“You realize that we’re going to have to move this fucking thing, right?” asks Jubilee. “When we get a house.”

Fresh shakes her head, fumbling around with the pot full of cooling-beads. “That’s okay,” she says. “We can either just leave this one here or I can just make a second one.”

“I didn’t know we could afford to live in such decadence,” replies Jubilee, rolling their eyes.

Fresh blinks, looking at them for a moment, a little puzzled. “Aren’t you the money-person though, Jubilee?” Jubilee stares at her, sighing before just waving her off and walking away.

“I think that was a sarcastic question,” notes Basil, standing next to her.

“Oh,” says Fresh, realizing. “It’s going to be okay, Jubilee!” she calls after her friend who has nowhere to escape to in the large, open room, except for behind the stack of wooden crates.

“Sometimes I wonder about that,” says their voice from behind the boxes. Fresh shrugs, returning her focus to the cold-cabinet that she’s making. She doesn’t have any real glass to make a see-through window with, but that’s fine. This is just their private one anyways, so it can have a solid door made out of wood and a crystal-drakonium inner-lining.

Setting the pot inside of the top-rack, she then sets in some trays full of water for ice-cubes and closes the door to let the cooling mechanism start doing its thing, to bring the temperature inside of the cabinet down.

“So… now what?” asks Basil.

“Now’s the fun part!” explains Fresh. She grabs a large, cylindrical glass bowl that she made with some of Jubilee’s glass. Out of crystal-drakonium, she had made a big, rubbery-grippy lid that sits tightly on top of it. Next to it all, sits an even larger, hollow cylinder, this one is made entirely out of crystal-drakonium. “Shamrock!” calls Fresh over to the man. “I’ll need your help in a second, please!” she says. Shamrock, having returned from the dungeon with a heap of loot that she still needs to dig through, gets up and walks over to her.

“So, what’s ice-cream?” asks Basil.

“Uh, well.” Fresh thinks for a moment. “It’s like… cream, you know? But cold? And it gets really thick and smooshy.”

“Hmm…” Basil crosses her arms. “I don’t know…” says the priestess. “Jubilee?”

“It sounds like shit,” barks a voice from behind the crates.

“Non-believers!” yells Fresh out loud, turning her head back to the task at hand. She can’t be mad at her friends for this. It’s not their fault that they’re ice-cream heretics, they simply don’t know any better. “Just watch,” she says, grabbing the bottles of high-fat milk. “First, we pour in some milk,” she explains, emptying the two bottles out into the big glass-cylinder. “Then, we need some heavy cream!” she says, leaning in towards Basil. “That’s where all the flavor is!”

“Uh…” Basil is still unconvinced. Fresh looks back, pouring in the small bottle of cream as well. “You’re very excited about this,” she laughs.

“Now we need some sugar, but… all I found is some honey.” Fresh shrugs. “I’m sure it will be fine, though!” She says, grabbing the jar of their breakfast honey and pouring in a few, very generous, globs. “For flavoring, we could just leave it plain, the honey should do a lot. But let’s add a little bit of this sweet-bean,” she says, pulling out a single, long, black bean that she had bought.

“You’re really prepared for this, huh?” asks Basil, standing there with crossed arms and watching as Fresh cuts the sweet-bean open with her knife, scraping out the insides into the container.

“Mm!” nods fresh, tapping the knife against the edge of the container. She thinks for a second. “I think that’s it.”

“That’s it?” asks Basil, looking at the oddly colored, gloopy mixture, filled with floating bits and pieces of everything.

“That’s it for the ingredients,” says Fresh and sets the lid onto the container. “Shamrock, can you put this glass container inside of that sleeve there, please?” she asks, pointing at the crystal-drakonium cylinder. Shamrock nods and does as asked. The milk-cylinder fits inside of the sleeve with a good amount of space still free to the sides, as it is a slight bit smaller than the larger rubbery sleeve. “Great! Now… uh…” Fresh looks around. “I need some ice,” she says, staring at the cooling-cabinet that likely still needs a few minutes. She taps her foot, waiting. Shamrock sets the whole thing into the cabinet for now, so that the milk doesn’t spoil.

Half an hour later, they take it back out. Fresh grabs the trays of freshly-frozen ice-cubes and empties them out into the empty sides of the sleeve, so that they surround the glass container on all sides. Then she sets the crystal-drakonium lid on top of the rubbery cylinder, sealing it. “There!” she says. “Sorry Shamrock, I need your help again,” she says, laughing meekly. “Just take this and shake it please! For five minutes, I guess?” ponders Fresh, thinking out loud.

Shamrock nods, grabbing the container. He starts shaking it.

Basil and Fresh clean up the rest of the stuff meanwhile and while they do, Fresh wonders where she learned to make this? She doesn’t think that she’s ever actually made ice-cream before in any of her lives. It must just be one of those things that she knows how to do because the fountain wants her to know how to do it.

Oh well, there are worse things than ice-cream at least, right? So much for the whole ‘horrible witch of the north’ thing. Well, unless she gives everyone in this world cavities. That would be pretty evil of her, actually. She doesn’t think she’d go that far, but maybe some brain-freeze would help set a few people straight. Is that a bad thought?

Nah, it’s probably fine.

Basil shakes her, waking her from her daydream and Fresh jumps up, surprised, running across the room to get a bowl and a spoon. “Okay Shamrock, that’s enough,” she says. “Thanks!”

Shamrock nods, setting the container down onto the ground. Excited, Fresh runs over to it, popping off the lid. Basil looks over her shoulder. Giddily, Fresh pulls off the second lid of the inner-container and stares at the bounty inside. All of the contents have come together and solidified nicely into a thick, rich cream.

[Ice-Cream]{Honey-Sweetbean}(Excellent) A thick, rich, frozen batch of ice-cream. It tastes deeply of fragrant sweetness mixed in with a fatty cream. Qualify Effect: +2 HEAT-RESISTANCE for 4 HOURS Weight: 1L Status: Frozen Value: ???

“I SCREAM FOR ICE-CREAM!” exclaims Fresh excitedly, stabbing the spoon into the off-white, honey-tanned mixture. She lifts it to her mouth.

A second later, the spoon falls out of her hand, into the bucket, and she falls back, clutching her face, crying.

+ (Fresh) [+2 HEAT-RES]{Ice-Cream}(4H)

“Are you okay?!” asks Basil.

“It’s so good…” sniffles Fresh. There isn’t a lot of sugar in this world. Sure, there are confections and sweets made out of jams and fruits and things of that nature. But being a luxury item, there just isn’t a lot of that kind of stuff going around in their ‘segment of the population’. Eating a real sweet like this is a treat on another level.

Basil sighs, closing her eyes. “Please don’t scare me like t-” Basil makes a surprised, oddly throaty noise as Fresh, having quickly jumped back up to her feet shoves the anew fully-laden spoon into her mouth, her face hovering close to hers expectantly.

+ (Basil) [+2 HEAT-RES]{Ice-Cream}(4H)

Basil’s eyes open wide as Fresh pulls the spoon back out. “It’s good…” says Basil, looking down at the cylinder in surprise. “Really good,” she says, surprised. “Jubilee!” she calls over the crates.

“Fuck off!” calls Jubilee from the other side of the boxes.

“Are you reading your creepy book again, Jubilee?” asks Fresh, loading up the spoon for Shamrock to try. She stares towards the crates, lifting the spoon to his helmet. It donks against the metal. “Ah…”

Jubilee doesn’t bother responding.

Shamrock takes the spoon from her, turning it sideways to sticking through the gap, leaving a smear of ice-cream on the side of one of the struts. Fresh frowns, grabbing a cloth. “You’re such a messy eater, Shamrock,” she says, wiping the spot off.

+ (Shamrock) [+2 HEAT-RES]{Ice-Cream}(4H)

Shamrock does something unusual for him. He shudders, his entire suit of armor rattling all at once. “Careful, it’s cold!” she laughs.

“Good,” says Shamrock, staring down at the tub of ice-cream. “…It’s very good.”

Two down. Fresh beams. “Jubilee~” she calls out, loading up another scoop. “Pleeease~?” she asks, knowing that she doesn’t have to explain what she’s asking. She hands the spoon around the wall of crates.

“Will you people leave me alone for five minutes, if I try your stupid, gloopy, bird-shit concoction?” asks Jubilee’s annoyed voice. Fresh realizes that living in a shared space like this must be exhausting for a super-introvert like Jubilee, who just wants their quiet. She hopes that they can get a house soon, so that her friend can have some time to recover from all of this forced socializing. Then again, she is the one forcing them to socialize…

Maybe she is evil?

“I pinky-promise I’ll leave you alone all day, Jubilee,” swears Fresh, lifting her small finger in the hand holding the spoon around the corner. “If you want.”

Jubilee sighs and she feels a slight movement against the spoon. Waiting a second, she pulls it back, happy to see that it’s empty.

+ (Jubilee) [+2 HEAT-RES]{Ice-Cream}(4H)

“Well?” asks Fresh. Jubilee is quiet for a moment.

“…yeah, not bad,” says a reluctant voice from the other side of the boxes. Fresh beams, knowing that this must have been very hard for Jubilee to say. “If we make some small packages, we can sell this stuff ready-made,” says Jubilee, already getting into the business-sense of it all. “We could diversify the flavors. Maybe make one batch for each kind of fruit?” they suggest. “Fuck. Good job,” they praise.

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” says Fresh. “Do you guys want to eat some together?” she asks, looking back at Basil and Shamrock who cautiously stare back her way. Basil already has a spoon in her mouth and Shamrock’s is loaded full. “Hey!” yells Fresh, running over to save the ice-cream from her guilty friends, who she has apparently managed to convert after all.

After that and a harsh lesson on sharing, the four of them sit around the pile of crates, passing the bucket of ice-cream around in a circle, until they’ve eaten their way to the bottom.