Fresh stands outside on the marketplace, staring into the window of the odd store that she’s never seen before.

A few people are running around inside of it, running the day to day.

Bending down, she looks at the products on display. There are some medicines, made by an alchemist. There are winter clothes, made by a tailor. There are crude magical weapons made by some sort of carpenter or craftsman. Looking to the side, there are even hand-drawn dungeon maps.

She tilts her head, feeling an odd sense of déjà vu. Fresh looks up towards the sign above the door.

‘The Dungeon Stuff-Store’.

Fresh blinks, staring back into the window.

How odd.

Shrugging, she continues on with her grocery run. They need fresh bread today for breakfast. She wanders through the aisles of the many street merchants as she walks over the marketplace, looking for something nice and warm.

The stall that had once belonged to the muffin-man now seems to have an owner again, one who isn’t a ghost and so she stops there in his memory, buying some fresh breads and a few small, bite-sized muffins from the baker who now runs it. They’re not as good or as soft or as delicious looking as the muffin-man’s. But they’re perfectly acceptable muffins apart from that.

(Fresh) buys {8} [Muffins](Normal)

for

{46} Obols !

Beaming, she heads back home.

“Hey, Muldrich,” she waves. “Do you want a muffin?”

“No, thank you,” replies the guard. She would have been surprised if he had said literally anything else, honestly. Humming to herself, she heads inside and goes upstairs where the others are waiting.

Technically, breakfast today was supposed to be the rest of the cake that Jubilee had baked yesterday. But in reality, there just wasn’t enough cake left for that. They had eaten it all last night, after they made the plan to save half for breakfast.

“Hey guys,” says Fresh. “I think somebody is stealing our brand identity.”

Jubilee looks over from the table. “Those are some big words for you.”

Fresh frowns, making a show out of it as she puffs out her cheek, setting down the bag of baked goods onto the table.

“You mean that other store down the street?” asks the priestess. She shrugs. “It’s fine,” she remarks, turning back to the pot of fresh jam that she’s preparing. “We’re doing well and if that inspires someone else to do well too, then we shouldn’t have a problem with it.”

“Hmm…” Fresh thinks for a moment. She supposes that Basil has a point. Deciding to change the topic, she looks around the room for something else to talk about.

Her eyes land on Shamrock, who is next to Jubilee, playing with his fingers. “Hey, Shamrock?” she asks. The man looks up towards her. “How come you decided to try and be more humany?”

His chest heaves for a moment as he exhales, staring her way. “Armor only comes in one shape,” he replies. Fresh starts laughing.

The healer-spriggan, having been given its second dose of mineral-water by Jubilee, is now a stage-three spriggan. That means it’s significantly larger and more lean. It’s grown just past Jubilee-sized. The buds on its head have begun to sprout and are dotted with a few flowers. Now it towers over the little house-spriggan, who is still only less than half of its size.

“Do you think we should give the house-spriggan some water too?” asks Fresh, watching the two spriggans run around. There’s a clear difference in size and strength between them now. “I don’t know if there’s not going to be some weird power dynamic now.”

“The fuck?” asks Jubilee. They gesture for her to bend down and Fresh obliges, thinking that Jubilee has a secret to tell her. Instead, they grab her head and begin twisting it around. “No. Still as light as ever,” they remark. “When did you learn so many words?” they ask.

“Jubilee!” protests Fresh. “I know a lot of words! Really great words!” she argues.

“Like what?” asks Jubilee, letting her go.

Fresh thinks for a moment, the two of them staring at each other. Now, put under pressure, she can’t actually think of any of her great words. “…Chicken-butt?” she asks.

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “Weirdo.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh, looking back towards the spriggans. It looks like it’s fine. They seem to just be playing their usual games and the smaller house-spriggan seems to be more enamored than ever with the healer-spriggan. Murder attempts bond people together, she supposes, rubbing the still sore spot on her head.

“Excuse me,” says a familiar voice. Muldrich.

Fresh blinks in surprise, turning her head towards the door. The guardsman is standing there, holding a half-dark-elf child that Fresh recognizes as the man’s daughter. “Can she use your washroom?” asks the guard. Given the very spriggan-like dance that the girl is doing, Fresh supposes that it’s an emergency.

“Sure,” replies Jubilee. “But the basement isn’t safe,” they explain. “Medicine making, you know?” They snap their fingers. “Basil.”

“Sure thing,” says Basil, grabbing the child’s hand.

Muldrich nods and steps back outside. “Thank you.”

Fresh and Jubilee exchange a look. It’s a good thing they had prepared for a scenario like this already, ever since they had made a plan to try and win Muldrich over. The basement, while full of what Jubilee would call ‘fuckery’, is dressed up in wood-cladding, crates, barrels, shelves and growing plants. As long as nobody looks around too carefully, everything should be fine, if they’re just escorting them through it to the washroom on the other side.

As for the mineral pool, it’s not really a giant secret that they need to hide from the world. In fact, it might even be beneficial to let the world know about it through a second-hand source like this.

Powerful magical water on their property could explain a lot of what they do and offer away pretty easily.

Fresh looks back towards the door, wondering. Is this a real scenario that's playing out right now? Or is Muldrich using his daughter to spy on them for the city guard?

“Hmm…” Fresh thinks for a moment, tapping her fingers against the counter.

“It’s fine,” remarks Jubilee, perhaps knowing what she’s thinking. “The big slime eats the little slime,” they explain. Fresh nods, understanding.

She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like lying to Muldrich. She doesn’t like him using his own daughter to check out their operation from the inside. She doesn’t like the fact that they’re all in this odd situation to begin with. But she understands.

Fresh turns her gaze, watching as the healer-spriggan whacks the smaller house-spriggan on the head and laughs as it protests, clearly upset about being bullied.

But in this world, as horrible as some things are, it just is what it is.

- The big slime eats the little slime.

She really has to do something about that.