on their tables.
