“Why is it raining again?!” protests Fresh, pressing her face against the window. “I thought deserts are supposed to be dry?” she asks, turning her head around to look at the others who are walking around, getting ready to call it a night. It’s shortly after Jubilee and herself had gotten back from their excursion. They had told the others about it, just to keep them on their toes. But there really wasn’t a large surprise here, today.

Sure, the thieves’ guild is suspicious and obviously untrustworthy. But that’s not exactly a secret and it never has been. The same goes for the shadowy entity known as Patala, who, as Fresh has come to understand from Jubilee’s explanation, isn’t even the leader of the thieves’ guild, or even a higher up. He’s just an entity that exists within its ranks and nobody has quite ever really known why, who he is or how he got there and so, over the years, his presence has simply become a fact of life.

In meetings of the powerful, he simply makes his way inside and takes a seat. In the gatherings of the lowest ranked newcomers, he slides through the shadows, picking and choosing those he finds particularly promising for whatever prospects he might have in mind. Any attempts to kill or subdue him have been met with failure, given his quite literally shadowy nature. But at the same time, he’s never caused any real harm to the guild and has even brought in considerable profits with his schemes, so he has simply been given free-rein to do what he does. Though, more aptly said, the guild just kind of ignores him and he does his own thing.

Well. That’s how it used to be, anyways. But now, times have been changing. Patala has taken a more prominent role in the guild as the other, more senior members seem to have simply vanished. Of course, being the thieves’ guild, ‘fuckery’ is at play. But nobody could ever prove it and nobody can kill Patala, so it just goes on like this.

“It’s all fucked,” says Jubilee. “Used to be a lot of fun, actually,” they say. “Back in the day. Honor among thieves, you know? But now? Now it’s all fucked,” they repeat, shaking their head. “Just like everywhere else.”

“They do say that nothing is sacred anymore,” sighs Basil. She wasn’t thrilled about the church in the red-light district, but she said it made sense for the church to go where the people needed the most spiritual help. This seemed to ease her mind a bit, at least until Jubilee told her about the literal den of evil beneath it. After that, she just kind of frowned and has been doing so the entire time.

“Everything is going to be alright, Basil,” consoles Fresh, hugging her from behind.

“Sometimes, I wonder about that,” says Basil, looking out at the rain.

Fresh gasps. “You sound like Jubilee!” she exclaims, pointing at Jubilee who stands there, raising an eyebrow at the statement.

“Have I really fallen this low?” asks Basil, lowering her gaze.

“Now you really sound like Jubilee, Basil,” says Fresh, worried. “Come on, let’s go to bed. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“No, no,” says Jubilee. “I think this is the end for old creaky-bones,” says Jubilee. “Let’s let her sleep her final sleep.”

“Jubilee!” scolds Fresh. Basil just sighs and walks away to her bed, not saying anything. The two of them watch her leave. Fresh tilts her head, scratching her cheek. Basil really wasn’t happy about today’s news. She looks back at Jubilee, who was always watching Basil go, perhaps having expected her to partake in their usual banter.

“Basil?” calls Fresh around the corner of Jubilee’s room. “Do you wanna do a sleepover tonight?”

“Not tonight, thank you,” replies the priestess, setting off her glasses as she then vanishes down into her blankets, burying herself beneath the heavy fabric, turning sideways away from them.

“Okay,” says Fresh, a bit let down as she and Jubilee exchange another look and shrug.

Heading to bed, she lies down, covering herself with her big, fluffy, blue blanket, holding it to her face as she breathes in the smell of it. It still smells like it did the day Jubilee made it. That being said, it also smells like adventure, to say it kindly. The blanket has a few leagues behind it as well, just like the rest of them and honestly, she hasn’t exactly washed it yet either.

But then again, if she did, that would get rid of the smell of her friends from the fabric.

Fresh opens her eyes, sitting upright in her bed just as the light goes out.

“I am a creep…” she mutters to herself, looking around the dark room. Her eyes land on the wooden chicken and she quietly yelps to herself, ducking back down into her bed.

Most of the night is rather peaceful, apart from Basil’s tossing and turning which seems to have taken a more severe turn. The priestess is practically spinning around in her bed half of the night and the one time Fresh wakes up to go to the washroom, she sees that Basil is laying upside down. With her feet uncovered, of course.

Frowning, she covers her back up, knowing that it won’t last and goes downstairs. By the time she comes back up a minute later, Basil is already rolled around sideways, the blanket thrown off of the bed entirely now. She scratches her cheek, before covering her back up. Grabbing the lantern from Basil’s nightstand, she bends down and looks beneath her bed, fumbling around to make sure that the foot-demon warding hamsa is still in place where she had hidden it.

Sure, her friends had been messing with her, when they said that they were real things. But the system clearly allowed her to make an item that repelled such creatures, so surely they exist, right?

And if they do, they surely have a right to exist like any other living being. But they don’t have a right to exist in her family’s house. Touching the hamsa, she feels that it is still there and then sets the lantern back onto Basil’s bed, patting it once before dropping back into her own.

The next time she wakes, the morning has come. Fresh lays there, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling as she hears a quiet mumbling coming from next to her bed. Basil is awake and praying. She does this regularly, but Fresh finds that she is often still asleep while the priestess does so and on the rare occasions that she wakes up before Basil, or at the same time, she just kind of lays here quietly and pretends to be asleep, to give the troubled priestess some quiet time to find her peace.

She supposes that all of this must always be particularly hard for Basil, who has always been a deeply spiritual and a ‘proper’ person by society’s standards. Their new life that she has chosen to spend together with them is literally the antithesis of everything she has believed for her entire existence and now, she has been trying to allow both of those stages of her life coincide with another, but there is clearly a schism here that needs to be mended. But this seems to be becoming harder and harder every day for her to reconcile.

A quiet sigh comes from the other side of the stone wall, the beads rattling as Basil sets them back down and gets up, making her bed. Fresh closes her eyes, pretending to be asleep again.

A minute later, the priestess seems to be making her way to the kitchen, but then stops. Her feet walk her way and Fresh feels her blanket being tugged on, before being tucked properly back into place. And then, she turns to walk away and continue with her morning. Fresh frowns, obviously, now she was trapped here. Despite wanting to, she can’t get up now without destroying the warm seal that Basil had made for her.

So she does her best to lay perfectly still and pretend to sleep a while longer. It’s very warm beneath the blanket, especially now that there are no open ends.

It’s like being trapped in a soft, tight hug. She can’t move. It’s like being stuck.

Fresh opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling.

It’s like being stuck in a chimney.

She sits upright, the blanket falling off of herself as she stares across the room with wide, deer-like eyes, as she realizes something. As she realizes, through some entirely random insight given to her by the universe now in this early hour, after a night of sleep.

Back in the west, on the mountain, when they had first inspected their new home from the inside, she and Jubilee had gone into the basement. Jubilee had looked up the chimney.

She blinks, staring around at the room.

There was no way that Jubilee couldn’t have seen the body of the man stuffed in there. There was no way. That means Jubilee saw the body and didn’t say anything. That means they had known that something would happen. Did they know about the ghost? Did they set it up? Fresh would trust Jubilee with her life and then some. If this was true, then surely there’s a good reason for it?

Basil walks back in from downstairs, fumbling with her necklace. The piece of scrap-metal, from her old companion’s armor, that she had tied to a simple string. Seeing her awake, Basil smiles. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” says the priestess, tucking the piece of metal tenderly back beneath her robe.

The only reason that Basil is with them is because she was brought to a low-point in life by a very unfortunate circumstance and had needed a new source of income. One that they so very conveniently had just for her…

Did Jubilee…

No… Fresh blinks, looking up back at Basil.

“What’s up?” asks the priestess. “You look a bit pale,” she asks, walking over and checking her temperature with her wrist. “Hmm… you feel fine. Maybe you just need a few more minutes?” She tilts her head and then nods upwards once. “Scoot.”

“Huh?”

“Scoot,” repeats Basil sternly and Fresh obliges, not wanting to be yelled at. She lays back down and Basil sits down next to her, pulling the blanket back up over her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she lays her head down on top of her chest, closing her eyes as she lets out a long yawn. “You really should wash this thing. It kind of smells,” says the tired priestess. Fresh lets out a nervous laugh.

She doesn’t know what to do. She supposes that she should confront Jubilee, but…

Her fingers grip the blanket.

Things have been going so well. They’ve all become so happy.

As she lays there, thinking about her life, she realizes something else. Thinking back to before her arrival in this world, she had bargained with the fountain for happiness. She hadn’t bargained for ever-lasting happiness. There’s a big difference there.

She was happy for a long time now and maybe… maybe her quota has just about been met?