A heavy wind pushes through the open cart, the breeze following the flow of the open road as it surges along the way, like water through a channeling basin. Fresh feels her hair blowing to the side, as the calming breeze moves over her face, heading down the road that they themselves had come along. Not sure what it is that she is looking at, she turns her face to look in that direction.

Now that the storm has passed, the weather has turned deeply mild and comfortable. The sun is out, but hiding lazily behind the many thick, autumn clouds which dampen its shine. A warm wind heats the world instead, drying out the many damp crevices and holes in the dirt, as it passes over them.

“Hey,” says Jubilee, getting her attention. Fresh blinks, looking back towards her friend who is sitting there with crossed arms, looking out in the other direction, past Basil, towards the road still ahead of them. She tilts her head, waiting for them to say something now that they have her attention.

“What’s up, Jubilee?” she asks.

Jubilee shifts in their seat, fidgeting in a manner that Fresh finds unusual for them. “Sorry that I made you kill that goblin,” they say. “That was fucked.”

Fresh tilts her head. “Goblin?” she asks, thinking back, lowering her gaze. She remembers now. During one of their initial outings in the northern dungeon together, back when the two of them had just first met, Jubilee had made her kill a tortured and mutilated goblin with her own two hands. She still remembers how badly she had cried then and how scared she was of the cruel and horrible Jubilee in that moment. It was really bad. “Oh,” she replies, rubbing her arm.

In truth, since then, she has killed a lot of goblins. She has killed mush-mushes, kobolds, monsters of all breeds and pedigrees and if the rumors were true, apparently even a real person. Though, that last one wasn’t on purpose. Does that make her feel better? No. Not about that. But many of those things had died far worse deaths than that first goblin.

If anything, the thing that scares her the most these days isn’t the fact that she had driven a piece of jagged glass into the creature’s heart several times, in order to silence its wretched screams, it’s the fact that her cherished friend could have done something so horrible to a living creature, even if it was a monster.

She knows that Jubilee has a past and perhaps maybe even more issues than she herself has. Having been a product of this horrible world, Jubilee became the only person that they could have ever become, given the circumstances of their environment and prior life. They, like so many other people here, had a heavy soul simply because there was nothing else that it could have ever become in the path that they had been given.

Would she let that excuse work for herself? No. She’s willing to accept that her circumstances and choices are purely results of her own personal decisions. But for her friends, Fresh is willing to look the other way and to accept that their environment made them what they are, for better or for worse. Isn’t that what the magistrate had told her to do, as the leader of their group?

“It’s okay, Jubilee,” says Fresh, holding her arms out in a beckoning gesture. “I understand why you did it,” she consoles.

“No,” replies Jubilee, seeing that she wants to hug.

Fresh narrows her eyes, waving her fingers inwardly. “I’ll forgive you, but only if you give me a hug.”

“Pass.”

“Jubileee~!” complains Fresh. “We’re trying to have a moment!”

“Moment’s over. I’m taking a nap,” replies Jubilee, kicking their feet up and leaning back, their arms folded over their chest.

“What’s a goblin?” asks Tarja.

“It’s a little monster,” explains Fresh. “They’re like kobolds,” she says. “But less fluffy.”

“Oooh,” exclaims Tarja, flying over to Basil to sit on top of her hat and pester her for a while. Though, Basil seems very calm and at peace with the swarm of fairies that spends a lot of time flying around her or sitting on her wide-brimmed hat. She seems to have adopted a sort of maternal role in the eyes of the fairies.

Fresh is, of course, a little bit jealous. She wishes the fairies would swarm around her and pester her with questions and attention. She sighs. Oh well, at least she has Jubilee, Basil and Shamrock. That’s pretty good too.

Deciding that she wants to pay attention to her friends as well, she moves Jubilee’s legs back down from the box and sits down in the freed up space, down on the ground between the benches, resting her head on Jubilee’s lap. Stretching out her leg she touches Shamrock with it and lifts her arm up, stretching it out to touch Basil.

“You’re doing the touching thing again,” says Jubilee, annoyed.

“I’m just trying to spend time with you guys,” she says.

Jubilee sighs. “We’re literally stuck in a cart together, like we have been for days now. Is that not enough for you?”

“No,” says Fresh, closing her eyes and deciding that she’s going to sit like that for a while.

“Why are you so clingy? It’s a little gross,” says Jubilee.

In truth, Fresh wants to say that she’s clingy because she knows that this is all going to be over one day, for better or for worse, so she wants to absorb everything from the moment now. The soft sensation of the squeaking priestess who she’s squeezing with her hand, the smell of the fabric of the complaining Jubilee, whose lap she rests her head on, the cool, heavy coarseness of Shamrock’s armor as she rubs her leg against it. But they don’t need to know that. “I just like you guys a lot,” says Fresh.

“Ugh,” groans Jubilee in disgust, but she knows that they don’t mean it because of the gloved hand that finds its way to the top of her head.

“Ugh,” agrees Basil, jokingly. She can tell that it’s a joke because of the way the priestess pushes her body into her hand, allowing her to pinch her in the side more.

“Ugh,” is all that Shamrock says, never able to resist joining in on the fun. But she knows that he doesn’t mean it either, because his heavily armored leg moves an inch closer towards her.

Living in a cart isn’t so bad either, thinks Fresh. Maybe if they ever run out of dungeons, they can convert the cart into a traveling store and become road-side traveling merchants. That could be a lot of fun too. But sourcing materials could be a problem eventually. Plus, she’s gotten spoiled by the luxuries of a warm bath and a hot breakfast every day. Fresh yawns, taking the initiative to bite down lightly on Jubilee’s leg, just for the sake of doing so, before turning her head back sideways and taking a nap as well.

The droning sound of the constantly rolling wheels of the cart, spinning over the mixture of gravel and loose sediment, overpowers her fading senses, sounding oddly familiar to the trickling of flowing water.

“Hey,” says a familiar, tired voice as Fresh finds herself once again in the black-ocean, having fallen asleep.

“Ah, please don’t soak my clothes! The fairies will get suspicious,” says Fresh first thing, realizing that she is in a ‘fountain-dream’ right now. She must have fallen asleep right then and there.

The fountain yawns and her body spins around a few times, as if it were either looking her over or simply bored and spinning her around like an unimaginative child would with a doll. “I could just get rid of them,” suggests the fountain. “Then it won’t be a problem.”

“No! Please leave them alone!” pleads Fresh.

“You know that they’re going to attract a lot of bad attention, right?” asks the fountain. The water surges all around them. “Then again, we might be far past that point already. Things are happening.”

“What’s happening?” asks Fresh, feeling her hair billowing around her head.

“Don’t you worry about it. We’re still ahead of the game, but the others are starting to throw their balls too.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that our headstart-period is over,” exclaims the fountain. “That fuck from your world, who they’re going to crown as the hero, just got smushed by a truck. He’s going to be reborn any day now.”

“Huh?!”

The water rushes around her, pushing her away. “Just as soon as they finish indoctrinating him,” explains the fountain.

“What do we do?” asks Fresh, fearful for this new life of hers in a variety of different ways. “What do I do?” she asks.

“They want a fight, we’ll give them a fight,” says the fountain. “The hero is going to be expecting a witch,” it explains. Fresh feels herself being carried off into the distance by the current. “We’re going to give them a witch. Keep your eyes closed.”

“Huh?”

“Keep your eyes closed,” instructs the fountain again.

Fresh yelps as she returns to wakefulness, water splashes down her body as something loudly shatters above her head. She keeps her eyes closed.

“FUCK!” curses Jubilee.

“PENTII!” yells Tarja, furious.

“I’m sorry!” says Pentti, the fairy. Fresh waits a second and then slowly opens her eyes, looking up in confusion at the broken water-bottle in Jubilee’s hands, which had shattered above her head. The glass looks as if a spell had cut through it. “I didn’t mean too! I just kind of… did it. I don’t know what happened!”

There is a small cracking sound. Fresh recognizes the noise as that of someone being smacked over the head for having done something dumb.

“I’m really sorry!” says Tarja, dragging the fairy over by his ear.

“Fuck,” swears Jubilee. “Don’t move, goo-brain,” they instruct, starting to pick out shattered glass from her wet hair.

Fresh sighs, staring back at the long stretch of road that they’re leaving behind. It looks like the moment really is over.