“Hey Muldrich,” calls Fresh, leaning out of the door. It’s snowing. “Do you want lunch?”

“No, thank you,” replies the man. Fresh nods, shrugging as she heads back inside to get everything ready. Now that the festival has come to an end, they had hoped that business would slowly start to pick up again a little more. But a lot of people seem to be spent out of their savings and the number of weary, tired faces walking by outside of their window seems to be growing with every passing day.

Now that the festival is over, there is little effort being made by the powers that be to hide the fact that things are getting tight for the people of the city. Fresh sighs, scratching her cheek as she looks around the store.

Basil is sitting behind the counter, reading a book from the library about common farm pests. Jubilee is rearranging the items on the shelves and Shamrock is carrying their freshly bought materials downstairs into the basement, to sort them into the different shelves and containers.

Today feels like a sandwich day.

Fresh nods, going upstairs to get some food ready for everyone.

It is the morning of the next day. Fresh pops her head outside of the door as she opens it, looking around. There’s nobody waiting to come inside of their store today.

She sighs, turning to look at Muldrich who is already there. At least she can count on him to always be there.

“Good morning, Muldrich,” says Fresh. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“No, thank you,” says the man, staring straight ahead towards the distance.

Fresh nods, having expected as much. She still wants to ask. “Okay, have a good shift!”

She heads back inside, looking around the store. It’s all set up and ready for the customers, but they don’t seem to have any of those right now. So, instead, she goes downstairs into the basement to try and come up with some new items. Maybe they need something more exciting to lure people in?

“Varmints…” mutters Basil beneath her breath, looking around the basement as she collects a bunch of herbs and mushroom caps from their stores.

“What’s up, Basil?” asks Fresh, looking over her shoulder.

Basil sets a bunch of things down onto her workbench, flipping furiously through a few pages in that book that she’s been reading. “Something’s still chewing through the mushrooms on the farm,” says Basil. “It’s getting worse now. We lost half of today’s harvest,” says the priestess, looking for something.

“Oh, wow.” Fresh blinks. “That’s really bad.” She thinks for a second. “Well… it’s not like there are any customers anyways?”

Basil sighs, her head drooping. “That’s also really bad.”

Fresh laughs, scratching her cheek. “I guess so. Let me know if I can help, Basil,” she says, before returning to her own work.

The tarot-cards, maybe? They’re cheap to make and perhaps there might be some possibly useful effect?

Fresh pops her head out of the front door. It’s the evening of the next day. The third day in a row with no real amount of any customers. “Hey, Muldrich,” says Fresh. “Good work today!” she praises. “Would you like some dinner?”

“No, thank you,” says the man, standing where he’s always standing, staring in the same direction that he always stares into.

Fresh blinks, turning her head to look at Shamrock who is sitting outside on the other side of the door. The two of them are just kind of here, just kind of… staring.

She shrugs and heads back inside.

“Okay!” calls Fresh. “See you tomorrow!”

The snow continues to fall. The door is open, but Fresh is considering just closing it. Nobody is coming inside anyways.

Day number four.

“AHA!” yells Basil from upstairs. Fresh blinks, turning her gaze towards the spiral staircase. “Get back here!”

The sounds of stubby legs running away gets her attention. The two spriggans come bolting down the stairs, running for their lives as a sleep-deprived Basil chases them off, swinging a broom around.

They bolt off to the basement and Fresh intercepts the priestess, grabbing her. “What’s wrong, Basil?” asks Fresh. “Don’t be mean to the spriggans.”

“It’s the spriggans! I caught them!” says the priestess. “They’re eating our mushrooms!” She turns her gaze to look down the spiral staircase, towards the basement where the spriggans are warily looking up her way. “They’re the varmints.”

Fresh laughs a quiet laugh. Basil has been up dealing with this problem for days now. She’s clearly exhausted and has become a little… weird. But sleep deprivation will do that to you.

She grabs the broom and sets it down, trapping Basil in a hug. “There, there, Basil,” says Fresh. “The spriggans have to eat something, right?” she asks. “It makes sense that they’ve been munching that stuff.”

Basil sighs, looking around the empty store. “We can’t sink our profits like this. We need to stay above water.”

“It’ll be okay, Basil,” says Fresh. “People will start coming in again soon.”

The priestess loosens the tension in her body. “I hope so. A lot of the medicine only lasts about a week on the shelf.”

Fresh rubs her back, consoling her for a while as the spriggans cautiously make their way back upstairs, receiving an apology from Basil afterwards.

“Good night, Muldrich,” yawns Fresh, leaning out of the window. “Sleep tight!”

“No, thank you,” replies the man from down next to their closed front-door.

Fresh blinks, rubbing her tired eyes and shaking her head as she pulls herself back into the window.

“Man, Muldrich sure is an intense guy,” she says, closing the window so that all of the warmth doesn’t escape the house.

Jubilee shrugs, sitting at the table. “That fuck is there in the cold all day and all night,” they note. “I have no idea when he fucking sleeps or takes a piss.”

Basil nods, sipping her tea. “I never even see him take a break for lunch. Talk about tenacity.”

Shamrock sets down a pile of wood, getting the materials ready for Fresh so that she can make a ceiling over their bedroom. “A man of purpose.”

“You sure he’s not a fucking statue?” asks Jubilee. “I feel like the city is just pulling one over on us with him.”

“He seems nice,” says Fresh, shrugging. “You two get along, right, Shamrock?”

The giant man nods, sitting down at the table. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Fresh, Jubilee and Basil turn their heads, staring at him for a moment and then look back towards each other. Fresh isn’t sure if that was a joke or not and apparently, the same could be said of the other two.

The next day comes.

They’ve barely made a profit at all this week. In fact, several days have been clear losses. Basil sighs, taking a few tinctures off of the shelves. They’re on the verge of going bad.

“I’ll make a cooling cabinet for down here,” says Fresh. “That way we can keep some of the sensitive medicine longer next time.” Given the now sad look on Basil’s face as she discards some of the things that she had worked hard on to make, with hopeful intent for them to be of use to people, Fresh feels bad for not having thought of this idea sooner.

They’ve had a cooling cabinet in the west and the east, of course they need one here too. Especially since the floor-heater keeps everything really warm. It can’t be great for the shelf-life of Basil’s herbal medicine.

Something laughs outside.

Fresh blinks, peeking out of the window, staring at the two half dark-elf children running around Muldrich, their mother standing in front of the guard, adjusting his armor and doting on him. She seems to be making a fuss out of every little thing out of place with his equipment, wiping off every flock of snow that lands on his armor with a glare in her eyes at the audacity of nature, or more aptly said, at the ice-casters on the high branches of the world-tree, for having done such a thing.

The two children, a brother and sister, move to stand next to him, mimicking his stiff and quiet posture as they take after their father, staring out into the city with watchful eyes. Watching the streets, watching the shadows and the faces of everyone who walks by.

“Oooh,” says Fresh to herself, realizing as she stares out through the window. Basil presses her face against the glass too and then Jubilee comes by as well.

The smaller child, the brother, sneezes.

Muldrich lowers his gaze to stare at the boy and then sighs, picking him up and heading inside.

“Do you have anything for the sniffles?” asks the guard, looking towards Basil. The priestess stares for a moment and then nods. “We sure do!”