“What do you think about this one?” asks Basil, coming out of the dressing room of the tailor’s shop.

Fresh looks up from the shelf that she’s browsing through. “It looks really great, Basil!”

Basil sighs, but smiles. “You said the same thing about the last three.”

“They all look great on you!” says Fresh, pulling out a dress to look at. By the time she looks back up, Basil has already vanished back into the dressing room. The two of them are out in the city, buying clothes to prepare for the desert. Fresh isn’t too sure what she wants, in all honesty. Maybe she’ll just ask Jubilee to make something for her, that way she’ll like it no matter what it looks like. The rings of the curtain slide along the bar as Basil comes out again.

“What about this one?”

“It looks great!” says Fresh, seeing the drab, off-green robe with golden embroidery that the priestess has on. Seeing that this answer wasn’t helping Basil make up her mind, she decides to explain her reasoning. “The muted color really makes your eyes and hair stand out more,” she explains.

Basil looks down at herself. “Really?”

“Mm!” Fresh blinks, staring at Basil for a second. “Stay there!” she says, running across the shop to get something she saw before. A wide, flat-brimmed hat. It looks like a typical wizard’s hat, but squished and flatter and it has the same color as the dress.

“Huh?” asks Basil, watching her vanish into the fabric jungle. A minute later she appears back out on the other side. “How did you get there?” asks Basil, confused.

“I got lost,” admits Fresh, scratching her cheek.

Basil does her best not to laugh. Fresh drags her a step away from the closet and presses the hat down onto her head. “A hat?” asks the priestess. “I never really wear hats.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh. “Neither do I, but the desert is super hot and sunny,” she explains. “So this will stop your skin from getting burnt!”

“Huh, you might have a point there,” admits the priestess, somewhat surprised. Fresh nods with pride, spinning her around and letting her look at herself in the mirror. “What do you think?” asks Basil, adjusting the hat as she stares at herself.

“It looks great!” says Fresh. Basil sighs, but then starts laughing. In truth, Fresh really is sure that it does. But it’s still missing something. The color suits her well and the cut is nice. Plus the hat makes her look very ‘adventurery’ which Fresh thinks is fantastic. But there’s still something missing to help frame her face a little more.

“Do you have eye problems, Basil?” asks Fresh, adjusting the fabric on the back of her robe.

“Eye problems?” The priestess thinks for a moment. “No, I mean, I saw better when I was growing up. But I think that’s just normal stuff. Why?” she asks, looking down at the robe. “Don’t you like it?”

“No, it’s great!” says Fresh. “I just had an idea, is all. You should get glasses, you’d look super cute!”

“Glasses?” asks Basil, turning her head around to look over her shoulder. Fresh ducks under the wide brim of the hat, spinning her way. She seems intrigued, but uncertain.

“Glasses,” repeats Fresh, rolling her index fingers and thumbs together into two ‘O’s and placing them in front of her eyes. Basil stares at her, confused. “Don’t you know what glasses are, Basil?” asks Fresh. Basil shakes her head.

Fresh gasps. She hadn’t accounted for this. Maybe glasses don’t exist here? She frowns, thinking for a second. It makes sense to her. If telescopes are rare and super-expensive, that means lens-crafting is probably a very specialistic technique. Maybe for normal adventurers, things like glasses just don’t exist. She’d be surprised if the nobles didn’t have them though.

She nods, determined now. Dragging Basil to the counter by her hand, they pay for her clothes. They fit off the rack and don’t need any adjusting.

“What about you?” asks Basil as they leave. “Your robe is going to be way too hot there with all of the fluff.”

“I didn’t see anything that really did it for me,” admits Fresh, dragging a confused Basil back home.

The shop is closed, they had hung up a sign to tell any customers just as much. Only the fairies are inside, together with Jubilee and Shamrock. They’re undergoing the last of their education, before they all depart from the mountain. Having abandoned the teaching of business techniques, they’re now teaching them about survival out in the wilderness and about what they can expect in the other cities. “Hey guys!” says Fresh, scooting past everyone with Basil in tow. Jubilee is busy cursing at some fairy who had asked a question and Shamrock nods to them. Fresh suddenly stops in her tracks, standing behind Shamrock.

“What’s up?” asks Basil, confused at her sudden stopping.

Fresh turns to her, opening the shutters for the repair slide. “Meet me down in the basement, Basil!” says Fresh to the confused priestess, before pushing herself into the hole in the wall.

She had always wanted to do this.

Sliding down the rollers with her hands out in front of herself, she rushes down the incline of the slide, the construction rattling noisily as she shoots around the bend, just a little too fast. Fresh yelps, spinning around in an attempt to slow herself down. She reaches the end of the slide, scooting off of the sorting corner and falling bottom-first onto the floor.

Fresh rubs her back, scooting away a little and laughing, surprised she didn’t take any damage from that fall. “Ow…”

Her lamentation is interrupted as a moment later, Basil’s voice comes down from the staircase as well, her wordless shout sounding oddly bumpy, as if she were being shaken up and down. Fresh only realizes a second too late, as she sees the priestess coming around the bend, that she too had opted to try out the slide, her wide hat clutched against her body. “Look out!” calls Basil, but before she can escape, the priestess flies down and crashes into her.

Fresh yelps as Basil flies down against her as she half-manages to catch her, falling onto her back. “Are you okay, Basil?” winces Fresh, feeling the return of the painful pulling sensation in her lower spine.

“It was faster than I expected it to be,” says the voice, stemming out from the face that is pressed down next to her head. One of her legs is still hanging up on the edge of the table. “Sorry, I’m fine, are you?” asks the priestess, dusting herself off as she pushes herself up. “It seemed like a fun idea,” she laughs, placing her hands on the stones above Fresh’s shoulders and pushing herself up and off of her.

“Mm,” nods Fresh, opting not to tell Basil that her back really hurts now. It was a lot of fun, even if it was kind of scary. She’s surprised that Basil wanted to slide too. Fresh can’t help but wonder if she isn’t a bad influence on her friends sometimes. She tilts her head, looking past Basil for a moment, as in a brief instant of terror, she expects Shamrock to come down the slide next. But nobody else ever shows up. She sighs in relief, turning her head back forward and looking back up to Basil, whose face is still there, hovering over hers, her long hair draped down around them as she stares with a look that Fresh can’t make heads or tails of.

“Basil?” asks Fresh, blinking.

Basil blinks too, jumping up rather quickly a second later. “Sorry!” she says, sitting upright and climbing off, helping her get up. “Is your back okay?” she asks, seeing Fresh wobble up to her feet.

“It’s fiiine~” moans Fresh, holding her back with one hand, as she hobbles over to the workbench.

“Oh no, I’m sorry! Should I get Shamrock?”

“No!” replies Fresh quickly, not wanting to be shaken out again like last time. It helped, but it really did hurt a lot. She hovers over the workbench and the few materials that still remain. Copper seems like the right material for this.

Grabbing a copper-bar, she cuts off four long strips lengthwise from it, as well as one shorter one. All of them are only a few millimetres thick.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman {Cut}] x5

Taking one of the long ones, she holds it against the side of Basil’s head, figuring out the length that she needs. Once she’s figured it out, she bends both of the two metal ‘twigs’, down near the end, with just her hands. So that there is a slight downward hook.

Then, taking the other two long pieces, she uses her abilities to cut out a tiny channel along the length of both of them.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman {Extract(Rectangle)}] x2

Next, she takes those two strips and bends them into a circle, so that the small channel groove is on the inside of them. She grabs one, holding it up to Basil’s face, against her eye, trying to see if the size is right. It isn’t, so she adjusts it again, bending it on the sides to make it more inwardly squished.

As for the lenses, she still has a whole box of various glass lenses for her telescopes, so she slides that over to Basil. A lot of them she had made ‘wrong’ so they weren’t suited for the purpose of being a telescope lens. But it seemed like a shame to throw them out. “Look through these, tell me which one helps you see the best,” she says and Basil, still confused, obliges, picking out two a minute later and handing them to Fresh. She nods, taking them and cutting their edges down so that they fit into the squished circle-frames. She notices that Basil has chosen two lenses that she had made out of moonglass.

With a dab of glue, she carefully wedges them into the channels that she had carved and then, presses the circular frame back shut around them, closing it up with her abilities.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Blacksmithing {Join Metal}]

Fresh beams, they’re starting to take shape. Now she just needs to combine the ‘wings’ and to make the nose-bridge. The flappy ‘ear-sticks’ are easy enough. She doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be called. But she knows what she means. She just uses a tiny hinge to attach them, one on each side, to the circular frames. Basil stares curiously over her shoulder meanwhile.

Finally, taking the tiny strip of copper that she had cut off before, she cuts that in half again and sands it, leaving only a tiny, smooth wire.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Blacksmithing {Cut Metal}] (Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Sand {Smooth}]

With some glue, she glues on two tiny nubs of crystal-drakonium, so that they won’t slide and then she puts it all together.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Blacksmithing {Join Metal}]

[Moonglasses](Holy){Excellent}

A pair of large, round spectacles with low strength lenses. Helps the wearer see marginally better.

While equipped:

-) Vision: -0.75D

-) +1 INT

-) +1 WIS

Quality Effect:

-) Lenses are resistant to bright sun-light

-) Lenses are resistant to oil smears

-) Lenses are non-reflective

Weight: 0.06kg

Value: ???

“Ta-da!” says Fresh, holding out the glasses to Basil who takes them, looking at them curiously.

“What are they?”

“They’re glasses.”

“What do they do?”

“You wear them,” explains Fresh, making the gesture around her eyes again with her fingers. Grabbing the glasses, she unfolds them and sets them onto Basil’s face, adjusting them.

“Oh, Wow,” says Basil in quiet bewilderment as she looks around the basement. “Everything looks so sharp!”

Fresh gasps, seeing her. She reaches over the table, grabbing Basil’s hat and sets it back on top of her head, adjusting it. She gasps again. Quickly, she runs across the basement, grabbing Basil’s adventuring bag from the corner and slinging it over her shoulders. “Basil!” calls Fresh excitedly.

“Y…yes?” asks Basil, blinking a few times as she stares through the glasses at her.

Fresh clenches her fists, leaning in towards the nervous priestess. “You look great!”

“Really?” asks Basil, grabbing the straps of her bag. “You think?” she asks, embarrassed.