Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Three - Dress-Up Games

I noticed Awen fixated on her copy of our team photo as we walked along. She was staring at the image, her expression something I couldn’t quite read while her thumb ran up and down the edge, careful not to rub against any of the smiling faces on the photograph.

“Are you okay?” I asked, voice pitched low so that I wouldn’t disturb the others.

Caprica, Amaryllis, and Calamity were in the middle of a spirited argument about whether or not eating rodents was okay. Calamity and--surprisingly--Caprica both seemed to agree that the occasional mouse was a fine snack while Amaryllis disagreed quite sternly.

Awen looked up, then her expression changed, becoming a shy little smile. “Yeah,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I only had to move my arms up a tiny bit for her to walk right into a hug. “You looked... I don’t know.”

Awen booped her head against my shoulder, and soon we had to break apart the hug because walking-hugs were an advanced-level hug tactic and it wasn’t easy to keep up. “It’s okay. I was just... this is a really nice painting.”

“Photograph,” I corrected softly. “And yeah, it is! We’re all real smiley. Did you see the expression on the elf’s face when we didn’t just stand there all gloomy and dour?”

“My cheeks hurt from holding the smile,” Awen admitted.

“Ah, but it was worth it, yeah?”

She bobbed her head in a nod. “Yes. A lot of things have been worth it lately.” She looked at the photo one last time, then carefully tucked it into the envelope it came in and placed it in her bag. When she looked back my way, there wasn’t any shyness in her smile. “Thanks, Broccoli.”

“Huh?”

“Awa, guys, I don’t think we’ll find any mice to eat here, um, so maybe it doesn’t matter?” Awen said as she walked around me and towards our other friends, putting an end to their argument as she did so.

Not to be left out, I skipped over to my friends and grabbed the nearest two--which happened to be Amaryllis and Calamity--from behind for a quick hug. “Yeah! If we find any mice then we’ll see what they taste like, okay? Unless they’re cute talking mice. Those we’ll make friends with.”

“Emergency ration friends?” Calamity asked. He licked his lips.

“No,” I said chastisingly. “Friends don’t eat friends.”

“Says you,” he shot back. “Bunnies are part of a cat’s diet, you know. Roasted on an open flame, maybe with some spices. Tasty!”

“We just ate, why are we talking about food again?” Caprica asked.

“Because explorers think with their stomachs,” Awen said. “At least, my uncle used to say that a lot of his adventures happened because of his lower brain, so that’s what I think he meant.” She nodded.

Amaryllis smacked herself in the face with a wing. “World, why,” she muttered.

“What?” I asked her.

“Never you mind,” she said. “Look, clothes.”

I turned, following her pointing talon to a store across the hall from us. It was actually quite large, one of the bigger stores we’d crossed, and the interior was filled with mannequins and racks upon racks of clothes. The sign at the front named the place Every Body Needs Clothes and it seemed as if they specialised in clothes for every body type and species. “Oh, let’s go!”

“Yes, you and Awen and Caprica and Calamity... wait, all of you except for me need clothes,” Amaryllis said. “Why am I surrounded by people who only have one outfit?”

“I have at least two,” I said.

“I have a large wardrobe,” Caprica said.

“Not on the Beaver you don’t,” Amaryllis said. “And Broccoli, one set of adventuring clothes and one nice suit for special events doesn’t count as a full wardrobe.”

I shrugged. “You don’t need to convince me! Come on, I wanna play dress-up with unlimited funds!”

“Unlimited-- Broccoli, don’t waste all of our money on pretty clothes. No more than a dozen gold each. Ten, even!” Amaryllis said as she ran after me.

Her budget turned out to be really generous though. Most clothes here were only a few coppers, with the much nicer things priced in silver. The Stormtower economy seemed to be booming if all of its stuff was priced so cheap. Or something like that, I wasn’t an economist. In fact, at the moment I was the opposite, a consumer.

“Who do we shop for first?” I asked.

“Calamity needs it most,” Caprica said. “He looks like a ruffian.”

“But I want to look like a ruffian,” Calamity said.

“In that case, you’ve succeeded in a spectacular way,” she said.

I clapped my hands. “Ruffian chic!”

“That’s not a thing, Broccoli,” Amaryllis said.

“It could be,” Awen suggested.

We ended up scrounging for all sorts of things across the store, with more and more clothes piling up onto Calamity’s outstretched arms until we could barely see the tips of his ears over the pile.

Then we shoved Calamity into some changing booths and giggled while he cursed and stumbled around inside. He came out with various outfits, all of which we nixed, denied, or agreed with him that they just didn’t suit him. Formal didn’t work on Calamity. Putting him in a nice suit left him looking like someone playing dress up in their dad’s clothes, and he didn’t look comfortable.

In the end though, he found something that he liked.

“You can’t wear a vest and a sleeveless leather jacket,” Caprica said.

“Why not?” Amaryllis asked. “It leaves his wings... arms, free.”

“Yeah, check out my cannons!” Calamity brought his arms up and flexed. He did have rather bulgy muscles on his upper arms. Probably from using a bow so much, that had to require a lot of upper body strength.

His overall outfit was fairly simple, but clean. A short sleeve button up shirt, a little blue tie around the neck with a black vest over his shirt. And atop all of that, a beige leather coat, without sleeves.

He topped that with a white cowboy hat--with ear holes--and a pair of white pants made of a tough, denim-like material.

If it wasn’t for my Cleaning I might have suggested that he forgo using so much white, but that was fine.

“I think it suits you,” I said.

“I’m liking it,” he replied as he adjusted his hat.

So that was that. Somehow, without needing to communicate it, all of our attention turned towards Caprica who blinked and suddenly had the kind of expression I’d expect from a bunny that tripped out of a bush and into a wolfpack. “What?” she asked.

In the end she was pushed into the changing room with a small mountain of clothes. It was only a small mountain because there weren’t that many things sized for a sylph, otherwise we might have been there all day.

In the end, we pushed Caprica a little bit out of her comfort zone, her comfort zone being things with stiff shoulders and smart military-cuts. We were looking for something casual, not something that could pass as a commander’s outfit.

Still, Caprica had her tastes, and she settled on a simple outfit. Pants--”You don’t wear skirts when you intend to fly anywhere,”--that were on the tighter side, some slip-on shoes, and a nice blouse under a button-up cardigan, with the sleeves rolled up she could pass for an off-duty librarian instead of an off-duty princess-commander.

It was cute!

“Who’s next?” I asked.

“Awa,” Awen awa’d, and so she was picked to be next. We did the same thing, pulling her across the store and showing her all sorts of outfits. It was easy to shop for Awen. If something was too much, her face would go red, and if she liked it she would give a little nod.

In the end, we pushed her into the changing room with only a few items. She stepped out of it wearing a blue dress and a nice leather jacket. The only problem was...

“Wow,” Amaryllis said. “That’s... a very short skirt and a lot of leg.”

“Ah,” Awen said. She tugged the hem down, which didn’t do much.

“If you want, we can go back to that picture place. Send Rose something to remember you by,” Amaryllis teased.

Awen spun and ran back into the changing room and only came out ten minutes later, her blush significantly less incandescent. She had a nice, rather modest dress on, though she’d kept the jacket. It had pockets, after all.

“Okay! Amaryllis next!” I said.

“Why not you next?” she asked.

“Because you were too slow,” I replied before grabbing her by the talon and pulling her back into the racks. Amaryllis, as it turned out, had a very particular idea of what ‘casual’ meant, and I ended up having to jog after her as she flitted around the store and tossed clothes back for me to catch.

I didn’t know that one of my best friends was such an avid shopper, but here we were, with a heap for Amaryllis to pick through and discard. She ended up only going into the changing room with one or two items.

When she stepped out she was wearing a white... shirt-thing. It wasn’t an item of clothing I’d ever seen on earth before. It had short sleeves on the inside, but a long, shawl-like piece of cloth came out from around the collar and swept down over the wings.

She was also wearing a tracksuit.

There was no mistaking it. Her pants--white, the same as her strange shirt--had stripes on the side and were tucked into a pair of large talon-accommodating shoes.

She looked surprisingly modern, actually. “Well?” she asked.

I nodded and gave her a thumbs up. I was going to tell her she looked cute, but she probably wouldn’t appreciate that. “You’re very attractive.”

“Moron,” she said before pouting off.

“My turn!” I cheered.

My friends seemed to make a point of dragging me all over the store, deliberately suggesting the most absurd outfits they could, but the joke was on them. I loved spending time with my friends, even if it meant playing the part of the doll.

“Broccoli, I want to show you something,” Amaryllis said. Next to her, Caprica was nodding seriously. Then unfolded a pair of pants. “These, my dear Broccoli, are pants.”

“Uh,” I said.

“They’ve very practical,” Caprica went on. “See, they’re like two skirts, but together.”

“I know what pants are?” I tried.

Amaryllis huffed a sort of... ‘I don’t believe you’ huff. “We’ll see about that.”

I was shoved into the changing room with a lot of outfits, and then I spent the next while trying things on and stepping out to see what worked and what didn’t. Of course, my friends made me take my beard off after the first outfit, but I vowed to put it back on after! Some of the stuff was... not as modest as I was used to, and after stepping out with a shirt that exposed my tummy and rather tight shorts, I found that Awen was having a hard time breathing. She was also covering Calamity’s face with her arm.

Amaryllis pushed me back into the changing room, and I looked over everything until I found something I thought would be comfy. A nice teal sweater with some vertical lines, a clean button-up shirt, and some pants with flared legs. They reminded me a little of my mom’s bell-bottoms.

“Oh, that works,” Amaryllis said as I stepped out.

Caprica nodded. “Very comfortable.”

I grinned. “Then I’ll take it!” I said.

I insisted that we take some time to put everything away while also tossing around a bit of Cleaning magic, just because it seemed like the nice thing to do. It paid off in the end when the cashier gave us a little discount. They seemed rather relieved about it too!

And so, with more comfy clothes on, we headed out... probably to find even more food to eat.

***