Chapter Seventy-One - Friendship is Magical

“You... agree?” I said.

Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, I do.”

I looked around the Exploration Guild’s lobby, just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of prank wizard hiding in one corner, then, with a growing smile, I turned to Awen and grabbed both of her hands. “Amaryllis agrees! We’re going to kidnap you so hard!”

“Awa, I, I look forward to it, I think,” Awen said.

Amaryllis cleared her throat. “Do you at least want to hear my reasoning?” she wondered aloud.

“Sure!” I said. “I know you love talking.”

She glared, not that it stopped her from explaining. “Awen deserves better, which is already a decent start. This will ingratiate us with Abraham, her fool of an uncle, and if Awen gains any power in the future she might be indebted to us, and I don’t like the local humans.”

“Ah, that last one was a little... speciest,” I said. “But it’s... for a good cause?”

“Sure,” Amaryllis agreed. “Did you pick out a mission?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I did see one that looked neat, but we got to talking about kidnapping Awen and I got distracted. Sorry?”

Amaryllis huffed and moved over to the mission book. “Show me.”

The mission that I had found was fairly simple. Travel out of Greenshade heading North and collect samples of any interesting or useful plants along the way, then return the samples, and a map of their locations, back to the Guild who would provide it to a local Alchemist’s group. “I think no one took it yet because it’s kind of boring to most people.”

“But you have a Gardening skill that might help you with it. No tight deadline either. We can grab this and use it as an excuse to meander along our route for a ways. If we’re careful we’ll find easy things to fight and gain experience with.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said.

“Awa, f-fight?” Awen said.

“Don’t worry, Awen, Broccoli will keep you safe,” I said while flashing her a thumbs-up.

Amaryllis sighed. “I doubt your ability to keep yourself safe,” she said. “The area around Greenshade and towards the Nesting Kingdom should be relatively safe. We, that is, the harpy clans, make a point of keeping the area around the foothills of the Harpy Mountains clear of the more threatening monsters.”

I grinned and nodded along. “Cool! So, we’re taking the mission?”

Amaryllis agreed and soon she was back by the counter and registering the two of us for a bit of flower picking. Last time I had tried something like that, I had met Oak, so maybe this time would be just as fun. Though hopefully with fewer tentacle monsters. Awen didn’t seem to have the constitution for dealing with those.

When Amaryllis had finished up with all the dull paperwork stuff, we began to head out. The moment I started to reach a hand for Awen she placed hers in mine, though she did it with a bit of a blush.

“Miss Bunch?” Awen asked.

“You can call me Broccoli,” I said.

“I like calling her moron, or idiot,” Amaryllis said with more than a little snark. “It is both amusing and keeps her feet on Dirt.”

“Awaaa Br-Broccoli,” Awen stuttured. “Why are you helping me? I appreciate it, really, but I’m just me.”

I shook my head. “That’s a silly way of thinking about things. How about you point us towards a place where we can buy some good gear in a hurry and we’ll chat along the way. If you’re going to be an adventure buddy then we should learn more about each other.”

“Um, that way,” Awen said. “And what do you mean by silly?”

I didn’t want to dismiss her concern out of hand. In fact, it was all rather spur of the moment, even for me. Awen’s story was sad, true, but not disastrous. If I didn’t help her she would live a miserable life, yeah, but that was it. That was enough for me to want to help her. Plus, she seemed nice. A little shy, maybe, but the way her eyes lit up when she talked about her uncle and her tiny kernels of dreams made me want to just squish her cheeks.

“How many people live in Greenshade?” I asked.

Awen blinked. “Aw-about forty thousand fixed citizens. Twice as many vagrants who come and go?”

She didn’t sound entirely sure, but that was okay. “How many need a friend?” I asked. “How many of them are in need of a few more copper, or could use a warm blanket or a place to rest for the night?”

“I, I don’t know,” Awen said. She curled in on herself, which was silly. It wasn’t her fault that the world wasn’t always a nice place.

“I’m only the one Bun, I can’t be all of their friends. Some might need it more than you, but I can’t be there for all of them. But that’s no excuse not to be the friend of the person that needs one who is right in front of me. You look like you need a friend, really badly too. Um... do you have other friends?”

Awen shook her head. “The maids, some of them. But, most got fired after getting too close.”

I pouted, that was just cruel. “Well then, I’ll be your friend. And Amaryllis too.”

“Don’t go volunteering my friendship like that,” Amaryllis said.

“Hmph, fine, then I’ll be a super good friend to you, and you’ll win over Amaryllis by being really nice to her, and like, preening her feathers or something.”

Amaryllis trilled. “As if I’d let your clumsy human fingers touch my plumage.”

“Amaryllis is actually very cuddly, but she puts on a prickly exterior because she thinks that it makes her look cool,” I told Awen.

The girl nodded seriously while Amaryllis squawked and denied the obvious truth.

“Anyway, my point is that Broccoli Bunch says yes to friendship, and I guess it was coincidence or fate or whatever that I happened to bump into you while my friendship quota was unfilled.”

“You have a quota?” Amaryllis asked.

I nodded. “Yes. How many people are there on Dirt?”

“Idiot.”

“Miss... Broccoli,” Awen said while her hand squeezed mine a little harder and she focused on the path below. “Thank you. I’ll, I’ll try to be the best friend you’ve ever had. I promise!”

Holding hands with Awen turned out to be useful. It made it easier to pull her into a big tight hug. I only stopped it when her face had gone so red that I was afraid that she might have been running out of air.

We gathered a few looks, but I guess we--or at least Amaryllis and Awen--looked important enough that no one made a fuss. There were a lot more people around, and the area had changed a little, with more homes and quite a few businesses. None that looked as grand as those in Port Royal, and judging by the dismissive look on Amaryllis’ face, she was going to comment on how plebeian they all were, but I saw signs on stores that promised to sell what we needed.

The first stop was a general goods store, where I dragged Awen up to the counter and asked the clerk, a younger human boy, if they had any pre-made travelling bags.

Then, with Awen hugging her new backpack--one a bit smaller than my own--to her chest, we moved over to a clothing shop across the street.

“There are a bunch of things we’ll need, besides the blankets and food and such we got,” I said. “You’ll need a knife, for little things, like cutting food and rope and plants. And you’ll need some sort of weapon too, I guess. I have a spear you could use... I had a spear. Oh, shucks, I forgot my spear!”

“You dolt,” Amaryllis said. “I tossed it in my bank, no worries. Now, if you give her your spear, what will you use to defend yourself?”

“My shovel and my wits?” I asked.

Amaryllis laughed, in her strange, whistle-y way. “Might as well bow down and let yourself die, then.”

I harrumphed and pointed off to a shop at one end of the street. There was a large chimney sticking out the back, and the air smelled like charcoal the closer we came to it. “We can buy her something usable there,” I said.

“I-- will I really need a weapon?” Awen asked.

I considered it, but the answer was rather obvious. “You’ll want to try to negotiate your way out of any fight first, but sometimes that just doesn’t work out and you need to fight. It’s not fun, and it’s not pretty, but I guess it is part of the adventure.”

“Awa, I see. Uncle Abe’s stories have lots of fights in them,” she said.

“I can assure you any battle we enter will be nothing like a fight involving that man,” Amaryllis said.

The weapon’s shop was filled with racks and racks of shiny tools of death and destruction. The place smelled like oil and wax and sweat and I loved it instantly. “Ohhh,” I cooed as I skipped down to a rack that held a whole slew of pretty swords.

“You have Inspect?” Amaryllis asked.

“Insight,” I corrected.

She nodded as she looked around. “Then we’ll be using that to find something. Half of these are awful.” She tapped one of the prettier swords with a talon.

A cheap steel sword of very common quality.

“Aww,” I said.

“Awa,” Awen said. “I don’t know what to use.”

I looked over to Amaryllis, who was my expert at all things non-friendship related. The harpy sighed and shook her head. “You’re a human, which means you have pretty little hands and decent arm strength. I’m assuming you don’t have any offensive magics? Of course not. Maybe... a warhammer? Broccoli is a surprisingly nimble fighter, and I’m better at range. We could use someone to act as... bait.”

“Bait,” Awen repeated faintly.

I gave her a side hug. “We can get you a big hammer to scare the monsters away with. And hammers can be used as tools, right? Do you think there are any mechanical weapons here?”

“None that I would trust,” Amaryllis said.

“I, I think a hammer would be okay,” Awen said. “My uncle had one for some time. It was a good weapon, he said.”

“Brilliant!” I said. A few of the other customers glanced my way, but they went back to minding their own business soon enough. I drug Awen over to a wall rack that had a bunch of hammers on display. Plenty of them were all black with spikes and heads made to look like wolves or dragons and such, most of those were of rather poor quality. One caught my eye because it was shorter and really simple. Just a steel head, a few metal bits holding that in place, and a nice shaft made of some dark wood.

“Insight,” I said while pushing some mana into the skill.

A simple warhammer of Uncommon Quality. Recently modified after the hilt was damaged.

“This one is nice,” I said as I handed the hammer to Awen. She weighed it in both hands, gave me an uncertain look, then swung the hammer around a few times while I backed out of kneecapping range.

“Awa, I, I think I like it,” she said.

“Neat!” I said before dragging Awen to the counter where a young woman in an apron was waiting. “I’ll pay for this one.”

“Th-thank you, Miss Bunch,” Awen said.

“Wait, why didn’t I get thanked for buying that backpack of yours?” Amaryllis asked. “Am I just a canary to you two?”

“You’re the prettiest canary,” I said.

It was a little hard to pay for the hammer while Amaryllis bonked my head, but I managed.

***