Fresh cups her gloved hands, blowing another tuft of ash forward over the crystal marbles on the table. This doesn’t help the already dusty basement become any less of a nose-itching mess, but it does complete the process of enchanting the marbles.

It is late in the morning of the next day. The rains continue and business is just as slow as yesterday, so Fresh has snuck away to do some more crafting downstairs.

Shamrock has volunteered to sweep up the basement and he now stands next to her, broom in hand, watching as the cloud of fire-place ash spreads over the table and onto the floor.

Feeling his gaze, Fresh blinks and looks over to the man with the broom in his hand. “Ah, sorry!” she apologizes. “It’s a messy crafting process,” she explains, scratching her cheek again and smearing a streak of ash onto her face.

Shamrock looks around the basement. “The air is bad.”

“Mm,” nods Fresh, rubbing her forehead on her sleeve and returning to her work. “It’s been like this for a week or two now,” she explains. “I figure it’s because we’ve had the fire on since then, for the coughee.” She sighs. At least when they had the ghost, it was always nice and cold.

Shamrock doesn’t say anything, sweeping the ground at her feet. Fresh stands on one leg and then on the other as he sweeps beneath her, working his way around the basement. By the fireplace, there is even more soot that leads straight to her workbench and Basil’s planters are basically ringed with loose crumbles of dirt as well.

Smiling, satisfied, she sets the small palette of heating elements to the side and pulls over her grimoire, once Shamrock is too far away to accidentally read it. Flipping through the damp pages, she looks for a source of inspiration for some new idea.

“Hey, Shamrock?” she asks, calling across the basement to Shamrock who has worked his way to the back corner by the stairs. “What’s with the other two witches? The ones who live in the south?”

He stops sweeping, looking over her way.

“Are they nice?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder.

“It is daytime,” advises Shamrock, suggesting against this conversation.

“We’re in the basement and nobody’s around,” she sighs, turning back to her book. “I’m just wondering, am I… you know, witchy? Am I doing what witches do?”

“You are,” says Shamrock, reassuring her. There is a rattling and she turns around, looking as he seems to be jamming the handle of the broom into the air-shaft that is dug into the wall.

“Did you ever meet the others?”

“I have,” explains Shamrock.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Are they nice?”

“They are,” he says, pulling the broom back down as some blockage falls down out of the shaft. A clump of straw and feathers and fabric. Fresh narrows her eyes, trying to see what it is from over here. “A nest,” explains Shamrock. Immediately, Fresh feels a familiar draft come back over her as the air circulation returns to the basement, now that the vent is unclogged for the first time in weeks.

“A nest?” asks Fresh, setting down her work to walk over. An air shaft seems like an odd place for birds to be hiding, but then again, she supposes that there are weirder things. But as she looks at the thing, she realizes that this isn’t something that a bird could have made. It’s too tightly packed, too well dressed and there is a little bed, made out of kobold fluff.

A fairy had been living here.

“Shamrock…” she says, worried, already realizing the danger that this could imply. If a fairy had been in the air-shaft, does that mean that somebody had overheard her? That somebody had seen her witch-crafting? This is bad. Very bad. Criticality bad.

Seeing that she’s tensing up, Shamrock places a hand on her shoulder and points at the bedding in the nest.

“It has been forgotten. Look,” he explains, pointing at a few bits of cobweb strung between some of the sticks.

“Are you sure?” she asks. He nods, squeezing her shoulder once before grabbing the nest and setting it to the side. “Why would it be unused?”

He looks at her, grabbing the broom to continue his work, apparently unfazed by the discovery. Fresh, seeing his calm demeanor, feels her own blood begin to settle again, together with the slowing of her heart. “They didn’t come home,” he explains, returning to his sweeping.

This answer, despite bringing her a lot of sudden relief, makes her cry as she walks back to her workbench, as she thinks about a fairy taking the time to make a comfortable nest in a warm, dry, safe place, perhaps with a spark of hope for the future in their eyes as they worked, only to then never return to it one day. The freshly blowing breeze that rushes past her, feeding the fire as it rises up the chimney, does little to cool her nerves.

“They have given up,” explains Shamrock. Fresh sniffles, rubbing her face on her shoulder for the second time now. “Gauden and Spillaholle have seen too much,” says Shamrock. He bends down, setting the broom to the side and grabbing the scoop, as he collects the dirt together into it. “They could not keep the faith.”

Fresh nods, thinking that she understands. If the other witches had had a similar life to hers, then she is accepting if they’ve burnt out from the cruelty of this world and wanted to retreat away from it.

“What about the sect?”

“They serve.”

“Does that mean that everyone is in the south?”

“Those who follow the two, yes,” he explains, rising to his feet.

“What about the rest of you?” asks Fresh, she rubs her arm, not really sure what to say. Having a sect of worshipers is certainly an oddity for her. “What’s so special about me? Is it that Perchta thing?” she asks. “I still don’t know what that is.”

Shamrock dips out the dust into a bin down next to the stairs. “Perchta was the witch of the forgotten.”

“Huh?”

“The outcasts. The misplaced. The wrong.” He taps the scoop against the bin, knocking out the rest of the dust. “The monsters.” He looks over to her. “She led them all on the first wild hunt.”

“What’s that?”

“A time of change,” explains Shamrock. Fresh blinks, not really understanding. But she’s happy that Shamrock has talked to her so much. This might be the most that he’s ever said in the span of five minutes.

“Thanks, Shamrock,” beams Fresh at him before returning to her work, having received some answers at least.

She shakes her head. A nest, huh? Fresh sighs and makes a mental note to ask Veli if he knows anything about this.