Ravensdagger_Dreamers_Ten-Tea-Cle_Café

Chapter Twenty-Five — Gift-giving Traditions

Chapter Twenty-Five — Gift-giving Traditions “What’s that?” Dreamer asked.She was in the cafe’s main floor, doing the very first job that Abigail had ever taught her how to do. That was, sweeping the floors with a big broom and a dustpan. Once she’d collected a pan of dust she’d just tip it down her mouth. There were lots of crumbs there, after all.Daphne was sitting nearby, a stack of books on the table before her, and a dirty plate next to a lukewarm cup of tea. She had been doing all sorts of school-related work stuff while Dreamer cleaned up. Daphne wasn’t the only person working. Dreamer’s weird pamphlet clone was in her own corner, frowning hard and sweating as she worked on a pamphlet with a focus that Dreamer didn’t think she could manage herself.She had looked over Pam’s shoulder with an eyetacle, and was very impressed so far.Maybe letting her clones go wild with autonomy was a good idea after all?“Pardon?” Daphne asked.“You said a Winter Solstice, but I don’t know what that is. Is it a kind of cake?”“No, it’s not a kind of cake. Though I suppose there are cakes that are generally eaten around that time. No, the solstice is the shortest day of the year.”Dreamer blinked. “Really? What if I make today shorter, will it become the solstice today?”“Please don’t mess with time,” Daphne said. “It would ruin my scheduling. Also, don’t touch the planet’s rotation speed or tilt. This is the one time of the year where the sun doesn’t wake me up in the morning and I’d like to keep it that way.”“Okay,” Dreamer said.“The Winter solstice is not just the shortest day of the year, it’s also a celebratory day. You get together with family and friends, eat lots of rather unhealthy foods, and trade small gifts.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. She liked this idea. “Can we do that more often than once a year. Every day?”“It wouldn’t be as special if it was daily, would it?” Daphne asked. “Besides, it’s a celebration of a year spent together in each other’s company.”“Okay,” Dreamer said. That made sense.“Will you be participating?” Daphne asked. There was a small lilt to her voice which told her that Daphne was about to do something clever.“I guess. There’s food and fun, yeah?”Daphne nodded. “Oh yes. The entire thing is about closeness. I... well, I look forward to seeing Abigail’s reactions to the gifts I got for her.”Dreamer rubbed at her nose. It was itchy. “Do I get gifts?”“I’ll be sure to get you something nice,” she said. “You don’t usually get anything too extreme for the Solstice. Just something small that you know the other will like.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “I need to get gifts for my friends, right?”“That would be very nice of you,” Daphne said.Dreamer frowned. She didn’t know what to get her friends. Most of them probably wouldn’t appreciate sprouting tentacles. Hugs were nice, but a hug was a... thing, not a thing-thing. Giving them good dreams would be hit-or-miss. Her experiments with Abigail suggested that the dreams Dreamer thought were good didn’t feel good to Abigail.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.“Hmm,” Dreamer hmmed.“Do you need help?” Daphne asked.“Help with what?”Daphne laughed. She turned a page in one of her schoolbooks, her attention more on the books than on Dreamer. “With the gifts. It’s not always easy to pick out the right gift for someone, you know.”Dreamer agreed. She’d been thinking about it for nearly a whole minute, and she had nothing. That was basically forever. “Yeah. What can I give Abigail?”“Well, that depends. Different gifts can mean different things.”Dreamer slumped. There were hidden meanings too? Dreamer didn’t like symbolism, it made things silly. And sub-text was complicated. That’s why she just took everything she saw in dreams literally. It made things simple. “Oh! Maybe I can look at what Abigail dreams of for ideas?”“That’s... ah, an option,” Daphne says.“Usually she has weird dreams though. Sometimes you’re in them and not wearing anything, it’s very strange.”Daphne choked, because she was a human and they weren’t made very well, especially if they could mess up breathing, something they had to do to stay alive. “M-maybe not something from Abigail’s dreams, then,” she said.“Well, what do I get her, then?” Dreamer asked.“Abigail will be hard to buy for. I think most of her big dreams have been, to some degree, accomplished,” Daphne said. “But I think that no matter what you get her, she’ll be quite happy. Maybe something small and cute?”“Like a smaller me?” Dreamer asked. She could do that.“I was thinking more a plush, something Abigail and put on her bed to remind her of this next Winter Solstice,” Daphne said. She tapped the back of a pen against her lower lip. “Actually, that’s an excellent idea, I’m going to see if I can’t get some small plushies for a few of the girls I know. It’s a simple and elegant gift.”Dreamer liked the idea. A small, soft Dreamer plush, with little tentacles. Abigail could hug it if Dreamer wasn’t around for hugs (Which was kind of silly, since Dreamer had tentacles around Abigail’s soul that would tell her if Abigail was in the mood for a hug so that Dreamer could come and give her one).Yes, it was a nice idea.“Where do you get plushies from?” Dreamer asked.“A store, I suppose,” Daphne said. “There used to be a city to the north that had a great artisan for that kind of thing, but she passed away. Too bad.” Daphne bent over her work again, and started focusing more on that while Dreamer thought.She thought really hard.Abigail was the best, so she deserved the best, which meant...“I’ll be right back,” Dreamer said before she leaned the broom against the nearest wall and walked out.She needed a few things. First and foremost, a police booth.

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Chapter Twenty-Six — Late Night Time Travel

Chapter Twenty-Six — Late Night Time Travel Charlotte glanced up when something struck her window. A pebble? She abandoned her homework-easy to do since she wasn’t terribly fond of it to begin with-and walked over to the window. A quick flick of the clasp and she tugged the wooden frame up so that she could stick her head outside.The dorm was nice, in that it was a clean and well-maintained building in one of the more patrolled areas of Five Peaks. Still, the rooms were small, pretty expensive, and they weren’t far enough from the all-male dorm for Charlotte’s liking.She liked a bit of flirting, but not so early. She was very ready to give some poor starry-eyed idiot an earful about hitting the wrong window when she noticed who was waiting for her below.“Dreamer?”“Hello Charlotte,” Dreamer said. She waved one of her little hands and a few tentacles up at Charlotte. “I need help.”Charlotte glanced back into her room, then back out. “Okay. Is this the kind of help that will require me to be wearing pants?”Dreamer thought about it, which was enough of a yes for Charlotte to step back and shuck off her pyjamas.As soon as she had both of her favourite boots on, she snuffed her light and then went back to the window while grabbing her trusty whip and her short sword. She grabbed Web-her spider familiar-from her terrarium and let the spider sneak into the crevice at the front of her shirt. Then she sat on the windowsill and waved Dreamer closer. “Can you grab me, carefully, then lower me down to the ground next to you... carefully?”Dreamer nodded, and soon little rifts opened in thin air. A tentacle grabbed Charlotte around the waist and another couple grabbed her legs and arms. Had a boy grabbed her this way she’d have added her handprint to his face in a permanent fashion.She was passed from tentacle to tentacle until she was let go, both feet on the ground. She started to strap her sword to her belt. “Alright, so what’s going on?”Dreamer nodded. “It’s very serious,” she said. “I want to get a gift for Abigail.”Charlotte paused. Had she overreacted, with the sword and all?“But the person who makes the gift I want to get is dead, so I need to go to the past to get the gift before they die.”Charlotte continued to strap her sword on while congratulating herself on her foresight. “And how exactly are you planning on going into the past?”“That’s the easy part,” Dreamer said. “I could go there with some timetacles, but when I did, I couldn’t figure things out, so this time I want you to help.”“That sounds both fun and very dangerous. More dangerous than fun though,” Charlotte said.Dreamer nodded, then she placed her hand in Charlotte’s and pointed down the road. “I made a thing.”Charlotte grinned. “Well then, show me this thing you made.”Dreamer guided her by the hand all the way to an alley not too far from the cafe. Fortunately, the cafe wasn’t all that far from her dorm. The alley was mostly empty, save for a few tin trash cans, some discarded papers, and an Inquisition signalling box.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.The box was a good three meters tall, with frosted windows and a label on the top that read INQUISITION. “What’s that doing here?” Charlotte asked as they approached the box. It was a dull red, with a few instructions on the door for how to use the magical communication device built into it.“This is a box,” Dreamer said. “With doors. I needed a place to put my stuff to make this a thing.”“How very enlightening,” Charlotte said.Dreamer stepped up to it, then tapped the box with her hands. “This is the Tentacles and Relative Dimensions in Space machine,” she said.“A mouthful,” Charlotte said.Dreamer shrugged, then opened the door.Charlotte stared. She walked up to the box, then into it, then back out. She went around, poking at the box before stepping back in front of it. “It’s smaller on the inside,” she said.“Yeah, my stuff’s pretty big, so I made the inside smaller,” Dreamer admitted.“Alright, so what’s the idea?” Charlotte asked.“We go to the past, then we find the person I’m looking for, and then we get the plushie I want.”“A plushie?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer nodded. “Yeah, there's a plushie-maker at... Daphne said to the north.”“We’re going back in time to go visit a dead plushie maker so that you can get a gift for Abigail?” Charlotte asked.“For the Winter Solstice,” Dreamer confirmed. “Is that okay?”“Oh, it’s more than okay, that’s brilliant,” Charlotte said. “I’m in, as long as you can promise me that I’ll be more or less fine.”Dreamer nodded. “More or less is something I can do. Now get in the box.”“You’re not going to be in it?” Charlotte asked.“I can be if you want,” Dreamer said.“It’ll be my first time doing time travel, I think it’d be a little more comfortable with someone’s hand to hold along the way,” Charlotte said.Dreamer shrugged, then extended her hand to Charlotte. They squeezed into the police box, then Dreamer closed the door. “Shut all of your eyes. And don’t look outside of the box. Time’s not like physics, it’s a lot more angry about stuff doing things it doesn’t like.”“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charlotte said.Charlotte wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Maybe a count-down, or at least Dreamer announcing that they were off, somehow. She wasn’t expecting the box to start spinning around like a top while infernal screeching sounded out, only partially muffled by the wooden walls around her.She grit her teeth and worked hard to keep her lunch in, even as Dreamer hummed while bouncing off every wall inside of the box.It ended with a lurch and a bang, and suddenly the world stilled.“We’re here,” Dreamer said.“Really?” Charlotte asked. She picked herself off the floor, feeling every new bump and bruise.The door opened, and she found herself in the morning of a brand new day, the sun shining, the city alive, and the world seeming as normal as ever, or at least what she could see of the world from the alley.“We’re eight months ago,” Dreamer said. “Let’s go?”

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Chapter Twenty-Seven — Little Worries

Chapter Twenty-Seven — Little Worries “So how are we going to get to the village to the north?” Charlotte asked. She adjusted her belt, then shivered a little. For all that it was early morning, there was a bit of a chill to the air. The people she saw walking by had jackets on, and seemed better prepared for the weather than she was.Then again, if it was a few months away from the Winter Solstice, and then they moved back eight months, then they were technically back to one of the coldest times of the year. She chuckled at the strangeness of it all.“We don’t want to make too much of a fuss,” Dreamer said.“Ah, because we’d be noticed and then that would break causality?” Charlotte said. “You might make it so that Abigail never summons you, and then you wouldn’t be on this planet to come back to this time, thereby creating a paradox.”“What?” Dreamer asked. “No, I’m not worried about that stuff. I’m worried about the time monsters. Come on, let’s go.”“Time monsters?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer looked genuinely annoyed. “Yeah. When you eat them, then uneat themselves. It’s really annoying.”“You’re not worried about paradoxes and causality?”Dreamer sniffed. “As if someone could undo me meeting Abigail and the fun I had after. No, that’s happened to me already, so it’s happened, that’s all. No one’s going to unhappen it.”“Um,” Charlotte said. “Okay?”“Yes,” Dreamer agreed.Dreamer wiggled her fingers Charlotte’s way, and so the older girl grabbed Dreamer’s hand and walked out onto the street with her. “Alright, if we’re heading out the old fashioned way, and we don’t want to attract the attention of time monsters-which I really, really don’t-then we’re going to need to grab a couple of things.”“What things?” Dreamer asked.“Just... well, I’ll want a coat. And maybe some gold to make it to the town by carriage.”They walked down the street, hand-in-hand, and Charlotte felt oddly... misplaced. Something was subtly different about the city. A city that she walked through every day, and that she knew fairly well.Had it changed that much in eight months?She glanced at the carriages rumbling down the street, at the people walking in little groups, sometimes exhaling hot enough that puffy steam escaped with their breath. The sky was a nice blue, with fat clouds hanging above and a few wintery birds darting about.Charlotte couldn’t pin what made her antsy.“Are you okay?” Dreamer asked.“Yeah, yeah, it’s just... Five Peaks feels different.”“That’s because it is,” Dreamer said with Dreamer-like certainty.“You mean because this is in the past?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer shook her head. “It’s not just that. There’s a lot of other things you might be feeling. You’re good at feeling things, right?”“I guess.”“You’re not feeling me in the city, because I’m not here yet. In our time I’m part of the city. I had time to sink my tentacles all over. In this time, the people with the nice hats are doing something similar. Watching for things like me, scanning and poking and sniffing at the air. But because they use big magics to do that, it stains the city.”The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.“So I’m not looking for something new, but the lack of something that was there before, and that’s here... now in this time,” Charlotte said. She stood taller and breathed deep. There was something of a stink to the air. “Well, that’s something.”“It’s not going to be a problem on this adventure,” Dreamer said. “But my metatentacles are poking at it because it might be good foreshadowing for stuff later.”“Uh,” Charlotte said.Dreamer smiled up at her. “Don’t worry about it.”Charlotte decided to worry about it.Unfortunately, other than worrying about it, there really wasn’t much she could do. So they walked hand-in-hand, across the city and to one of the carriage stations on the edge. “I don’t have a lot on me,” Charlotte said, her breath making little puffs before her as she spoke. “But it should be enough for a carriage to get us over to... wherever.”“You need a jacket,” Dreamer said. “You’re going to get all sick and cold.”“Well, I think I’m well on my way to being quite cold,” Charlotte said. “I’m positively perky here. The boys at the Academy would love to chat with me right now.”“What’s that mean?” Dreamer asked.Charlotte eyed the girl next to her. “How old are you?”“I’m several eons old,” Dreamer said. “I was there when time started.”“Well, you look like you’re twelve, so maybe ask again when you’re several dozen eons old and I’ll tell you,” Charlotte said.The station they were near had a yard where horses were being moved in and out of large stables while carriages were being hitched. Dreamer walked ahead of Charlotte and dragged her behind one of the stables where no one was around.“What’s... oh,” Charlotte began, but then the air rent and tentacles poured out of nothing and wrapped themselves around Charlotte. She would have complained, but they were rather warm.Then the tentacles left, and Charlotte found herself wearing a long jacket, the sort of leathery thing she saw inquisitors wearing, though done up in a deep purple instead. “Huh,” she said.Dreamer nodded, then summoned a coat for herself. “It’s actually just a lot of tentacles shaped like a coat,” she explained.“Thanks Dreamer, you’re a sweetheart,” Charlotte said. She rubbed Dreamer’s head, because she knew the girl liked that kind of thing, then gestured back towards the street. “Let’s get a ride, yeah?”Dreamer nodded, and the pair of them walked back out from behind the stables.Charlotte flagged down a man loading a cart, asking him where she had to go to secure a ride, then walked over to a little building where a clerk was filing papers behind a desk.It took a few coins and a few minutes, but soon enough they had two tickets out of Five Peaks, and towards the scenic and quiet town of Six Hills.

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