It is late in the evening after what was another very successful day of work.

Fresh stands on one leg, holding her hand out over the batter that is flattened out on the kitchen counter, as she sprinkles a dash of red-seasoning from her hand. Humming as she works, she lowers herself down and grabs a bottle of dried herbs, rising back up to her feet and spinning around in a circle where she stands, as she hums a song that she doesn’t quite remember the origin of. Crumbling some of the dried herbs onto her open palm, she holds her hand out before herself and blows over it, sending the dried, crumbled herbs flying out forward.

Feeling everyone’s gaze on her, she turns her head around and looks over her shoulder.

“Cooking,” she answers, before Jubilee can ask her what she’s doing. Grabbing a bottle of oil, she drizzles it out over the dough, swaying from side to side as she works.

“Are you sure that’s what you’re doing?” asks Jubilee.

“Mm!” nods Fresh. “I’m cooking with love!” she exclaims, looking over her shoulder and winking.

“Like you do with your eggs?”

“IAGH!” Fresh yelps, clutching her heart and covering her eyes with her other forearm. “That’s so mean, Jubilee!”

“What’s with the theatrics?” sighs Jubilee, shaking their head. Fresh shrugs and turns around, grabbing the pepper. “And what the fuck are you even making?”

“I don’t know!” says Fresh, grabbing the pepper and throwing a dash of it onto the dough, spinning around and pouring it down over her shoulder. “Cooking is an adventure, Jubilee!” she exclaims, continuing to sway from side to side.

“I think I’m gonna go get some bar-food,” replies Jubilee.

“Oh, don’t be such an old sour-puss,” says Basil.

“Old? You’re one to talk, grandma,” replies Jubilee. “I’m surprised you can even still walk up the stairs.”

Basil crosses her arms. “And I’m surprised that you can even manage to get up on that chair. But here we are.”

“Here we are,” sighs Jubilee.

“Here we aaaare~!” says Fresh in a sing-song voice, planting her feet firmly onto the floor, holding her hands up into the air and twirling her torso around in a circle.

This would usually be the point when Shamrock joins in the conversation to say the line too, but he’s off in the dungeon. Fresh sometimes thinks about accompanying him. But then she thinks about Mr. Monkey and she can’t bear to ever see him again. Losing him once hurt too much, she doesn’t think that she can go through that kind of pain a second time.

“I wish we had music,” says Fresh, continuing to wobble around.

“Sure,” says Jubilee. “Let me just go hire a bard to sit outside our house all day.”

Fresh gasps. “Really?!” she asks, turning back to Jubilee.

“Fuck off,” they reply. “If you want music, then sing. At least you’d be living true to your bird-brain.”

Fresh frowns and rubs her arm, getting flakes of dried herbs all over her forearm, she looks back at the dough. “I’m too shy,” she admits. “I don’t have the strength to do it,” says Fresh, realizing in this very instant how true that is. She can talk to her friends extremely shamelessly about her feelings towards them, she can hold their hands, hug them and dote on them to an unhealthy degree.

But singing in front of them? Out of the question. That would be embarrassing.

“You hum all the time,” says Jubilee.

“Humming isn’t singing!” argues Fresh. “It’s like the difference between seeing someone in their pajamas and seeing them in their underwear!”

Jubilee and Basil exchange a look and then turn back towards her. “I’m pretty sure we’ve seen you in both of those already,” says Basil, sipping her tea.

“Creep,” says Jubilee, holding their head which is laid down on their hand.

“I’m not a creep!” argues Fresh.

Jubilee points at her. “You literally admitted to me once that you were.”

“BETRAYER!” yells Fresh, pointing at Jubilee. “That was a special moment!”

“If by ‘special moment’ you mean I was laying defenselessly in bed when you accosted me, then yes.”

“That makes it sound way worse than it was!” argues Fresh. “You’re making it sound like I was a total creep in front of Basil!”

“Anyways,” says Jubilee, shaking their head. They point at Basil. “Pretty sure we saw you in your lacy underwear, when you got nabbed by that ghost.” Basil chokes on her tea. “That’s right. I didn’t forget. Anything.”

Fresh gets back to her cooking, she decides it might be time to change the topic. “Anyway, why don’t you guys sing then?”

“I’m good,” replies Jubilee.

Basil is still coughing and hitting against her own chest.

“But Jubilee! I’m sure you have a cute singing voice!” says Fresh. “I remember you humming back in the north too!”

“Am I going to have to use your own metaphor against you?” asks Jubilee. They stop, sitting back upright as they then stare down at the table for a moment. “Have I really fallen this low?”

“I don’t have much of a singing voice either,” says Basil, adjusting her glasses.

Jubilee nods. “Yeah, I’ve heard,” they say. “When you’re in the shower, it sounds like someone’s drowning a harpy.”

Basil gasps. “Are you listening to me in the shower?!”

“You fucking wish,” quips Jubilee. “I can hear your screeching through three walls!” they bark, leaning over the table towards Basil.

Basil gets up, pressing her hands onto her side of the table and leaning over it towards Jubilee. “I guess that makes sense for someone with such ridiculous ears!” Fresh stares at the two of them as both of them sit back down, crossing their arms. To the side, the door opens and Shamrock steps in.

“Home,” is all that the man says. Relieved to have some back-up to help lighten the mood, Fresh holds her arms out to her sides and spins her way across the room towards him.

“Hi, Shamrock!” she says, feeling two large hands grabbing her shoulders. The world spins as she is pushed back in the direction that she had come from.

“Hello.”

“We were just talking about singing, Shamrock!” explains Fresh, holding her head back so that her crown presses against his breastplate. “And Jubilee’s underwear!”

“What the fuck? No we weren’t,” says Jubilee.

Basil thinks for a second. “We really should though.”

Jubilee looks at them. “How about you three fuck off?”

Shamrock shakes his head, planting Fresh back at her post and sitting down at the table. He sets his bag full of monster drops and gunk down onto the floor. “I just came back,” he says and Basil starts laughing.

Fresh wonders if this is what Jubilee calls ‘banter’? She sometimes honestly can’t tell if her friends are really arguing or if it’s just how they talk. Basil and Jubilee are always bickering these days, but she still finds that they’re very close despite that. She supposes that every friendship is a little different. She has a different friendship with Jubilee than she has with Basil and a different friendship with Basil than she has with Shamrock. She supposes that it works the other way around too.

Jubilee has a different friendship with Basil and Basil has a different friendship with Shamrock and everything is all wiggly and wobbly and connected like a spider’s web made out of slime-goo.

Finishing the dough, she flattens it out onto a baking tray and scores it with a knife, before putting it into the oven.

Dinner that night is honestly very nice. The odd thing she had made turned into a very long, flat, fluffy pastry-crusted bread that they ended up ripping into pieces and eating with various things that they had laying around; spreads and oils and butter and some vegetables and fruits.

[Spiced Flatbread]{Flaky}(High) A giant loaf of spiced flatbread with a flaky, light crust. Made with LOV: +5 MAX-HP Weight: 1.2kg Value: ???

And later that night, Fresh lays in bed and thinks, pulling her covers up higher as something in her head begins to spin into motion. The connections are slowly coming into place as she thinks about tonight’s conversation at the dinner table.

She doesn’t think about any of the arguing or any of the other conversations that were had later on, or even about her failed attempt at getting Shamrock to sing. No, Fresh thinks about one, very particular thing. A tiny detail, mentioned only in a single sentence, Jubilee’s long, sharp ears.

Jubilee knew.

Her fingers clasp the blanket tighter, tight enough to become pale.

Back in the north, when she had gone upstairs in secret, breaking into Jubilee’s most sacred space, they had known. If Jubilee can really hear Basil’s singing in the shower from upstairs, then there isn’t a single chance that they didn’t hear her trampling around just above their head in the middle of the night.

She turns her head, looking over at the wall that her bed sits beside.

She had betrayed Jubilee’s trust that day and not only did they know it, but the ever short-fused and hot-burning Jubilee let it slide. Jubilee never lets anything slide.

Fresh sits upright, turning her head to look at the chicken on Shamrock’s nightstand.

Not only did Jubilee let it slide, but on the morning of the next day, they had worn their favorite outfit and the flower she had given them.

Why?

Fresh’s eyes look away from the chicken, which Basil had ensured her is unhaunted, and float around the room as she thinks. Why? She knows what Jubilee looks like now, sure. But she still doesn’t know who Jubilee, her best friend, is.

Why?

The thieves’ guild. The snakelike man, Patala. All of their odd, secretive conversations with Basil, who also knows something that she doesn’t.

She sighs, shaking her head. No. It isn’t her business, right?

Fresh lays back down.

Jubilee can do whatever Jubilee wants, she reminds herself. ‘That isn’t what this is’ repeats Fresh in her mind, closing her eyes and falling back to sleep as she mutters the sentence that Jubilee had told her that night, when she came back from the central-city.

Lifting a hand, she softly knocks twice on the wall to Jubilee’s room, before falling to sleep.

In her descent into her strange dreams, she’s sure that she hears a soft knock come back twice from the other side.