For the first time since she was reborn, Fresh takes off her boots and sets them to the side, down by the door. Feeling a great sense of freedom and satisfaction coming over her tired mind, a yawn overpowers the smile on her face. Exhausted, she wiggles her toes and gets back to work, while humming a tune that she remembers from her old life to keep herself awake, as her head grows heavy and droops repeatedly.

It's been about two hours now, since they had gotten back. But Fresh still sits there, now alone. Jubilee had left silently, more or less, just after she had begun working. The girl rubs her eyes. She’s really tired. Her stomach growls again and she sighs, feeling a little worn down in general. Her eyes go to the mushroom powder that she has been crumbling. Three caps have already been shredded apart, to the best of her ability. But it’s hard without a mill or anything of that kind. Maybe if she even just had a stone mortar and pestle, then this would be much easier. But with just her hands, it’s arduous, crude work.

What is she even doing, shredding these? She doesn’t have a plan or any idea of what to do with the shredded material. It just seemed like the only thing that she could do. She didn’t want to just sit there and do nothing. But even if she tears all of these apart, what will she do with them then? Maybe she just made things worse? Maybe they could have just sold the raw caps. Now the merchants for sure won’t want them.

She sighs, looking away from the mushroom-caps, opting not to eat any of them. She only has one health point left and doesn’t want to risk it. Besides… they aren’t hers to eat. She rips off another fistful with a shaking hand and begins shredding it. These are pretty much all Jubilee’s. All she did was carry them, hell, not even all of them. So, of the thirty some Obols worth of raw materials, how many are really hers? Morally? One? Maybe two. But not more than that, at least in her own eyes. She crumbles the last of the fourth cap apart into the snail-shell, which is now close to full.

[CRAFTING: 2]{Idle Hands}

Fresh looks up to the window, feeling a little pride despite everything, as she looks at it. This was her second crafting level now. So apparently taking raw materials apart gives her… experience, or whatever is used to calculate these sub-categories. So this means if she levels up again, that she’ll have two crafting ability choices to choose from now? She smiles and grabs the last mushroom-cap, her weak hands tearing into it as she thinks. She feels unwell.

“I guess I’m dying…” mutters Fresh to herself idly, laughing at the absurdity of that. She looks down at the cap in her hands. “Wait for me on the other side, Mr. Mushroom,” she says in a sad, defeated voice. “I’ll see you again soon.” Her head flops forward and she sighs in exhaustion. It’s tempting to go to sleep and the bed is right there, just across the room…

Fresh shakes her head, snapping out of it. “Let’s both do our best, Mr… Mush…” she quietly mumbles beneath her energy-less breath, as she continues tearing into the cap, her head sleepily nodding down forward as she reaches her limit.

“Stop talking to the mushroom, dumb-ass,” snaps a voice from just beside her. Fresh perks up, her low hanging head snapping upwards in surprise towards Jubilee, who she hadn’t even noticed entering back inside through her sleepy daze.

“Ah! Welcome home!” says Fresh, not sure why. It feels like the right thing to say in her tired mind.

Jubilee tenses up and Fresh thinks she’s about to get hit or poked again, maybe that was a too personal thing to say? But instead the figure just sighs and idly tosses her a small bundle that lands in her lap, walking past her towards the table. “Shut up. Here.”

Fresh looks at the small brown-paper wrapped thing in her hands. “What’s this?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” says Jubilee.

Fresh looks at the paper in her hands and undoes the wrapping, revealing a piece of still hot, brown bread. Her eyes grow wide. “Is this for me?” she asks in surprise.

[Dark Wheat Seed Bread](Normal) A small, still hot loaf of fresh bread, made out of ground seeds, nuts and a dark, whole-grain flour. Weight: 250g Value: 10 Obols

Jubilee looks back at her and shakes their head, before sitting down at the table to rest. “No, I bought it for the mushroom.”

Fresh laughs, feeling a bit more chipper now. “Thank you!” Jubilee just indistinctly mumbles in return. She looks at the bread, her first ‘real’ food since she had gotten here. Her first… wait. Her eyes open wide. “Didn’t this cost a lot of money?” she asks, remembering the price of ten Obols. That’s already a third of their haul.

“If you don’t want it, then give it back,” sighs Jubilee. Fresh pulls the bread back away and takes a loud, audible bite of it and her tired eyes light up. It’s deeply savory, the dark-brown bread still retaining a lot of oils and moisture from the seeds inside of it. All of it comes together with a thick, heavy rye flavor; the smell of which is carried up to her nose by the still warm air, rising up off of its crusted surface. Fresh’s fingers squeeze down on the sides of it in delight. It’s just bread. But it’s delicious. Far more so than Mr. Mushroom ever was.

She rips in to take another bite, it’s the best. It feels like the best thing that she’s ever eaten. Fresh wipes her eyes, feeling them grow wet. Again. She owes Jubilee for yet another thing. “Thank you,” Fresh stumbles out, doing her best not to cry as she takes another bite. Her fingers scratch against the black, oven-charred end of the bread.

“It’s just bread, dummy,” says Jubilee. “So? Did you figure anything out?”

Fresh gulps, swallowing a large piece of it that she hadn’t finished chewing yet and looks nervously towards her party-member, who still hasn’t raised their gaze to look at her. Something hurts in her gut as she looks back to the bread in her hands. Her fingernails idly scrape against the charred top. The room is quiet.

The girl looks at the black spot on the bread, scraping against it again with a fingernail, as she watches a bit of it flake off, the black crumbs falling into the mixture of mushroom powder.

Fresh gasps, the idea coming to her immediately. She isn’t sure where it stems from exactly, her own imagination, or the faint sound of water that she hears come in from the outside world. Though she isn’t sure from where that particular sound could stem from. “I need to see an alchemist!”

“Huh?” asks Jubilee, looking over now, after raising their head an inch.

Fresh jumps up to her feet, almost knocking the snail-shell bowl over as she jumps up. “Jubilee! I have an idea!” she exclaims with a wide smile.