Fresh sighs, sitting up on the roof of the house. It’s not exactly a safe place to be, given the height and also the sleekness of it, because of all of the winter snow and ice. But she’s securely fastened with a rope that Shamrock is holding onto down below.

She looks around at the destruction. It’s torn apart, it looks like someone literally blasted this section of the roof away from the inside with a spell. Though, she really couldn’t say why the previous owner would have done that?

“Here’s another one coming up,” calls Basil from down below. Fresh turns her head, looking down at the hole. They’ve set up a little system, similar to the bucket and pulley system they had on the roof in the east in order to get wood and supplies up here for her to work with. Fresh leans over, carefully pulling up the board from the harness.

They’re broke.

Not the boards. But them. Their purchase of this house had essentially cost them every last coin that they had. Even dinner is off the table, in every sense of the phrase. These materials that they’re patching up the roof with now, they had been able to buy by selling some crafting materials that she had still had stored inside of her inventory. But that really only covered the cost of the wood and some nails. Her plan is to board the hole back closed and then to lay some crystal-drakonium from her inventory over it, to keep the rain and snow from dripping down through the fresh wood. A real, extensive repair is going to have to wait until they’ve secured some funds again. But right now, the priority is to stop their new home from falling any further apart than it already has.

Fresh holds onto the rope for her life as Shamrock and Basil slowly lower her back down to the second floor.

“Good work,” says Basil, grabbing her as she comes down, starting to untie the rope from around her waist.

“Thanks,” sighs Fresh, rubbing her face with the inside of her elbow. She’s cold, her fingers and face are icy from working up on the roof for hours and she’s hungry and tired. All in all, it’s not a great time right now.

Fresh lifts her eyes, looking up at the patched and closed ceiling and lets out a satisfied, quick sigh, seeing that it’s now tightly sealed and that neither a single flake of snow or drop of icy water finds its way down through the cracks anymore.

There’s a loud scraping sound that catches her attention. Fresh looks at Shamrock who is rubbing his gauntlets together very quickly for a moment. He extends his hands out to her. Fresh beams, placing her icy digits into his warmed palms.

“Thanks, guys,” she says, letting out a loud yawn as she feels a warmth return to her hands and body.

“FUCK OFF!” barks Jubilee.

“PAKEW!” replies the spriggan, furiously waving its stubby arms at Jubilee, the giant leaf sprouting out of its head bouncing from side to side as Jubilee shoves the little creature away again. They haven’t been able to get rid of it, despite every attempt. It always just reappears every time, a few minutes later when they aren’t looking.

Even the one time Jubilee had killed it, seeming deeply pleased with themselves, despite Fresh’s ugly crying over the dead spriggan. It simply popped back up out of the basement a few minutes later.

Fresh steps down into the library on the second floor. “Roof’s done, Jubilee,” she says.

“Good. Build a cage next,” they say, pushing the spriggan away again as it keeps trying to get into the corner that Jubilee has made ‘bed-ready’. In the back section of the library, there’s a little nook free from plants and overgrowth, behind many shelves. It kind of reminds Fresh of a mattress-cave, but it’s made out of bookshelves.

Thankfully, they still have a few of her crystal-drakonium mattresses in her inventory, so at least they won’t be sleeping on the floor. The spriggan seems to have taken a liking to this new cozy corner however and seems insistent on claiming it for itself.

“Even the fucking ghost-house was better than this,” says Jubilee. “That was a one and done deal. But this little shit won’t-” They grab the spriggan, throwing it out again. “- FUCK OFF!”

Jubilee snaps their fingers and a shard of glass shoots out, impaling the spriggan and killing it right away.

“JUBILEE!” cries Fresh. “Stop killing things in our house!”

“I’ll kill as many fucking things in our house as I deem necessary!” they snap back her way. “When I find out where that little shit keeps coming from…” they stop for a second, thinking. “Hey, did you get experience points for that one?”

“Uh…” Fresh looks around for a menu. But there isn’t one. “No. I think the dragon ate them.”

“Very funny,” sighs Jubilee. “Great. I was gonna say that we should find out where it keeps coming from and then just build some kind of non-stop murder-chamber.”

Basil shakes her head, walking past Fresh. “That’s pretty dark, even for you,” remarks the priestess.

“You kidding?” asks Jubilee. “Imagine. A machine that produces infinite experience points at home.”

“It would be life-changing,” laughs Basil. “But I think we’re doing fine as is. Though, we really could afford to level-up more.” She covers her stomach with her hand, as if feeling that Jubilee was about to poke it as she walked past them to inspect the book-cave.

Fresh nods. They’ve certainly neglected dungeoneering and leveling-up to an extent for a long time now. Their focus has been their business and honestly, for all intents and purposes in that regard, they’re well-suited enough already.

Though, then again, they did kill a dragon and clear a whole dungeon, so do they really need to get any stronger?

“We’ll just build a cage then,” says Jubilee. “If we lock it up, it won’t keep coming back.”

“I don’t see the harm in it being here,” remarks Basil.

“You don’t see the harm in having a monster in our house?” asks Jubilee skeptically. The three of them turn to look at Shamrock, who is also coming down the stairs, having been moving away the old bed upstairs that nobody wanted to use. Jubilee looks back towards Basil. “He doesn’t count.”

“It’s just a spriggan,” says Basil. “Besides, there’s clearly some magical force keeping it here,” notes the priestess. “Maybe it isn’t something we should be playing with? There’s a higher power at work here.”

“We paid one-hundred and fifty thousand Obols for this place. Not one of those was for a spriggan,” replies Jubilee, raising an eyebrow. “The only higher power I’m seeing is mercantilism gone wrong.”

“Just consider it a…” Basil thinks for a moment. “- a quirk.”

“A quirk?” asks Jubilee incredulously.

“A quirk,” replies Basil, crawling into the book-cave. “Like the house in the north and how it was always drafty. Or how in the west there was a ghost. Or how in the east we had the crabs.”

“One of those things is not like the others,” notes Jubilee.

Basil shakes her head. “It’s just what it is.”

“It shouldn’t be,” says Jubilee.

“PAKEW!” protests the spriggan angrily as it comes back up the spiral staircase from downstairs, running past Fresh on its stubby legs towards their sleeping area. Jubilee’s eye twitches and they step back, grabbing a small shelf and sliding it to the side, closing the ‘cave’ off from the outside world.

Fresh and Shamrock, both locked out, stare at each other for a moment and then look back at the spriggan that is running back and forth around the wall of shelves, trying to find a way inside to Jubilee and Basil.

Fresh sits down in the bath, floating on her back. It turns out that whoever had lived here installed another door in this room, off to the side, behind a crystal-cluster, that led to the facilities of the building.

The water is really something though. It’s hot, just on the cusp of being too hot. So floating in it brings a deep sense of relaxation to her cold and tense muscles. As she floats there on her back, noticing how soft the mineral water makes her skin feel, Fresh is sure that she can feel something pop in her back simply through the loosening of her body.

She lets out a long sigh, closing her eyes, as she feels the water all around herself. She isn’t sure if she falls asleep exactly, but she finds herself floating in a dark place.

A loud yawn reverberates out through the water that she finds herself floating inside of. Fresh looks around, recognizing the sound as that of her patron, the fountain.

“Hey,” says Fresh. “Long time no see.”

The currents shift all around her and she feels her body moving. “Life is busy, what can I say?” replies the fountain.

“Listen, uh, I know this is kind of random,” starts Fresh, wanting to say something before the fountain lets her know why she’s here. “But I wanted to say thanks,” she says. “It’s been really nice lately,” she says. “I didn’t know life could be this nice.”

“See?” asks the sleepy voice. “And you doubted me.”

“I still do,” she says. “I’m not happy about how you made me curse the hero and how you keep threatening me and my friends. You’re really suspicious and honestly, probably evil.”

“But?” asks the water.

Fresh frowns, looking to the side. She’s never really seen the fountain, having only ever heard its voice. Or maybe this, ALL of this, is the fountain? “But… I’m happy now.”

“Aaaah! There it is,” says a coy voice. “And?”

Fresh crosses her arms, or at least tries to. She doesn’t really have a body. “And… I want to know, is this going to last? Or is this just… a ‘for now’ thing?”

The water swirls around her, spinning her around and around in a circle, like a child spinning a doll that they’re playing with.

“After your little betrayal with the crystal in the west, maybe it should have stopped a long time ago?” suggests the fountain. “I don’t need employees who I can’t trust.”

“As if you didn’t set that up!” argues Fresh, leaning in towards the darkness. “You’re manipulative and mean!”

“But?” it asks knowingly.

Fresh frowns, wanting to yell. But.

She’s happy.

Whatever this life of hers has turned out to be, whatever she’s had to do to get here, she clearly feels that the ends have justified the means. She’s happy, her family is happy, they’re warm and safe and sort-of-kind-of fed and she’s grateful for that, even to something that has made her do so many terrible things for reasons that she doesn’t understand.

“I thought so,” says the fountain, as if reading her thoughts and the expression on her unseen face.

“I just want to live this life, forever,” says Fresh.

“That’s awfully selfish of you, isn’t it?” asks the fountain. “Is that what they want?” it asks. “Your friends?” Fresh floats there, listening to the voice echoing all around her. “Have you ever considered something?” asks the fountain and Fresh looks up towards the edges of the distant water, where, in her faintest imaginations, she’s sure that she can see the silhouette of something, someone, floating there, adrift in the black-water. “That maybe, they’re only your friends because I’m making them be?” it asks. “Maybe I’m forcing them? Like I made you, with the apple, with the hero?”

Her eyes open wide.

“Maybe it’s all just…” A soft voice whispers into her left ear, as if it were right next to her. “- a dream.”

Fresh sits upright, gasping for air, clutching her chest as she looks around herself, at her sleeping friends who are all laid out next to herself. They’re laying in the library, in their corner, asleep and outside of the small four walls of the little nook they’ve made for themselves, she hears two tiny feet, running around back and forth.