Chapter Three - A Bunny-Girl Did It

Abigail walked into the cafe, then paused to stare at everything.

Not much had changed, really. The furniture was still the same, and the place still needed some fixing, but there was no denying that it was fundamentally different.

“Did... did you clean while I wasn’t looking?” Abigail asked.

Dreamer thought about it. “No,” she said. Abigail once said that lying was wrong. Dreamer found out later that it was only lying to Abigail that was wrong, lying to other mortals was okay and expected since other mortals could be really dumb when Dreamer told them the truth.

Abigail spun around, then looked down at Dreamer. “Then how did this place get so clean?”

Dreamer’s other body, the one that had stayed at the cafe while her other other body went with Abigail, stepped up to the top of the part of the room at the rear. “A bunny-girl cleaned it.”

“A bunny girl,” Abigail repeated. Her poor mortal ears just weren’t that good sometimes. She started at the Dreamer that was standing at her height thanks to being up a few steps. “Is that why you have... uh... ears?”

Abigail had to be referring to Dreamer’s new ears. They were two long tentacle-purple stalks sticking out of the top of Dreamer’s head. She didn’t quite know how to make fur, so they were mostly covered in a fine bristle of tiny soft tentacles. They were a bit wobbly. Every time Dreamer moved her head they flip-flopped around, but from her observations of Broccoli, that was normal.

“Are they cute?” Dreamer asked.

“Uh... yeah, I guess,” Abigail said.

“Would you be more or less likely to pat me if I had bunny ears?”

One of Abigail’s eyebrows rose. “Uh. I think... less? I don’t know, those don’t look quite like bunny ears. Sorry?”

Dreamer pouted. Her imitation wasn’t quite right. Next time she summoned Broccoli to clean things she’d look at her ears closer. Or maybe she could hunt down a bunny and grab its ears. Daphne had a nice stapler in her office that Dreamer wasn’t allowed to eat.

“You haven’t explained who cleaned the cafe yet,” Abigail said.

“Oh, that was Broccoli. I made a summoning circle, and she showed up, and then she cleaned everything.”

“You... summoned someone?” Abigail asked. “You can do that?”

Dreamer shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Abigail said.

Dreamer liked Abigail’s ability to not get weird about stuff. It was very endearing, and easily in her top ten best features.

Abigail shook her head and looked around again, then she sniffed at the air. “Wow,” she whispered.

“It’s very clean,” Dreamer agreed.

“I’m impressed,” Abigail said. “Where did the, uh, person you summoned go?”

“I unsummoned them,” Dreamer said. “Then I resummoned them again to make sure that I didn’t splatter them when I sent them back, then I re-unsummoned them back to their home.”

“Oh,” Abigail said. She licked her lips, then rubbed at her forehead. “I feel like telling you not to summon people would be counterproductive somehow. But, uh, we need rules if you’re going to summon people.”

“I was mostly thinking I’d summon customers and neat people for the cafe,” Dreamer said. That way it wouldn’t be hard to keep an eye on them, and Abigail would have a steady stream of clients who could buy her tea and cookies and who would appreciate Abigail’s hard work.

Abigail sighed and stepped up the first step on the way up to the counters and the kitchen. She bent down and gave Dreamer a quick hug, the extra height Dreamer had making it a strangely even hug where Abigail didn’t need to lean down at all.

“Alright,” Abigail said as she came out of the hug. “Rules... wait, there’s a chalk sign there.”

Abigail walked over to one wall where there was a chalkboard hanging by a nail. Dreamer imagined that it was meant to have the daily menu on it or something. She’d spent a lot of time looking at places like the cafe, mostly to clean out people’s leftovers, but the knowledge was now coming in handy in other ways.

The Rules

1 - What happens in the tea house, stays in the tea house

2 - No permanent summoning

3 - No summoning anything that can destroy the world

4 - Only summon people that you can unsummon

Abigail paused, then lowered her chalk. “Okay, I think that should do for now. We can add more of them as things come up.”

“Okay,” Dreamer said. The rules were easy enough to remember. The second, third, and forth basically didn’t matter as long as Dreamer was around, and for the first one, all she needed to do was wipe the memories of anyone that came into the shop. Super easy.

Abigail placed her hands on her hips and nodded. “This is going to be a disaster,” she said.

“It will be okay,” Dreamer said.. “I won’t let anyone eat your cafe, you don’t need to worry.”

“Right,” Abigail said. “So, I have a bit of starter money from Daphne, did you want to come with me? We need to pick out new chairs and tables and all that sort of stuff.”

Dreamer nodded. “Can we have a tentacle theme?”

“I don’t think that’s, uh, likely?”

“But some of the other cafes I spied on had themes.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of... tentacle looking stuff.”

Dreamer shrugged. Abigail was probably right. Most humans didn’t have an appropriate appreciation for a good tentacle. “What about a sleep theme?”

“I... don’t even know what that would look like,” Abigail said.

“We could make the tables out of nightmares, and instead of plates, we could use daydreams.”

Abigail shook her head. “I was thinking more... a rustic theme?”

“Well, okay, but that sounds less fun than my ideas.”

“Sure,” Abigail said. “Less fun, but then more of our future clients will leave with their sanity intact.”

“Why would anyone come here to break their sanities?” Dreamer asked.

Silly Abigail, this wasn’t the place for that. Though if she really wanted that kind of thing, Dreamer was sure she could accommodate.

***