The waves of the ocean crash against the shoreline as explosions ring out from all around them. Sand flies up high into the air, along with bits of crab and it all rains back down again, as if they were in the center of a strangely wet sandstorm.

Fresh holds one of her ears closed, tilting her head as she looks at the side of the magical-floating-fairy-house out on the beach.

“So?” asks Tarja. “How does it look?” asks the nervous fairy.

Fresh looks at her and then tilts her head the other way, staring at the thing. There had clearly been a fire of some kind in the night. The wood is charred and scarred and most everything is broken, from the windows to the fluffy lining of their sleeping area to the melted globs of crystal-drakonium insulation that drip out from the cracks of the wood that remains.

“It looks bad, Tarja,” admits Fresh. “Super bad,” she asks. “Is everyone alright?”

The world explodes behind them as a particularly ambitious caster blasts away one crab after the next with a level of energy that Fresh can’t help but find enviable this early in the morning.

The sun had barely risen when they had been woken up by Tarja, who was knocking on their balcony a little bit ago, asking for help. Apparently, for one reason or another, their house had caught fire in the night and burnt to the point of becoming mostly uninhabitable.

“Everyone’s fine,” says Tarja. “It was just Sauli and me here, everyone else was working when it happened.”

“But you’re both fine?” asks Fresh. She doesn’t actually know which fairy Sauli is supposed to be, but she still wants them to be okay. “The necklaces?” she asks.

Tarja shakes her head. “We’re all fine. It’s just that our house is…” She turns her head, looking at the mess that remains and sighs. “It’s ruined.”

Fresh nods, feeling some sympathy with the little fairy. Though, ‘little’ is relative. Tarja seems to have filled out a lot more and while she hasn’t grown in height, she has certainly grown into her body. Must be all the crab meat.

“What about your tools?” asks Fresh. Tarja spins around, showing her the ‘quiver’ of needles on her back.

“I saved the important ones,” she says.

A crystalline wave shoots along the beach, skewering several crabs at once. Fresh turns her head, thinking for a second that it’s Jubilee’s glass magic. But no, it’s literally crystals, like the ones from the west.

But they shatter a second later, but rather than falling to the ground, they simply blow away as if they had been made up out of fine sand, sitting atop a desert dune in the wind.

“There sure are lots of interesting kinds of magic,” notes Fresh.

“Huh? Oh,” says Tarja. “That’s Karri,” she explains. “Look.” The fairy lifts a finger, pointing. Fresh squints, recognizing one of the familiar fairies. She isn’t from Tarja’s group, rather, she is one of the fairies who was training to become a healer.

Fresh beams, lifting a hand and waving. “Hi, Karri!” she calls across the beach. The fairy looks up from her work and laughs, waving back with a big smile.

“She grew into her magic a week ago,” says Tarja. “She’s been blasting crabs here in every free minute since.”

“Really?” asks Fresh. She plants her hands on her hips, letting out a deeply satisfied, long exhalation. “You’ve all been working so hard,” she says, nodding with pride. Turning back, she looks at the destroyed house. There might be some setbacks here and there, but the fairies are really developing into hard-working, satisfied people.

“We can fix this,” says Fresh, looking at the house. “But it might take a day or two,” she admits, tilting her head.

“I figured,” says Tarja.

“In the meantime, you guys can stay on our roof, if you want?” suggests Fresh. “We’ll be out of each other’s way then, but you guys don’t have to sleep in crab-country.”

“Are you sure?” asks Tarja. “We don’t want to be a burden anymore.”

Fresh shakes her head. “I’ll ask the others. But I think it should be okay,” she says. “I’m gonna unhook your house and take it with me, okay?”

Tarja nods as she sets to work. “Hey,” says Tarja. “Uh, can I ask you something?”

“What’s up?” asks Fresh, fiddling with some of the cords that they had tied the house down with against a few trees, up against the top of the shoreline.

“How come you’re always helping us?” asks Tarja.

Fresh shrugs. “Because I want you to like me,” she replies, plain as day. “I’m selfish like that, you know?”

“Oh,” says Tarja. “That’s pretty honest.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh. “I’ve found out that it isn’t worth lying, Tarja,” explains Fresh. “You’re just gonna cause more trouble for yourself in the long-term if you do.”

The two of them part ways, with Fresh carrying the destroyed house back to their shop. Tarja is going to stay there and get the others up to speed when they get back from their routes along the beach with their mobile tailoring business.

“I’m home!” calls Fresh, carrying in the broken house through the front door. It’s still about half an hour before they open for the day.

“Hey,” says Jubilee, not looking up from the counter at first, until they seem to smell the burnt smell coming from the fairy house and look up towards her. “Those ungrateful little fucks…”

“It was an accident, Jubilee,” says Fresh. “Can the fairies stay on our roof?” she asks. “Just for a day or two, until I can fix this.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No,” repeats Jubilee, tapping their finger against the counter.

Fresh blinks, staring at them as she stands there with the fairy house in her arms. “Please?” she asks again.

“Fine, whatever! I don’t give a fuck. Go ask Basil,” sighs Jubilee, rolling their eyes.

“You’re the best, Jubilee!” beams Fresh, walking to the stairs.

“You’re getting ash everywhere!” barks Jubilee after her.

She turns her head back as she enters the stairway, calling over the shelves. “I’ll clean it up in a minute!”

Heading upstairs to her workshop, she sets the house down on the bench and heads to the table.

“Baaasil~?” asks Fresh. “Is it okay if the fairies from Tarja’s group stay on the roof for a day or two?” she asks. “Just until I fix their house.”

“Is everyone okay?” asks Basil and Fresh nods. The priestess sighs. “Did you ask Jubilee?”

“Mm!” nods Fresh.

“And what did Jubilee say?”

“Jubilee said yes, but to ask you too.”

Basil sips her tea. “As long as they don’t mess with the plants, it’s fine,” she says. “But you’ll have to do your crafting in the shower until then.”

“Huh?” blinks Fresh.

“What if one of them peeks through the trap-door to the roof?” asks the priestess. Fresh thinks for a second and then sighs, realizing that she’s right.

“What about you, Shamrock?” she asks. He just nods, pouring his tea into his helmet. “Thanks guys!” beams Fresh, heading back to the workshop.

The rest of the morning she spends making an assessment of the damage. She isn’t an expert, but it looks like the fire started in the sleeping area. A piece of crystal-drakonium is stuck, melted to the wall where a spell of some kind looks to have impacted it. The entire area around it is charred.

Did someone use their magic in bed?

She shakes her head. Young people can be so irresponsible.

Fresh blinks, realizing what she just thought. She steps back from the workbench, setting down her tools. She decides to pester her friends for the remainder of the morning instead. She needs to use her youthful energy to its fullest, while she still has it.

After that, they open the store and business comes into full swing again. The ice-cream window is booming as always and Basil is becoming a real master at her tasks there. Jubilee is working the front counter as always and spends their free time arguing with customers, some of whom seem to be there only to argue for the sake of doing so. Shamrock’s figurines and his combined planter-pot project with Basil have been placed out onto his shelving area. The loot from the dungeon has been compacted into a tighter space, in order to make room for the new figurines.

Most of them are still low-quality. But the first two or three ‘normals’ have begun making themselves seen as well and Fresh feels a deep pride as she stands there, holding the man’s left arm with both of hers wrapped around it as they peek through the shelves from the clothing aisle, watching some customers on the other side.

“This one!” exclaims an excited swordsman. “I really like this one,” he says, grabbing a figurine. From the placement of it, Fresh recalls that one being a minotaur.

“It has your face,” sighs the woman next to him.

“Huh?” he asks, taken aback. He looks at it and then at her. “I was gonna get it because I thought it looked like you.”

“WHAT?!”

The man laughs and runs past her to the counter, managing to evade her clawing after him as she begins her pursuit.

“Good job, Shamrock!” beams Fresh, rubbing her face against his arm. “Can you help me with the fairy house too?” she asks. “You’ve gotten really good!” she beams. Sure, this was perhaps a slight exaggeration. But sometimes, a little spoiling is necessary to help her friends’ self-confidence. “Pleeeease~?” she asks.

Shamrock stands back upright, his head looking over the shelves again as he turns his gaze down her way and nods once.

“Okay.”

Later that day, after work is over, the four of them find themselves on the roof and wait for the fairies to arrive.

Jubilee knocks on the empty kegs. “Should we just lock the little shits up in here?” they ask. “I’d kill to see a drunk fairy.”

“Jubilee!” scolds Fresh. “Don’t corrupt the innocent!”

“You’re one to talk,” sighs Jubilee, shaking their head.

“Huh?” Fresh places her hands on her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jubilee rolls their eyes and ignores her question and then, a minute later, several small lights rise up in the distance and float towards their house as six small figures, with their bags on their backs, make their way to them.

Fresh clutches her hands together in front of her chest. She’s oddly excited to have everyone ‘home’, if that even makes any sense.