Fresh wipes her forehead on her sleeve, listening to the sounds of metal boots come up the staircase. It’s the middle of the night, several hours after she had failed to fall asleep. Now she’s fiddling around with the lantern, holding it steady as she tightens a few bolts on its side. It constantly tries to fly back up into the air, so she has to hold it down with one hand while she works.

The door opens upstairs and closes a second later and then, after a moment of silence, the workshop door opens. Fresh looks over her shoulder, giving Shamrock a smile and a nod to quietly welcome him back home. Looking over his shoulder at Basil, sleeping on the other side of the room, he nods back to her and closes the door again.

Fresh sighs in relief, turning the lantern around and squinting her eyes which feel really heavy and tired all of a sudden, to moisturize them. Letting out a loud yawn, she rotates the lantern and lets it go. It took a lot of elbow-grease, a lot of weird processes to fix the jagged metal and a few oddities like magic-crystal powder and moondirt to get the magical resonance of the item just right, but she feels like she’s done it.

The lantern rises up into the air. The new moonglass exterior of its body, encased between a thin, iron frame, shimmers brightly as the magical-crystal, suspended inside of its core in moonwater, flashes in a variety of bright colors.

“Blue,” says Fresh. The water bubbles and the lantern spins around once. The crystal, as well as the glow, both turn into a bright blue hue that fills the room.

+ Status [Mystical-Lantern]{Blue}(Excellent) All party-members within line of sight, up to a maximum distance of 6m receive +3 SOUL-REGENERATION / Minute

“Pink,” says Fresh, placing a finger to her chin and thinking. The lantern spins, the color fading from the rich blue to a bright, floral, spring-pink.

+ Status [Mystical-Lantern]{Pink}(Excellent) All monsters within 12m, with up to a level equal to the primary-owner’s, within line of sight, are repelled

She nods at the lantern with the expression of a proud mother as it floats around the workshop, far more independently flying now than it used to. It seems to be taking its own path, rather than just sticking to her side. “Purple,” says Fresh.

+ Status [Mystical-Lantern]{Purple}(Excellent)

Absorbs all incoming DMG for all party-members within line of sight, up to a maximum distance of 6m, equal to a total of the current primary-owner’s LOV * Phase of the current moon.

(New moon = 75%, Crescent = 200%, Gibbous = 300% Full moon = 400%)

She yawns again. “I hope you’re feeling better now,” she tells the lantern, rubbing her eyes. All of the motifs of angels and demons and all of that she had essentially gotten rid of from its surface. Now, it’s just a lantern without any preconceptions imposed onto it. Maybe Basil will like it more now? “Let’s go to bed,” she says, rubbing her eyes again. “Off.”

The lantern’s glow dies down and it lightlessly floats alongside her as they leave the workshop. It diverges off to float over to Basil’s nightstand, as she makes her way back to her own bed, seeing that Shamrock is now laying in his. Exhausted, she slips under her covers again, throwing off her robe a second time as she has high hopes of getting at least a couple hours of sleep tonight.

Her body falls slack more or less instantly and she finds herself sinking into her mattress.

“Hello?” asks Peridot. “Hellooo- ?”

Fresh opens her eyes, feeling someone shake her. “Heeey~” She turns her head, staring through sleepy eyes at Basil, who is jostling her. “Good morning! We’re getting ready for breakfast,” says the priestess, getting up from the side of her bed. “Wanna get up?”

Fresh groans, hiding her head under the pillow. “Nooo…~”

“Shamrock, throw her into the ocean,” barks Jubilee from across the room. Fresh sits upright, hearing the pair of metal boots coming her way. Clutching the blanket to herself, she relents. “Okay! I’ll get up,” sighs Fresh. How many hours of sleep did she get? They didn’t feel like enough. She looks at Shamrock, who has to be just as tired as she is. But he doesn’t seem to show any signs of it.

She throws on her robe again, dragging herself out of the bed that she felt like she had just fallen into a second ago. Heading downstairs, she does a quick crab-check of the washroom and then gets ready for the day. There hadn’t been one in here yet. But she’s sure that there will be one day.

Dragging herself back upstairs a little bit later, she sits down at the table and lets her face flop down against the wooden surface.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” asks Basil. Fresh groans and lets her face smush flatter against the wood. Glass clinks next to her as someone sets down a cup of what smells like coughee.

“Thanks, Jubilee,” says Fresh, listening to their small steps move away from her.

“People who are up all night doing dumb shit don’t get to complain about being tired,” says Jubilee.

“I wasn’t!” argues Fresh. “I couldn’t sleep, so I fixed Basil’s lantern.”

“Thank you,” says Basil, sipping her tea and looking over the shoulder at the lantern that is flying around the upstairs area by itself.

“I hope you like it now, Basil,” sighs Fresh. “I made it look less scary.”

Shamrock comes from the kitchen, setting down a large platter covered in a light breakfast spread consisting of different breads, creams and eggs. Apparently, he and Jubilee did the cooking today. Fresh wishes she had been awake to see it. The thought of the two of them next to each other in the kitchen, wearing matching aprons, is too much for her to handle.

“Huh?” asks Basil. “I liked it before too,” says the priestess, sipping her tea and scooting her chair closer to the table.

“It’s okay,” says Fresh, pushing herself upright and grabbing her coughee, adding a splash of milk to it. “I get it if you didn’t like it before. It was a little spooky.”

“What? No, I really liked it,” affirms Basil. “Why would you think that I didn’t?” she asks.

Fresh tilts her head. “Because you always kept it locked up in a box or something.”

Basil blinks, looking at her, before staring down at her tea. “Oh.” She shakes her head. The priestess looks over towards Jubilee, who only responds with an indifferent shrug, before turning her gaze back to Fresh. “I kept it in your workshop so that you’d be fine, if anything happened.”

“Huh?” asks Fresh. “Then what about in the west? When you stuffed it in your wardrobe?”

Basil shrugs. “I put it in my wardrobe, in case there was an accident in the kitchen, so it would cover anything there.”

“Ooooh…” says Fresh, her eyes growing wide. She had misread the situation entirely. “Sorry,” she relents, drinking her coughee. Fresh is starting to think that she finds herself being a bad friend more often than not these days.

“No, I should have told you,” says Basil. “I can see why you’d think that.”

Fresh shakes her head. “I should have known better. Sorry, Basil.”

“Who gives a fuck?” asks Jubilee, sitting down at the table. “It’s a fucking lantern, what does it matter? You people are fucked in the head. Eat your eggs.”

“It’s about the principle of the matter, Jubilee,” says Fresh, turning her head to look at her friend.

“Take the principle of the matter, twist it around a rod and shove it,” says Jubilee, pointing towards her with a fork. “Eat your eggs, before they get cold.” Fresh turns her gaze, looking at the platter of fairly-decently made eggs. She assumes Jubilee was on egg-duty today, hence their insistence. She looks back towards Jubilee, seeing if they’re still wearing an apron.

They aren’t. Dang.

Feeling their wary gaze on her, Fresh starts stacking her plate full and the others begin as well. All in all, they have a very nice breakfast. The ocean air blows gently in through the balcony, carrying with it a soft, refreshing morning warmth. The four of them discuss their plans for the day. Jubilee, Basil and Shamrock are going to handle the store today, while Fresh intends to work on their washroom and to start crab-proofing the house.

Shamrock apparently has an idea too, for something that he wants to make to sell and Basil needs help getting her planters set up, apparently wanting to use a section of the roof, if Fresh can set up some support-beams to make it capable of properly bearing a heavy load, such as dirt and plant-matter.

The four of them clean up together and then get ready for the day, which is apparently going to be a full one.

Fresh, holding a plate, stands by the basin in the kitchen and looks out of the balcony towards the ocean, trying to remember some oddity from her dream that night. But it just doesn’t seem to come to the forefront of her mind.

Oh well, it probably isn’t important.

Humming to herself, she scrubs the plate clean, listening to the mind-numbing droning of the crashing ocean waves.