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Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café
Annotation
Dreamer (and friends) open a little café on one of the quieter streets of Five Peaks. There they meet new friends, serve some tea to strangers, and tear open rifts in reality to solve mundane life problems.
These are the stories of the Ten-Tea-Cle Café!
[A Totally Official crossover between Love Crafted and: Azarinth Healer, Calamitous Bob, Vigor Mortis, Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, and many more!]
Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café
Prologue — Dreamer’s Ten'tea'cle Café
Chapter One — Rub a Dub Dub
Chapter Two — The Cleanest Bun in the Buniverse
Chapter Three — A Bunny-Girl Did It
Chapter Four — Kitty Cat
Chapter Five — Purrniture Purrchases
Chapter Six — Eating Tea People Place
Chapter Seven — Pretty Pretty Flowers
Chapter Eight — Poor Saps
Chapter Nine — Quiet Opening
Chapter Ten — Forbidden Things and Why You Should do Them
Chapter Eleven — A Simple Plan
Chapter Twelve — Bunch’a Brats
Chapter Thirteen — Big Sister Talk
Chapter Fourteen — Domo Arigato
Chapter Fifteen — Existentialism, More or Less
Chapter Sixteen — God-ssips
Chapter Seventeen — Mango Cake
Chapter Eighteen — Finding Solutions
Chapter Nineteen — The Pursuit of Reason
Chapter Twenty — Magical Girls
Chapter Twenty-One — Secret Pamphlet Making Technique: Long Horizontal Fold!
Chapter Twenty-Two — Close Physical Affection of the Third Kind
Chapter Twenty-Three — About Hugs
Chapter Twenty-Four — Vim and Vigor
Chapter Twenty-Five — Gift-giving Traditions
Chapter Twenty-Six — Late Night Time Travel
Chapter Twenty-Seven — Little Worries
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Numero
Chapter Twenty-Nine — North Hill
Chapter Thirty — Sneaky Scary Tentacles Send Shivers Down Your Mind
Chapter Thirty-One — Plushie Shop!
Chapter Thirty-Two — Shedding Some Light
Chapter Thirty-Three — A Customer-Friendly Experience
Chapter Thirty-Four — Gerard the Very Very Sane Plushie-Maker
Chapter Thirty-Five — A Bit Silly
Chapter Thirty-Six — Back to the Future’s Past
Chapter Thirty-Seven — Cult
Chapter Thirty-Eight — Solstice
Chapter Thirty-Nine — RacerGirl
Chapter Forty — A Visitor
Chapter Forty-One — Death
Chapter Forty-Two — The Inspector
Chapter Forty-Three — The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer)
Chapter Forty-Four — GWNN
Dreamer's Ten-Tea-Cle Café
Prologue — Dreamer’s Ten'tea'cle Café
Dreamer’s Ten'tea'cle Café Dreamer—who was currently holding onto both Abigail and Daphne by means of her hand grasping one of Abigail’s and a tentacle around Daphne’s ankle—stared up at the building before her with her mouth agape and her eyes roaming across the old red brickwork.It wasn’t all that impressive to look at. She knew this because she was an expert at human buildings, having eaten several. “I don’t get it,” she admitted.It was just a normal building. The front had a pair of wide and tall windows next to a little door. There was a small fence-like thing around the bottom of the window with rotting plants in it. The door had an awning above it, with a torn-up tarp that used to be red and white but was now water stained and fading.“It needs a little bit of love,” Abigail said.Dreamer’s confusion only grew. Was Abigail going to make love to a building? That seemed very unsanitary, and she knew the things Abigail and Daphne got up to.“What’s it for?” Dreamer asked. If Abigail wanted to be all depraved and stuff, she didn’t care, as long as Abigail remembered that Dreamer was the one Abigail had to love the most.“Do you know what a café is?” Daphne asked. She hooked a lock of her blond hair behind one ear and smiled down at Dreamer, who shook her head. “A café is a shop that sells food.”Dreamer liked the idea so far. “This place doesn’t look like it’s selling any food now,” she said. Just to make sure, she snuck a few tentacles through the walls of this reality, then out the other side into the café. Other than a few mice, there wasn’t anything worth eating.She, of course, speared the mice through and yoinked them screaming and chittering into the void between realities, so she could snack on them later.“So what are we doing here then?” Dreamer asked.Abigail laughed, and Dreamer turned to look up to her. Abigail laughs were precious, so as soon as they were out of the immediate vicinity, she snatched the laugh out of the air and saved it for later. “Daph and I were talking, and the apothecary business… I don’t know if it’s what I want to do forever. This place actually belongs to Daphne’s family, and there’s a whole second floor we can use.”Dreamer caught on. “We’re moving?” she asked.Abigail let go of Dreamer’s hand, then squatted down next to Dreamer, the hem of her skirt brushing against the road. “Maybe. We’ll look around inside first. It might be nice to have a little shop all of our own. I’m a decent baker, you know.”Dreamer nodded. Abigail was! She especially liked it when Abigail baked and she got to help by eating the utensils when they became dirty.She never did understand how burning some things made them grow bigger, and taste better too. Tricksy human magic. “Alright,” Dreamer agreed.“You don’t mind?” Abigail asked.“Mind what?” Dreamer asked.“Moving out, coming to live here instead of living at home?”Dreamer shrugged. She’d lived next to dying stars and within the comforting embrace of black holes. Her homes, as many as they had been over the aeons, never lasted eternally. She was okay with moving on. Though her current home was the nicest. It had an Abigail, but this new home would have an Abigail too, and the same one, no less!Abigail was conveniently portable like that.“Well, let’s check it out,” Daphne said. The three of them walked over to the front, Dreamer recapturing Abigail’s hand when she stood back up and finished brushing off her skirt. Daphne started to fiddle within her skirt, then she pulled out a ring with a bunch of keys linked to it. “It’s one of these,” she said as she tried the lock.Dreamer got bored three keys later and touched the keyhole.Locks were very complex little mechanisms that clever humans came up with to keep nosy people out of their things. All someone had to do was push up a bunch of little levers, then turn the entire mechanism to move back a bolt. Two things that were very easy to do if one had a sufficient number of small tentacles.“Unlocked,” Dreamer said.“Where did you learn to do that?” Daphne asked as she pushed the door open with one hand. It squealed on rusty hinges, and a small bell above clinked pitifully.“You remember that one shop you and Abigail went to without me once?” Dreamer asked as they stepped in. It was very dusty. “The one where you both blushed a lot and where you bought that magic wand you hide in the box behind the picture frame in your office?”Neither Abigail nor Daphne said anything, so Dreamer went on.“When you were in there and I was checking to make sure you were okay, I discovered they had metal underwear with locks on them, so I wanted to see what was in them, but I didn’t want to just eat them because Abigail said I’m not allowed to eat that sort of thing, so I had to figure out the lock.”Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.Dreamer looked back when her arm tugged on Abigail’s. Abigail wasn’t moving anymore, and her face was very red. Daphne’s wasn’t far behind.“Are you both sick, or did I say one of those red-face things again?” Dreamer asked.“N-nevermind that,” Abigail said. “Can you just… forget all about that?”Dreamer considered it, then she shrugged. It wasn’t very important. So she jabbed a tentacle into her mind, grabbed that memory, and flung it away. She blinked a few times. “What now?” she asked.“Well, ah, this looks… cleanable?” Abigail asked as she looked about.The front room of the café was quite long; the rear section rose up three steps to a landing that was split in half by a counter with some racks and tables and shelves behind it. There was a lot of empty space, and a single broken table against one wall with a chair next to it. The air was dusty, with thick dust bunnies floating around and gathering into bigger lumps with the wind slipping in from the open door.Daphne sneezed a very Daphne sort of sneeze, all quiet and lady-like, her little lace handkerchief fluttering about. “We’ll need to clean the place to truly see its potential.”“It doesn’t seem that bad,” Abigail said. “There’s lots of room. We can set out at least four tables here. Maybe more if we really squeeze them in.”“You might want to limit the number of tables. That’ll lower the number of clients that’ll wait around. We don’t want to have more clients in the shop than we can care for at any one time,” Daphne said.“That sounds fair. Can we check the kitchen?” Abigail asked.They climbed up the back, where the counter blocked Dreamer’s view into the kitchen space. Once she slid some tentacles out from under her dress to raise her up, she could see that the part of the counter at the top didn’t have much behind it.“Just room for the till and maybe a few smaller machines,” Abigail muttered. “We can likely have a display here, for cakes and pastries.”“That’s a good idea,” Daphne said. She pointed to a door at the rear. “That’s the kitchen. Unless you feel like vaulting the counter?”Abigail giggled. “I wish. Come on, let’s check it out.”The kitchen door was locked. Daphne wiggled the handle, then let go and turned to Dreamer.Dreamer stared back. “What?”“Could you unlock it?” Daphne asked.Dreamer blinked. “I don’t know how to do that.”“But… you unlocked the front door.”“I did?” Dreamer asked. She couldn’t remember that.Abigail smacked herself in the face. Something she did sometimes. “I told her to forget how to do that,” she said. “Just… use the keys.”“What did I forget?” Dreamer asked. She couldn’t remember ever forgetting anything.“Nevermind,” Abigail said. Then she gave Dreamer celebratory pats, likely to congratulate her on her ability not to forget things.The kitchen was even dustier than the rest of the place, with pots and pans and all sorts of things laying around. There was a big oven at the rear, made of stacked stones with cracked cement between them, and a few stoves that looked like they were powered by some of that magic that humans like Abigail liked using.“Well, this has... potential,” Abigail said as she looked around.“It’s very dirty,” Dreamer pointed out.“It’s a bit dirty,” Abigail agreed. “Should we check out the upstairs?”“That sounds like a good idea,” Daphne said.To get upstairs they first had to go outside, then up a rickety staircase and into a small home on the second floor. It was a nice enough place, though it lacked all the stuff that made home home. None of Abigail’s books, none of Dreamer’s extra dresses. No painting of Abigail and Daphne on the walls. Still, it was a bigger place, if Dreamer didn’t count the extra space she’d shoved into their other home. Two bedrooms, a small kitchen and dining area, a much bigger washroom than they had at home.“You can have your own bedroom,” Abigail said.“But then where will you sleep?” Dreamer asked.Abigail laughed and pulled Dreamer into a side hug. “I like it,” she said. “There’s a nice view of the street, and it’s not too far from Daphne’s place. We just need to clean the tea shop up a bit and it’ll be perfect.”Dreamer nodded. “I can do that,” she said.Abigail eyed her. “Really?”Dreamer was always happy to help Abigail. “Yeah, I’m sure I can find a way to clean the place up.”“Well, I won’t say no to a bit of help,” Abigail said. She grinned down at Dreamer, who decided that she’d help more than just a bit.
* * *
Chapter One — Rub a Dub Dub
Chapter One — Rub a Dub Dub Crossover: Cinnamon Bun by RavensDagger Dreamer was out and about with Abigail. Even after being proclaimed Empress of Everything (by Dreamer), Abigail still insisted on going to school and working hard doing stuff for mortal money. Dreamer didn’t get it, but she wasn’t going to stop Abigail from having her fun.Besides, school was where Abigail had her friends, like Charlotte and Daphne, and Abigail liked learning things.The teachers were all very nice to Abigail ever since Dreamer threatened to consume their planet if anyone bothered her. The Inquisition people with the hats ran about and tried to make sure things worked out so that there was as little planet-eating as possible.Anyway, Dreamer was with Abigail, which didn’t mean that she was only with Abigail.You had to be really weak to only be in one place at a time.Dreamer looked around the café. It was certainly a place. A geographical location....She didn’t know what she was doing there, but she figured that she might as well do something while she was there. After all, Abigail had plans for the place. “She mentioned cleaning it up,” Dreamer muttered.She reached over to one of the tables and swiped a finger across it. It came back covered in grey dust.“Yup, it’s dirty in here,” Dreamer said before sticking her finger in her mouth.She frowned. She couldn’t remember ever actually cleaning anything before. Sometimes Abigail would sniff her and decide that she needed a bath. Did that count?Dreamer looked around the room. It wouldn’t be too hard to fill the entire café with water. Then all she’d need was a lot of soap and a rubber ducky.Did she need more than one rubber ducky? When she took a bath there was only one that Abigail set in the water next to her, but that was one bathtub of water. Were the number of rubber duckies meant to be proportional to the amount of water used?She stared around her. How many rubber duckies in volume was a café anyway?Dreamer rubbed the underside of her chin with a tentacle. Maybe she could ask for help?She blinked her eyes, those on the body that was currently with Abigail and Daphne and Charlotte. The three of them were sitting at the back of one of their classes, murmuring to each other while working on something. “Hey,” she said.All three turned to her. “Yes, Dreamer?” Abigail asked.“How many rubber duckies is a room?”“... What?”Dreamer sighed. “Nevermind.”She’d have to figure it out herself. Or maybe she could ask someone else? Dreamer clapped her tentacles. She had an excellent idea.When Abigail needed help taking over the planet and being accepted to her academy, she summoned Dreamer. Dreamer could do the same thing! It was a simple and elegant solution, and nothing could go wrong with it.She wondered where, exactly, to do the summoning, then shrugged and moved out of the café and up to the second floor. It was probably best to do it in the living room. She wanted to summon something alive, after all.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.Dreamer didn’t know much about magic, so when it came time to make a summoning circle, she just got some long, ropey tentacles to form a circle on the floor. She stared at it. It was mostly round, which was a good start.“Oh, right,” she muttered. She wanted something for cleaning.She walked around and searched under the sinks, the place which was usually the dirtiest in the house, and where mortals put their cleaning stuff for some unfathomable reason.After grabbing a tentacleful of cleaning stuff she returned to her summoning circle and placed them here and there. Some soap in one lumpy side, a bit of bleach in the other, a moldy sponge nearer to the middle.It didn’t look right.Dreamer huffed and tried to think about what was missing, then it hit her! Magic, Abigail had said, was about balance and symbolism.She wasn’t home, and didn’t feel like going all the way back, so she sent some tentacles searching through the homes in the neighbourhood until she found what she needed.First, she found a rubber ducky. But it wasn’t a ducky so much as a rubber bunny. It was close enough, she figured, and she did steal it from someone's bath. They screamed a lot when her tentacle slithered through their wall and scooped it out of their bath, suds and all.That would represent something clean.For the dirty part, she grabbed a magical item from under someone’s bed. A wand of cure hysteria, something that Abigail once told her not to touch or talk or even think about because it was so dirty.She placed both on opposite ends of her summoning circle while not thinking about it.Now she just needed to actually summon someone!Dreamer knelt down and placed her hands on her summoning circle tentacles. She gave them a comforting squeeze, then tried to think of something appropriately spell-like to say. She wanted someone clean, so... Ah! That was easy. Abigail often sang sing-song ditties while taking baths.“Rub-a-dub-dub,Monster in a tubJa kuka luulet olevasi?Teurastaja, luoja, puhtauden tuojaPurging dirt and nastiness scrub!”Dreamer didn’t have magic, so she yoinked some form out of thin air and poured it into the summoning circle.It wobbled and burbled, magic going wild until Dreamer shoved some of the gurgly bits back down and trimmed off the sharper edges. The world twisted and distorted and wiggled a bit, then, with a soap-bubble pop, someone appeared about a metre off the ground.“Huh?” The person said. Then they said “Ow!” as they landed on the floor with a heavy thump.“Hello!” Dreamer said. She was quite happy that her magic had worked. She could tell that this person was from elsewhere, they still had a tendril connecting them to the place they were from, and also they had bunny ears atop their head, which wasn’t normal for people from this planet, at least as far as Dreamer knew.“Ow,” the person repeated. She shook her head-Dreamer assumed it was a girl because she had a blue skirt on and her top clothes, which were made of metal, had room for chest lumps. “This isn’t the Beaver.”“No, this is the living room,” Dreamer said. “Hi! Do you know how to clean things?”
* * *
Chapter Two — The Cleanest Bun in the Buniverse
Chapter Two — The Cleanest Bun in the Buniverse Crossover: Cinnamon Bun by RavensDagger
* * *
The bunny-ears girl blinked at Dreamer the way people did sometimes. “Wait, time-out.”Dreamer didn’t like being put in time-out, but then this girl wasn’t Abigail, so she hardly had to listen.“Could we start over? It’s always really confusing for a little bit after you get summoned to another place... are we still on Dirt?”“Dirt?” Dreamer asked. “No, this is the café.”“Ah,” the girl said. She nodded, which was a good sign. “Well, my name’s Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch. I hope we can be friends!”Dreamer considered it, then she shrugged. “Alright. I just need someone to clean this place.”“Oh?” Broccoli asked. She had such a tasty name.“Yeah. Abigail’s gonna open up a café, and it’s very dirty here, so I made a summoning circle and now you’re here to clean.”“I see, I see... sorta,” Broccoli said. She reached up and rubbed her chin, the pose of a mortal doing some serious thinking. “Do you do this often? Summon people to do stuff?”“No, it’s my first time,” Dreamer admitted.Broccoli nodded again. “Good good. Well, I don’t mind helping, I guess, but I need to get back to my friends. They’ll miss me, I hope, and it would really suck to just leave without even a goodbye hug.”Dreamer hadn’t considered that. What if she had to leave Abigail all of a sudden, without even getting goodbye headpats. Of course, Dreamer wouldn’t leave for long. “I can put you back where you were.“ Dreamer decided. She just needed to figure out what the opposite of a summoning circle was.“Oh, that’s nice!” Broccoli said. “So, summoning, huh?”“Yup,” Dreamer said.“You know, if you’re going to summon yourself new friends-and I’m not saying you shouldn’t-then you might want to consider setting up some rules or something.”“Rules?” Dreamer asked. “I just want to make stuff clean.”“Oh, right, we can start with that!” Broccoli waved her arm to the side and Dreamer felt a twist in the air. Magic but not the same sort of magic she was used to. It scurried across the room and attacked the dust and grime, when the magic moved on, there was only sparkly-cleanness left.“Oh, good,” Dreamer said. Her summoning circle really had worked.“Thanks!” Broccoli said. She waved her hands this way and that, and every time she did, there was more clean-ness left behind. “Was it just this room?” she asked.“No, the cafe is downstairs,” Dreamer said. “We should probably do all of the upstairs first.”Broccoli nodded along. She was very agreeable about things, which was nice. A lot of people just did the whole screaming and running routine around Dreamer, and that got old fast. “So! Rules!”“I don’t know if I want rules,” Dreamer said.“Oh, but think about it! You could summon all sorts of friends from all over the place! I’m pretty sure this isn’t Dirt or Earth, so you have far-reaching friend-making potential!”Dreamer tilted her head to the side as she thought, the same way some dogs she'd seen did. When they did it, they usually got pats right after, and she found that it helped her think like a mortal sometimes. “Okay?”Broccoli clapped her hands. “But first! Tell me about yourself!”Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.“Oh, right,” Dreamer said. She was supposed to introduce herself, that was one of those polite things that mortals did when they didn’t dislike each other. “My name is That Which Lies Eternal Dreaming, and a bunch more names, but Abigail and everyone else calls me Dreamer.”“That’s a very cute name,” Broccoli said. “Can I ruffle your hair?” she asked.Dreamer nodded.The bunny girl reached over and waggled her hand over Dreamer’s head, sending her hair this way and that. It wasn’t quite a pat, but it was still very nice. “Thank you,” Dreamer said, because she was very polite.Broccoli laughed. “You’re welcome! So! A café, huh? I guess it’s not open yet?”“Not yet,” Dreamer said. “Abigail wants to open it so that she can make a bunch of money and stuff. I think. I mostly want it to work because it makes Abigail happy.”“And when Abigail is happy you’re happy?” Broccoli asked.Dreamer grinned. She liked it when people caught on fast like that.The two of them made the rounds of the rooms on the upper floor. Broccoli whooshed magic around and cleaned things off. Sometimes she’d pick a thing or two up and set it in its place too, and some trash was too big for her to magic away, so she gave it to Dreamer who ate it. Broccoli seemed a bit confused when Dreamer ate the remains of a broken cup, but it was a clean cup so it didn’t matter.“We should go downstairs next,” Dreamer said.“Alright!” Broccoli agreed. “You know, this isn’t what I expected when I got yoinked over to another world. Last time it was a lot more adventure... though I think this is about the same amount of cleaning.”“Getting yoinked places can be bad, but sometimes it can be good,” Dreamer said sagely. She liked spreading her wisdom around. “Why do you have bunny ears?”“My ears?” Broccoli asked as she reached out and touched the furry stalks sticking out of her head. “I got them when I became a bun. See, I have a tail too.” She wiggled her butt, showing off the brown patch of fur sticking out from a hole in her skirt.“Is it good?” Dreamer asked.The ears twitched. “I like them. I think they’re very cute! But it makes it hard to go hat shopping.”Dreamer considered this. “Is cute... good?”The bunny girl locked eyes with Dreamer. “Cute is the best.”Dreamer was really happy with the results of all this summoning stuff. She was learning all sorts of good things. “Maybe I’ll give myself ears too,” she muttered.Not bunny ears though. Bunnies were food. She’d give herself proper, tentacle ears.“Okay. This is downstairs,” Dreamer said as she opened the backdoor of the café and led Broccoli in. “We need to clean all of this too.”“No problem! Give me ten minutes and the whole place will be cleaner than... uh, something that’s very clean! But after that, I think I’ll have to go back home. Is that okay?”Dreamer smiled. “Yeah, that’s okay. But maybe I can summon you again one day for more cleaning?”“Or for tea! You know, I’m something of an amateur tea-maker myself.”Abigail might find that useful, and Daphne liked tea too. “Okay,” Dreamer said.Now she just needed to figure out what the opposite of a summoning circle was. Circles had two sides, so what was the opposite of two?
* * *
Chapter Three — A Bunny-Girl Did It
Chapter Three — A Bunny-Girl Did It Abigail walked into the cafe, then paused to stare at everything.Not much had changed, really. The furniture was still the same, and the place still needed some fixing, but there was no denying that it was fundamentally different.“Did... did you clean while I wasn’t looking?” Abigail asked.Dreamer thought about it. “No,” she said. Abigail once said that lying was wrong. Dreamer found out later that it was only lying to Abigail that was wrong, lying to other mortals was okay and expected since other mortals could be really dumb when Dreamer told them the truth.Abigail spun around, then looked down at Dreamer. “Then how did this place get so clean?”Dreamer’s other body, the one that had stayed at the cafe while her other other body went with Abigail, stepped up to the top of the part of the room at the rear. “A bunny-girl cleaned it.”“A bunny girl,” Abigail repeated. Her poor mortal ears just weren’t that good sometimes. She started at the Dreamer that was standing at her height thanks to being up a few steps. “Is that why you have... uh... ears?”Abigail had to be referring to Dreamer’s new ears. They were two long tentacle-purple stalks sticking out of the top of Dreamer’s head. She didn’t quite know how to make fur, so they were mostly covered in a fine bristle of tiny soft tentacles. They were a bit wobbly. Every time Dreamer moved her head they flip-flopped around, but from her observations of Broccoli, that was normal.“Are they cute?” Dreamer asked.“Uh... yeah, I guess,” Abigail said.“Would you be more or less likely to pat me if I had bunny ears?”One of Abigail’s eyebrows rose. “Uh. I think... less? I don’t know, those don’t look quite like bunny ears. Sorry?”Dreamer pouted. Her imitation wasn’t quite right. Next time she summoned Broccoli to clean things she’d look at her ears closer. Or maybe she could hunt down a bunny and grab its ears. Daphne had a nice stapler in her office that Dreamer wasn’t allowed to eat.“You haven’t explained who cleaned the cafe yet,” Abigail said.“Oh, that was Broccoli. I made a summoning circle, and she showed up, and then she cleaned everything.”“You... summoned someone?” Abigail asked. “You can do that?”Dreamer shrugged. “Yeah.”“Okay,” Abigail said.Dreamer liked Abigail’s ability to not get weird about stuff. It was very endearing, and easily in her top ten best features.Abigail shook her head and looked around again, then she sniffed at the air. “Wow,” she whispered.“It’s very clean,” Dreamer agreed.“I’m impressed,” Abigail said. “Where did the, uh, person you summoned go?”“I unsummoned them,” Dreamer said. “Then I resummoned them again to make sure that I didn’t splatter them when I sent them back, then I re-unsummoned them back to their home.”“Oh,” Abigail said. She licked her lips, then rubbed at her forehead. “I feel like telling you not to summon people would be counterproductive somehow. But, uh, we need rules if you’re going to summon people.”The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.“I was mostly thinking I’d summon customers and neat people for the cafe,” Dreamer said. That way it wouldn’t be hard to keep an eye on them, and Abigail would have a steady stream of clients who could buy her tea and cookies and who would appreciate Abigail’s hard work.Abigail sighed and stepped up the first step on the way up to the counters and the kitchen. She bent down and gave Dreamer a quick hug, the extra height Dreamer had making it a strangely even hug where Abigail didn’t need to lean down at all.“Alright,” Abigail said as she came out of the hug. “Rules... wait, there’s a chalk sign there.”Abigail walked over to one wall where there was a chalkboard hanging by a nail. Dreamer imagined that it was meant to have the daily menu on it or something. She’d spent a lot of time looking at places like the cafe, mostly to clean out people’s leftovers, but the knowledge was now coming in handy in other ways.The Rules1 — What happens in the tea house, stays in the tea house2 — No permanent summoning3 — No summoning anything that can destroy the world4 — Only summon people that you can unsummonAbigail paused, then lowered her chalk. “Okay, I think that should do for now. We can add more of them as things come up.”“Okay,” Dreamer said. The rules were easy enough to remember. The second, third, and forth basically didn’t matter as long as Dreamer was around, and for the first one, all she needed to do was wipe the memories of anyone that came into the shop. Super easy.Abigail placed her hands on her hips and nodded. “This is going to be a disaster,” she said.“It will be okay,” Dreamer said.. “I won’t let anyone eat your cafe, you don’t need to worry.”“Right,” Abigail said. “So, I have a bit of starter money from Daphne, did you want to come with me? We need to pick out new chairs and tables and all that sort of stuff.”Dreamer nodded. “Can we have a tentacle theme?”“I don’t think that’s, uh, likely?”“But some of the other cafes I spied on had themes.”“Yeah, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of... tentacle looking stuff.”Dreamer shrugged. Abigail was probably right. Most humans didn’t have an appropriate appreciation for a good tentacle. “What about a sleep theme?”“I... don’t even know what that would look like,” Abigail said.“We could make the tables out of nightmares, and instead of plates, we could use daydreams.”Abigail shook her head. “I was thinking more... a rustic theme?”“Well, okay, but that sounds less fun than my ideas.”“Sure,” Abigail said. “Less fun, but then more of our future clients will leave with their sanity intact.”“Why would anyone come here to break their sanities?” Dreamer asked.Silly Abigail, this wasn’t the place for that. Though if she really wanted that kind of thing, Dreamer was sure she could accommodate.
* * *
Chapter Four — Kitty Cat
Chapter Four — Kitty Cat Crossover: Stray Cat Strut by RavensDagger
* * *
“This both sounds and looks like a fantastically terrible idea,” Daphne judged judgmentally.Dreamer liked Daphne. The noblewoman was generous with her food, and she loved Abigail, which was a mark in her favour. Abigail loved and trusted her too. Other than Dreamer, Daphne was the only person Abigail ever hugged, and sometimes Dreamer overhead Daphne and Abigail whispering things about marriage and stuff like that before they’d both stop because they had that thing where their faces were too red for them to talk.Still, Daphne could be a big old kill joy sometimes.“It’s just a summoning portal to some other time and place,” Dreamer said. “We need someone to do renovation stuff, and this is less expensive.”Abigail and Daphne had gotten an estimate on how much it would cost to replace all of the furniture in the cafe, and it was a big number. It was almost like Daphne didn’t understand how many pretty dresses and food they could buy with that money, instead of buying stuff like chairs.No one ate chairs, not even Dreamer. People put their butts on those!“It’s not going to, ah, explode or anything, right?” Abigail asked.They were in the little yard at the back of the cafe. Dreamer thought that the best place to summon someone would be inside, but Daphne put her foot down and said that they’d summon people outside, not in.It didn’t change much for Dreamer.“It’s fine,” Dreamer said. “I’ve done this one time before.”She had her circle laid out before her, same as last time. The contents of the magic circle were different, of course. This time she needed someone who was good with furniture and stuff like that. So in one corner they had a whole desk from Daphne’s house that Dreamer had exploded once. On the other corner, they had some torn clothes that had been serving as the curtains in the kitchen.She didn’t know what else to add, so she tossed in a hammer to one side, because she wanted someone like that. And she placed a crossbow she’d found in the arms of some city guard on patrol in the other corner. The circle was on a patch of grass, with a few tufts of feral cat hair left here and there, but Dreamer figured that was okay.“Right, I’m ready to do this,” Dreamer said.“You are aware that none of that counts as a reagent, right?” Daphne asked Abigail. “With the possible exception of that cat hair.”“Let’s give Dreamer a chance,” Abigail said. “If it doesn’t work, then we’ll just hire a carpenter like you said. Okay?”“Fine, fine,” Daphne muttered. “Why is it so easy for you to convince me to do such foolhardy things?”Abigail giggled and bumped her shoulder against Daphne’s.Dreamer refocused on her magic circle. Summoning was a bunch easier than unsummoning, and even that wasn’t too hard. She still had to focus.Abigail had told her that some people pinched their tongue when they focused, so Dreamer got two tentacles next to her mouth, stuck her tongue out, and pinched it.Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!It didn’t help much, but she managed to summon anyway.There was a big poof, and lots of dust and smoke filled the yard. Dreamer guessed that some stuff from the void between places had come along and it didn’t like the stuff this planet was made of, so it poofed on contact.“What the hell?” someone in the smoke asked. They coughed, and Dreamer saw a strange metal hand waving around to dispel the smoke. “Myalis, what’s going on?”Dreamer grabbed the smoke and tossed it aside, leaving her summon standing in the middle of the courtyard.It was a girl! A human girl at that. She had pale skin and brown hair with pink bits in it. Dreamer didn’t know that was an option for humans, but then again, her last summon had bunny ears and a tail so she decided not to judge right away. Then Dreamer noticed the cat ears on the girl’s head. Weird.The girl blinked at them, one eye looking all pink and strange, with a vertical slit in its middle. It sat on the side of her face that was covered in old burn scars.“Uh,” she said. “So, what’s the likelihood I’m tripping balls next to a renfaire?”“Ah, hello!” Abigail said. She bowed, hands clasped before her. “I’m... oh, I should have thought of this before. My name’s Abigail, this is Daphne, and this is Dreamer, and, um, hello.”The girl waved one hand, the meaty one. “Hey,” she said. “Care to explain? Because I was just getting home and I had plans that didn’t involve... where the hell am I?”“You’re behind the cafe,” Dreamer said with a gesture towards the cafe in question.“Thanks pipsqueak,” the girl said.“No, I’m Dreamer,” Dreamer corrected her. She eyed the girl more carefully. “What’s the person living in your head?” There were a lot of little waves and beams lancing out from the girl’s head, but not from her meat-head.One of the girl’s eyebrows rose. She casually reached a hand into her long coat. “That’s Myalis. My AI. I’m a samurai... which doesn’t seem to ring any bells. Myalis?”The girl frowned, then both of her eyebrows rose.“We’re not on Earth?” she asked.“We’re standing on grass,” Dreamer said. This girl was a bit dumb.“I meant my home planet.” She shook her head. “You guys look human enough. So I didn’t get kidnapped by giant plant monsters, that’s cool. Can you tell me what’s going on or will I have to find out the hard way. Hard for you guys, not me.”“We’re really sorry,” Abigail said. “I... this is my fault. I should have considered things from the summoned person’s perspective. I’m truly sorry.”“Uh huh,” the girl said.Daphne stepped up. “We, or rather Dreamer here, summoned someone who could help us with renovations. Might we have your name, by the way?”“I’m Cat, Stray Cat,” the girl whose name was cat but who wasn’t a cat said. She did have cat ears though, and a tail was moving under her coat.Dreamer wondered what it was about her summoning that kept grabbing people with animal bits.Or maybe it was more of a problem with the mortals who like sticking animal bits onto themselves.She decided that must be it. “So, can you help us renovate?” she asked.
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Chapter Five — Purrniture Purrchases
Chapter Five — Purrniture Purrchases Crossover: Stray Cat Strut by RavensDagger
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Cat sent a text to Myalis. Mostly because none of her augs could connect to the internet, and there was no wifi signal to work off of anyway. Hell, even her GPS was pulling up a blank, which was somehow really distressing. “What’s going on?” she wrote.I have no idea. Which is to say I have several thousand hypotheses, but none of them are confirmable. Interestingly enough, I can still order things, and the connection to my main servers is still intact. I am attempting to work through what happened with several of my colleagues.“Hey, cat-lady, did you hear me?”Cat grinned in what she hoped was a disarming way and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Sorry, I got distracted by my own thoughts there for a second,” she said.After the... she supposed it was a summoning-but that sounded too much like some magic bullshit, and she wasn’t keen on the idea of magical stuff at all-she was confronted by three girls.Two of them were a bit older. Maybe Cat’s age, a year or two more at most. The blonde was an easy eight out of ten, and her little freckled girlfriend was cute too, in a bookish geek sort of way. They were either a couple, or the useless sort of lesbian that were a couple but didn’t know it.That, or Cat really needed to recalibrate her gaydar.The third one was a bit weird. Cat had spent a lot of time around kids, and something about the girl that had called herself Dreamer was pinging as ‘wrong’ to Cat’s senses. She didn’t know what it was, exactly. The kid had a clean enough dress on, with more ruffles than Cat would be caught dead wearing in a million years, and she was barefoot, which was strange if she could afford such a nice dress.“We have a lot of things that need renovating,” Dreamer said. “Mostly the stuff in the kitchens, and the tables and chairs and stuff elsewhere too.”“You, uh, know I’m not a carpenter, right? I’m a samurai. I fix problems, usually in very violent ways. I don’t know jack about furniture and shit like that. I don’t know how to cook either, so you’re out of luck there too.”The Dreamer girl pouted, then a tentacle sprouted from the air next to her. One moment there was nothing, the next there was a rip in reality and a thin purple tentacle slipped out of it and started to rub Dreamer on the chin.It was the most disturbing ‘thinking pose’ Cat had ever seen.Catherine, don’t panic.“Not a reassuring thing to say,” Cat muttered.“That’s weird,” Dreamer said. “Was my summoning thing wrong?”Disregard all points in your future purchases. We will give the creature whatever it wishes in order to keep it happy. The cost will be waived.“Well,” Cat said. She felt a slick bead of sweat sliding down the length of her back. She’d only been with Myalis for a little while, but not once had the AI ever sounded worried. “I do have one thing that might help. I can buy stuff.”Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.“Yes, we have money here,” the Daphne girl said.“I mean, I can buy some really neat stuff. Shit that’ll blow your renaissance minds,” Cat said.Dreamer frowned. “Don’t blow Abigail.”“Uh,” Cat said. Whatever Dreamer was, she was a kid enough for Cat to place her words in the ‘too innocent to know’ category and move on. “No problem, pipsqueak.”The creature identifying as Dreamer is a transdimensional being. It inhabits multiple dimensions. While the Protectors are capable of cross-dimensional travel, it has always been within a relatively narrow bandwidth. Creatures like Dreamer can move between these naturally through unknown means.Cat nodded, an easy, cocky grin on. “So, wanna show me around?”“You’re cooperative all of a sudden,” Daphne said.Cat shrugged. “The AI living in my head is scared shitless of Dreamer here for some reason.”Daphne blinked. “That actually explains things quite neatly.”“Really?” Cat asked. “Is that a common occurrence?”“Only with people who have common sense,” Daphne said.Catherine... I do not know how your lack of tact has not yet ended in your violent death. I suppose I should congratulate you, but I won’t for fear of encouraging even more recklessness.The trio before Cat filed into the cafe, and Cat followed after them while writing a text. “How do you know about Dreamer? Why is she scary?”The Protectors, from what Cat had gathered, had met and were made up of plenty of aliens.Our first contact with a being like Dreamer was in a solar system on the far reaches of the Milky Way. We established a forward outpost on the planet, and a small cephalopod-like creature appeared from a rip in space. It proceeded to consume the outpost and the planet around it.Cat blinked.All attempts to combat the creature led to great losses until the area was quarantined. Any organic crew suffered from severe mental trauma by dint of being in proximity to the creature, and AI, who require that natural laws function as they ought to, don’t adapt well to creatures that disregard these. The creature was eventually consumed by a purple tentacle-like appendage the width of a yellow dwarf that slid out of nowhere and returned there just as rapidly.“Huh,” Cat said.The girls turned her way, and she gestured to the kitchen as if she was commenting on that. “Nice enough, but I’m sure we can do better,” Cat replied with an uneasy grin.“Yeah. I want a kitchen where we can cook a bunch of tasty food and things,” Dreamer said.“Hungry, huh?” Cat asked.Dreamer nodded. “I could eat a sun.”“Haha... yeah.”
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Chapter Six — Eating Tea People Place
Chapter Six — Eating Tea People Place Crossover: Stray Cat Strut by RavensDagger
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Dreamer turned her head to the side and stared. There was something happening to space in the middle of the kitchen. Physics wasn’t screaming, but it was scratching its metaphorical head in confusion.Then, a couple of seconds later, a box appeared. It was big and square and made of some sort of clear material that Dreamer had never tasted before.“Taa-daa,” the girl called Stray Cat said.“Whoa,” Abigail said. “And that’s a stove?”“It is,” Stray Cat said. “It’s... some super high-tech stove thing. Like, I’m not big on the whole ‘don’t give the locals laser pistols’ thing, but I’m pretty sure this stove is some prime directive violating thing. You put food in, it scans it, then it nukes it until it’s perfectly cooked. Baking takes a little longer since it’s baking and that’s some chemical shit that can’t exactly be sped up.”“Surprisingly, there is a lot of overlap between baking and some forms of alchemy,” Daphne said. “I think we’ll be able to figure things out.”Stray Cat shrugged. “Sure. So, that’s the kind of stuff I can hand out. Never thought I’d be buying a stove, but hey.”Dreamer stopped staring at the box, then looked over to the stove they had. It was a big metal thing, with a chimney on the back and some space for wood to go in it. The new one was a lot smaller. Also, she sensed a lot of power in it. “What makes the new stove hot?” Dreamer asked.“Uh,” Stray Cat said. Her eyes glazed over, and she blinked. “Well, you guys don’t have electricity, so it’s powered by... seriously?” It sounded almost like she was listening to someone that wasn’t there, which Dreamer figured was the thing inside her head.“What is it?” Abigail asked.“Do you know what nuclear radiation is?”Abigail shook her head.“Then don’t worry about it.” Stray Cat grinned. “So, what else do you need?”“We need a few things,” Daphne said. “Lights and chairs, as well as some furniture in the rooms above.”“A bed,” Dreamer said.The girl she summoned nodded along. “Yeah, sure, screw it. Apparently I’m buying a bed and some chairs instead of anything cool. How attached are you guys to the old timey rustic look? Because the genuine wood is neat and all, but it’s a bit great-grandpa for my tastes, you know?”“What’s wrong with wood?” Abigail asked.“Well, it’s wood,” Stray Cat said. “It’s not exactly cool, you know?” She gestured round the kitchen at all of the wooden stuff. “”Like, it’s nice I guess. But you’re not going to RGB your wooden counters, right?”Daphne huffed. “If you think your idea of interior decor is better, than please, do as you see fit.”Stray Cat grinned. “Perfect! I love getting permission to mess things up. Maybe... alright, don’t freak out, but I’m not actually great at interior decor.”“Reassuring, especially after you just tried to convince us to let you do as you see fit,” Daphne said.“Yeah, well, as I was going to say Miss Snarks a Lot, I have an AI that’s great at making things look neat, so let’s let her do her thing, yeah?”Dreamer looked around her. The same feeling that happened when the stove appeared was happening, but all over now.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.Abigail gasped as the walls disintegrated, the big oven in the corner crumbled apart, and the counters and shelves turned to so much dust. Dreamer squinted. There were teeny tiny little things eating all the furniture apart and turning it into dust before they slid away. It was weird.Then new furniture started to show up. Big metal cabinets with glass fronts appeared on most of the walls, and the stove disappeared and reappeared in a countertop. A big metal machine appeared where the oven had been, and lights swung from the ceiling and cast bright white light across the room.“Whoa,” Abigail said. She was staring at everything with wide eyes, and even Daphne seemed impressed.“Neat,” Stray Cat said as she took in the new kitchen. “So, Myalis is chattering at me about the changes, but mostly it’s new furniture. Some wiring in the walls. The building’s supports were made of wood, so those have been reinforced with some sort of metal alloy stuff. There’s a fire-extinguishing system in place, and some duct work to push smoke out, and.. Yeah, that’s most of the technical stuff.”“Why is everything cat themed?” Daphne asked.It was true, the cabinet windows had little paws on them, and the new oven had cat ears.“Because of reasons,” Stray Cat said. “Look, the front was done too. And the upstairs... you know, this place is pretty nice now.”They moved into the front of the shop where the till was replaced with a machine with a flat glass panel. There was still some wood around, but a lot of it had been warped and reshaped to be pretty. Four tables sat in the front of the room, with four cat-backed chairs sitting around each. The floor looked like it was brand new, all shiny and sleek.“See, I said I was good at summoning,” Dreamer said.Abigail patted her head. “Yeah,” she said.“The washroom was fixed up too,” Cat said. “And the floor above. I bet you two will really enjoy the bed.”“We will,” Dreamer agreed.“I... meant these two, but... you do you.” Stray Cat raised her hands in surrender. “So, that’s everything. Though Myalis wanted to know if you wanted anything specific written on the sign out front.”“You did the front too?” Daphne asked. Dreamer had never seen her so impressed.“I didn’t do anything,” Stray Cat said. “But yes, I did.”They moved out the front-there was a new bell that made a happy jingly jangle noise when they opened the door and also when Dreamer poked it with a tentacle once the door shut-and they gathered on the edge of the street.The tea shop’s windows had been replaced with some that looked a bit blurry now, but that still looked nice, and there were some empty planters on the outside for flowers and stuff. Above the doorway was a big sign, one that was entirely blank.“Oh, we need a name,” Abigail said.“That’s easy,” Dreamer said. “This place is for people to come and drink tea and for eating, right?”“It is,” Abigail said.“Then we should call it the Eating Tea People Place,” Dreamer said.“I think we can brainstorm better ideas than that,” Daphne said. “How about ‘Abigail’s?’”“No,” Dreamer said. “That’s Abigail’s name already. This is a place for tea, right? We’re going to call it... The Ten’Tea’Cle Shop.”
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Chapter Seven — Pretty Pretty Flowers
Chapter Seven — Pretty Pretty Flowers Crossover: Azarinth Healer by Rheagar
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“It’s... it’s really pretty,” Abigail said that evening. She stood in the middle of the main floor of the shop, hands folded together over her tummy and eyes wandering across the cafe.Dreamer supposed that it was kind of pretty. She could do without all of the cat themed items, but cats tasted good, so maybe they were a way of telling people that the food here tasted good too.Not that they’d made any yet.“What’s missing?” Dreamer asked. She’d sent that Stray Cat girl back, according to the Summoning Rules. Dreamer decided to add her own secret addendum to the rules. She’d only summon people and stuff for a small amount of time. That way Abigail wouldn’t get too fond of them.The Stray Cat girl had been, in her own words, a ‘raging lesbian’ and that was something that somehow gave her and Daphne and Abigail a lot to talk about, though Dreamer thought that the cat-girl was a bit more open and less blush-y about stuff than Abigail and Daphne.“Missing?” Abigail asked right back.“We have furniture,” Dreamer said with a gesture towards the chairs and tables. “We have kitchen things. We have the rooms upstairs to be comfy in. What else do we need before we can do shop stuff?”Abigail reached up and pinched her chin between forefinger and thumb. “We need some ingredients, and I need to practice making cakes and pastries.” She smiled and looked down at Dreamer. “Do you want to help taste-test?”Dreamer nodded. She did.“So, we’ll need to stop by a few shops to grab the right ingredients. I think that can wait until tomorrow though. I’m not quite in the mood for baking and experimenting right now.”“Okay,” Dreamer said. She was a little disappointed, but what was a day of waiting when she’d waited entire eons for some suns to ripen into tastier colours.“I guess the only other thing is maybe some flowers for the planters out front?” Abigail asked. She glanced out of the windows at the front of the cafe, and Dreamer followed her gaze. There were, indeed, a couple of planters under the window where flowers were meant to be.Dreamer had seen plenty of those on some nicer homes across the city. They were like a free snack dispenser. “That can’t be too hard,” Dreamer said.“I don’t think it should be, no,” Abigail said. She shifted over to be next to Dreamer, then placed a hand on her head. “Thanks for all the help, Dreamer. I didn’t think you’d be so... enthusiastic about the cafe, but I’m glad that you are.”“It’s okay. You looked happy about it, so I’m happy too,” Dreamer said.Abigail laughed and bent down to squeeze Dreamer in a hug. “Thanks,” she said before standing up. “I’m going to go talk to Daphne for a bit. We still need to draw up a list of the things we need to buy. You know, at this rate the cafe will be ready to open in just a couple of days.”Dreamer nodded. She looked forward to it.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.Abigail gave her another pat-so many pats! Dreamer was being a very good girl today-then walked off to talk with Daphne. “Plants, huh,” Dreamer muttered.She flounced-something the girls at the gardening club had taught her how to do, it was how a girl walked when she was happy-over to the backyard, then she placed her hands on her hips.Flowers.Dreamer didn’t know much about those. Maybe she could place some tentacles out there that looked like flowers?She made a tentacle sprout out of the ground, then gave it some tumorous growths on the end.Dreamer hummed. Maybe it needed more colour? She changed the colours of the growths, like those frogs that Abigail told her not to eat despite their being spicey.The flower-tacle didn’t look right. She tried making it have nectar, but all that happened was a squirt of pus leaking out of the end of it.“No good,” Dreamer said.She shrugged. It was time to summon away her problems.She was really starting to like the whole summoning trick. It reminded her a bit of when she discovered tentacles and their myriad uses. It was a very versatile trick. Not as handy as actual tentacles, but neat all the same.Focusing, Dreamer tried to do a summoning without a circle. All she was looking for were some flowers, maybe a tree and some grass for the backyard. Nothing too complicated.The world warped, and Dreamer rolled her eyes when physics steamed in protest as dirt and the top layer of yellowed backyard grass was shredded apart by Dreamer’s spell.Grass appeared, long and green; then the ground warped again, and when Dreamer blinked, there was now a great big tree sitting in the middle of the yard.“Well, this is interesting,” the tree said.Not out loud, it was more of a psychic message sent out across a broad spectrum, though it wasn’t very loud. A sort of polite mental message.“I didn’t know trees could talk,” Dreamer said.“I daresay most of them can’t,” the tree and the grass around it said. “Would you mind telling me where I am?” it asked.“In the backyard,” Dreamer said. “I wanted flowers because mine don’t look right.” she gestured to her tentaflowers.“I see. That is certainly an interesting interpretation of what a flower should look like. Who might you be?”“I’m Dreamer,” Dreamer said. “Who are you?”“My... friends call me Meadow,” the tree said.Dreamer nodded. “Are you a boy tree or a girl tree?”“I’m more of a grassland, actually. I note that your body is more of a puppet than an actual proper body. Are you a boy tentacle being, or a girl tentacle being?”Dreamer considered that. “I think I’m a girl now. Being a girl feels better.” Besides, Abigail liked girls more, and for some reason boys weren’t allowed to wear pretty dresses.“A pleasure to meet you. You wouldn't happen to know how to return me to my other dimension?”“Yeah, I can do that,” Dreamer said. “But can you help me with flowers first?”
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Chapter Eight — Poor Saps
Chapter Eight — Poor Saps Crossover: Azarinth Healer by Rheagar
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“This is a fascinating world,” Meadow said.Dreamer nodded.They had exchanged names already. Not just ‘Meadow’ and ‘Dreamer’ but their actual names.Meadow’s name was almost a song. It sang of growth and expansion, of becoming one with the nature around itself so as to nurture it, to make it greater than the sum of its parts and to see it becoming powerful in its own rights. It was a gentle, but firm song, a lullaby sung to a precious child by the coarse voice of a labourer father.Dreamer’s name was more like incoherent, terrified screeching.It was the sound gods made when they woke up from a nightmare, then realized that it was made real. Dreams, the very concept of a reality that only existed in the fleeting moments when the minds of greater beings were unfocused belonged to her. The nightmares born of these were her playthings. And her name continued, because she was a selfish person, always grasping, always taking and eating and holding close to her the things she loved.“So anyway,” Dreamer said. “Flowers and stuff.”The Meadow made a sound that Dreamer thought sounded like laughter, leaves rustling above. “Yes. Flowers and such. I’m sorry, my newness here has encouraged me to snoop around. There are so many people here doing so many things. And what fascinating magics they use.”“Yeah,” Dreamer agreeds. “It’s a nice place. Abigail lives here, and so do I.”“Did you know that the people in that large building in the shadows of that hill are plotting to murder you?” Meadow asked.Dreamer rolled her eyes. The Inquisition again. “Yeah. They do that. It’s annoying and stupid because they can’t kill me: I don’t feel like dying.”“Indeed,” the Meadow said. “You summoned me to help with flowers, is that right?”Dreamer nodded. “Yeah. There’s a box thing out front, with space for flowers in it, but I can’t make those well so I summoned someone that could, and now you’re here.” She was quite proud of herself and her concise and accurate explanation.“That seems like a simple enough issue to remedy. I imagine you don’t wish for flowers that are... too complex?”Dreamer shrugged. “Can you make some that are pretty?”Another laugh, or maybe it was just the wind again. “Yes, I think I can manage pretty well enough.”Dreamer had some eyetacles here and there around the cafe, so she got to see some flowers poke out of the ground and grow big and tall. There were all sorts, with blue, and yellow, and orange and red flowers. Some with many petals, others with just a few. “Those are very nice looking,” Dreamer judged.“Thank you,” the Meadow said. “I’ve seen my share of flowers, so I tried to encourage the growth of some of the more interesting sorts.”Dreamer turned towards the backyard door a moment before it opened and Abigail stuck her head out. “Dreamer?” she asked, then she blinked up at the tree. “Is that a tree?”“Yes, it’s a tree,” Dreamer said.“Hello,” the Meadow said.Abigail stared. “Did the tree just talk?”“I did,” The Meadow replied with another branch-shivering laugh. “My name is the Meadow.”This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.“Uh, hi,” Abigail said. “I wanted to ask Dreamer... you know what, nevermind, it’s not important. How are you doing? And, ah, why are you here? If you don’t mind me asking.”“Dreamer was looking for gardening advice,” Meadow said. “She rooted around and found me, I suppose.”Abigail chuckled. “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, as long as she brings you back home. But, ah, I guess it’s not often that talking trees get to branch out.”The Meadow shivered and shook. “Indeed. I’m quite happy that Dreamer called for me. I assure you, she wasn’t barking up the wrong tree when looking for advice.”“Yeah,” Dreamer said. “We have nice flowers now.”Abigail nodded, still smiling and looking quite happy. “That’s wonderful, thank you Meadow. I’m sorry that Dreamer couldn’t leaf you alone, but I’ll try to make sure she makes it up to you.”“I appreciate it. I don’t intend to set down roots here. Nonetheless, it’s nice to make new... buddies.”Abigail laughed and clapped her hands together. “Oh, that was awful,” she said.“What was awful?” Dreamer asked.Abigail shook her head, still laughing. “It went over your head, it’s okay sweetie.”Dreamer deployed more tentacles, she’d catch the next thing that went over her head.“Your laughter has a very pleasant timber to it,” Meadow said.Abigail snorted. “Stop, please, They’re just getting worse.”“I would go against the grain to continue, so I will refrain for now.”“Urgh,” Abigail said, but she was smiling even if it sounded bad, so Dreamer didn’t know what to do. “Stop pollen my leg.”The tree shook. “And you claimed that I was terrible? That was practically tree-sonous.”Abigail moved over to stand behind Dreamer. She carefully pushed Dreamer’s tentacles aside and hugged her from behind, arms around Dreamer’s neck so that her head was pressed up against her still-shaking tummy. “Thanks, that was a lot of fun. Dreamer’s been good about summoning interesting people lately... in-tree-resting? No, that’s just too awful.”“You’re very welcome,” the Meadow said. “But, seeing as my work here is quite done, I wood like to return to my home. I have companions that may be missing me.”“Missing the tree in the forest?” Abigail asked.The Meadow shook with laughter again. “Indeed. Well done. If you ever need more assistance with gardening, then do call me over. Though, perhaps asking first wouldn’t be harmful.”“I’ll try to teach Dreamer to knock,” Abigail said. She squeezed Dreamer a bit tighter, then brought a hand up and started to play with her hair. Dreamer’s eyes drooped as Abigail’s fingers dug into her scalp and scritch-scratched her.Abigail and Meadow said their goodbyes, and then Dreamer blinked awake some more and undid her summoning, which sent Meadow back.A few birds that had perched on the tree were confused when it suddenly disappeared, and there was a bit of a hole in their lawn.“Well, that was nice,” Abigail said. “So, Dreamer, before all of that... I was looking at your bedroom and wondering what colour to paint it.“Oh!” Dreamer said. “I want it in nice looking colours!”And so Dreamer chased after Abigail, her flower-seeking mission a success.
* * *
Chapter Nine — Quiet Opening
Chapter Nine — Quiet Opening It was the morning of the grand opening, and Abigail was very nervous.Dreamer didn’t get it, not really, but she’d long decided that it was okay not to get everything that Abigail felt, as long as she got that Abigail felt like liking Dreamer. Emotions were complicated and a bit silly, and it was always tricky to catch them. Worse, when she did catch emotions, they were hard to wrangle into her mouth to eat, and they didn’t always taste good besides.She’d had one mouthful of sad and had decided that feelings weren’t good eating.“Why are you walking in circles this time?” Dreamer asked. “Is Daphne going to show up with flowers again?” Dreamer hoped not. The last time that happened she’d been left with Charlotte for ‘babysitting’ which was weird because while there was admittedly some sitting, Dreamer didn’t see any babies.Abigail chuckled and slowed to a stop. “Sorry. I’m just... I don’t know, a bit anxious? It’s the big opening, you know?”Dreamer nodded. It was. She had tentacles out front holding up a big sign-it was a long piece of cloth with the words GRAND OPENING! painted across it-and sometimes she had to twitch her tentacles to make it look as though the sign was waving in the wind.Abigail had spent a long part of the night awake baking cookies and small cakes and other pastries, and she’d made something called coffee which smelled interesting and that Dreamer wasn’t allowed to drink because “no, just no,” according to Daphne.“It’s going to be okay,” Dreamer said. “No one’s going to hurt you or the shop.”Abigail laughed and she pulled Dreamer into a quick hug. “Thanks, but that’s not all I’m worried about.”Dreamer hummed and enjoyed the hug while it lasted. “Then what are you worried about? I’ll take care of it.”Abigail pat her head. “It’s okay, Dreamer. I think... maybe being nervous about something isn’t so bad, not if you’re not too worried about it. It’s an excited worry, I guess.”The clock hanging on one of the walls-it looked like a cat’s head with little cat feet that pointed to the numbers around it-meowed, announcing that the hour had changed.“Okay!” Abigail said. She clapped her hands, then grabbed an apron from a nearby chair back and tugged it on. It was a nice apron, made by Charlotte. It had the name for the shop embroidered over Abigail’s chest, and a bunch of cloth tentacles sewn up coming up from the bottom. Dreamer found it very nice. Abigail grabbed a second apron and Dreamer put her arms out to the sides so that Abigail could slip it on her.She didn’t need help putting an apron on, of course, she was very capable of dressing herself, but when Abigail tied the knot behind her it was like getting an extra bonus hug, so she liked it.“Okay!” Abigail said. “I’ll be behind the counter, at the till. Dreamer, take these, and give them to anyone that’s passing.” She climbed up to the higher part of the cafe, reached over the counter, and grabbed a bag, then she took out a stack of pamphlets and gave them to Dreamer. “I had these printed at school. It cost a pretty penny, but I think it’s worth it!”This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.The pamphlets had the name of the cafe on the top, and some cute drawings of cupcakes and cookies and coffee and tea. “I give these to people?” Dreamer asked.“Anyone that’s passing by... if they want one, don’t force them on people.”Dreamer nodded. “I can do that.”“And if you’re near the door, open it for people who are coming in, alright?”“Yeah,” Dreamer said.“Good, good,” Abigail said. She took in a deep breath, then let it all out at once, but she was smiling. “I’m sure this’ll work out just fine. Anyway, Daphne should be showing up in the afternoon, and Charlotte too.”Dreamer nodded again. More friends was nice.Abigail went around to the back of the counter, and stood behind the till, a determined smile in place. “Let’s do it,” she said.Dreamer grabbed her stack of pamphlets and walked out of the front of the cafe. There were other shops and stuff along the street. A shoe place, a small restaurant, a couple of places that sold more boring stuff, like tools and things. It meant that there was always a good amount of traffic, though it wasn’t the busiest place in the city.She set herself next to the front of the cafe. It was still very early in the morning, the shops across the street were still setting themselves up for their first customers, and the Inquisition spies hiding on a roof across the street hadn’t been replaced by the next shift yet.The sun was still low enough on the horizon that the road was still a bit shady, but that would change soon enough.Dreamer waited until someone was close, a business-looking man in a suit and with a briefcase by his side. “Hey, you, take this,” Dreamer said.“I don’t want it,” the man said without even looking.Dreamer pouted, but there were other mortals going by. She saw another business guy walking by with a teacup in one hand and a newspaper tucked under his other arm. “Mister, come to this tea shop, it’s more better,” Dreamer said.The man paused, looked at the shop, then scoffed. “I think not. Besides, I have my own tea.”Dreamer huffed. Then, because she felt like it, she summoned a teeny tiny springtacle under his teacup and let it snap out. His tea cup broke at the handle and the cup portion took off into orbit.“Our tea is all in this planet’s atmosphere,” Dreamer said. She put on one of those smiles that made mortals feel more comfortable.The mister didn’t even look at her, he said some bad words then walked off in a confused huff.This whole thing was harder than Dreamer thought it would be.She’d need to find a solution to this, or they’d have no clients and then Abigail would be sad.
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Chapter Ten — Forbidden Things and Why You Should do Them
Chapter Ten — Forbidden Things and Why You Should do Them Dreamer was disappointed in the people of this planet. Not her friends and Abigail, of course, those were nice people, just the other people.Abigail went through a lot of trouble to make her cafe, and only six people went in all morning. Six people! Only three of them bought anything.Dreamer was angry and she didn’t know what to do about it. Fortunately, Daphne and Charlotte showed up around noon, before Dreamer started plucking people off the street and tossing them into the cafe, or enacted her plan to steal all the coffee and tea across the entire city so that only the cafe had any.“Daphne. Charlotte,” Dreamer said.Daphne grinned and leaned down to pat Dreamer on the head, as was appropriate. Charlotte gave Dreamer a big hug though. “Hey Dreamer,” Charlotte said. “It’s been a while.”Dreamer thought about it. Technically it had only been a week, but for Charlotte who was still mortal and didn’t live a long time, that might feel like a very very long time. Dreamer didn’t even want to imagine how much it would suck for Abigail not to see her for a week. “Yes,” Dreamer said.Charlotte giggled. “So serious,” she said before pinching Dreamer’s cheek.A tentacle wrapped around Charlotte’s hand and removed it from cheek-pinching range.Cheek pinches were forbidden, but Charlotte did them anyway.Dreamer didn’t get angry at Charlotte though. All of her friends were known for being good at doing forbidden stuff.“Did we get a lot of motion so far?” Daphne asked.“You mean people coming in?” Dreamer replied. She shook her head. “No. Only six people, and only half of them bought stuff.”“Oh, that’s unfortunate, but I’m sure things will pick up. We just need to find people that want a nice cup of tea or some cake and get them in here,” Daphne said. “Maybe we should spread some pamphlets around?”Daphne and Charlotte slipped into the cafe while talking about one of Charlotte’s cousins who did printing stuff and who might be able to help.Dreamer wasn’t really paying attention.She had a brilliant idea.Abigail made a good choice when picking Daphne as a mate, because Daphne had good ideas, and those good ideas would pass on to their spawn once they were ready to lay them.Dreamer shook her head. It wasn’t time for that kind of thinking. She had to think on what Daphne had told her. It was all so obvious. Daphne knew that Dreamer could summon people. Why not just summon people that needed what they were offering?It was so simple!Dreamer created a copy of herself, gave it a pretty dress, then extruded it in the alley next to the cafe where no one would ever notice the incomprehensible goop that came from making copies in a hurry.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.The not-Dreamer copy was a bit frumpled, her pretty dress wet with goop and one of her arms was just a tentacle, but she looked close enough to a human and the tentacle arm would help her hold up the sign for the cafe.“Here,” Dreamer said as she gave herself her stack of pamphlets.“Ahhhhhh!” the Dreamer copy screeched in pain so vivid, so colourful, that the people in the street started to weep, not because the scream hurt-though it was very loud-but because of a simple, primal reaction. Such pain deserved tears.“Shut up,” Dreamer said to herself. “Your job is to give people pamphlets, not to scream.”She regretted making a cheap clone. “Ahh?” Came a smaller, less offensive scream.“Yes,” Dreamer said. “I’ll be back in a little bit.” She stepped back and into the cafe where Abigail and the others looked like they were in a panic. “What?” she asked.“We heard screaming,” Abigail said.“Oh, that was me,” Dreamer said. “But it’s okay, I told myself to shut up.”Abigail rushed over to Dreamer and swept her into a hug. “Are you okay?”“Yes,” Dreamer said. She squeezed Abigail back, because that was how hugs worked and it was nice, then she reluctantly let go. “I need to go upstairs so that I can do some magic. I’ll be back very soon.”Dreamer waved to her other friends before exiting out the back and climbing up to their new home.It was nice, especially after that Stray Cat girl had come around and fixed things up. The floors looked new, the walls were freshly painted, the furniture was all very nice. Dreamer would have to do something about the cat theme stuff eventually, but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal for now.One of their extra rooms was converted into an office after Dreamer took a long time explaining to Abigail that she didn’t need her own room and that as the resident expert on sleeping and napping and other such dream-related things, she was best suited to cuddling Abigail in her own bed.The office had all sorts of things, Abigail’s schoolbooks, some reagents that had expired that Dreamer could snack on, and a desk with some papers and things to write with.Dreamer knew that for this bit of magic, it would be best if she really took her time and studied everything carefully, which meant, of course, writing it all down as she went. Notes were good for that kind of thing, and Abigail always used them when she had to remember things.Dreamer found a box of waxy crayons she hadn’t eaten yet, some paper, and then she sat on the floor to do some serious plotting.It was going to be great.
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Chapter Eleven — A Simple Plan
Chapter Eleven — A Simple Plan Dreamer’s plan was very simple.They needed more guests to come into the cafe, so she’d set up a spell that would summon nice people who needed the kinds of things that they sold at the cafe. Dreamer didn’t know too much about business, but she did know that the founding principle behind a good business was the same as what made a bed a good bed.A good bed was good if it was able to provide a necessary resource (sleep) to clients who were looking for that resource (sleepy people). A good bed provided services around its main product as well (blankets) and would go out of its way to ensure that the product was as good as possible (By providing cuddle friends).Just like the market was regulated by an invisible hand, a good bed also had its own system of regulation (Abigail’s hands shaking Dreamer awake). Businesses were regulated and forced to pay taxes, (just like how sleeping people paid Dreamer in dreams) and if they didn’t, there were repercussions (nightmares).Basically, Dreamer had it all figured out. She just needed to think about how to get all of that knowledge to apply to the cafe.In the end, she decided to go with the simplest solution. She’d grab a head of magical stuff and make it cast the same spells over and over again.First, a spell to see if it was the right time to summon someone.This spell would check the cafe and make sure that there were people working there, and that Dreamer was around to greet new people. Very simple stuff.Second, a spell to look for someone that needed something the cafe provided. The cafe had a bunch of stuff, but mostly Dreamer was thinking about the food and the atmosphere. Abigail said that that was an important part of the cafe experience, having a quiet place that someone could relax in, either alone or with a few friends. It was supposed to be very romantic and stuff.Third, Dreamer needed to narrow down that selection of people. There would be lots of people that wanted to use the cafe because it was such an awesome place, but it would suck if it filled up.Actually, that gave Dreamer another idea.First-point-one, she had to make sure that the spell didn’t trigger when the cafe had guests already. Otherwise it would just fill up.She nodded. The spell was becoming a bit of a tangled mess, but she was sure that was fine.Fourth, she needed the spell to grab people that were cool. That was a tricky thing to narrow down. What made a person cool? The way they talked? The number of sunglasses they owned? The amount of time they spent playing with tentacles?Dreamer eventually dismissed all of those. If she couldn’t narrow down coolness, then she could at least pick out people that were important. Shoving a hole through the fabric of reality next to her, Dreamer stuck out a meta tentacle, the same one from page 242 of the first edition print of Love Crafted (available at an Amazon near you) and cut off the tip of it.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.That would help her only grab narratively important people.Fifth... actually, she couldn’t think of a fifth, so instead Dreamer squeezed and squished all the spell stuff together, bashing some of it into the right shape with some old-fashioned tentacling, then she stood back and surveyed her work.Magic itself was weeping, but the spell was holding together, too afraid to come undone after Dreamer had put so much effort into crafting it.“That works,” she said.Grabbed the spell with yet another tentacle, she shoved it down and cast it at the cafe.Everything went green for a moment, but that passed soon enough and after Dreamer tasted the air and made sure it was all good, she pronounced it good.“Dreamer?!” Abigail called from the stairs.“Yes?” Dreamer asked.“Are you okay?” Feet thump-thumped and soon Abigail appeared in their apartment’s entrance looking worried and stuff. “You just ran off, and the, uh, clone out front is crying because she can’t get anyone to take her pamphlets. I was worried.”“Sorry,” Dreamer said. “I was doing a thing, and I couldn’t just be at the front, I needed to be here too.”“Uh, alright,” Abigail said. “Is everything alright? I thought I saw a green light?”“It’s good,” Dreamer said.“You haven’t summoned anyone?”“No.”“Killed any gods? Started a religion? Ended a religion? Eaten someone that can think?”Dreamer shook her head. She had done none of those things since the last time Abigail asked. “I’ve been behaving, and I haven’t hurt anyone.” Magic wasn’t someone, so it was okay. And technically, if her spell went wrong and hurt someone, that would be in the future, not now.“Alright, good,” Abigail said. “Did you want to come down? Charlotte’s trying the different sorts of cakes we have, and Daphne and I were preparing ourselves some tea. If we can’t serve anyone, we can at least serve ourselves.”“I like that idea,” Dreamer said. “Can I have cake and tea?”Abigail reached down and did a hand wiggle for Dreamer to grab. “Have you been behaving?”“I behaved like myself.”Abigail giggled. “That’s not all that reassuring, you know? Come on, you can have a bit of cake.”“How many cakes is a bit of cake?” Dreamer asked. Was this one of those things like a flock of ravens being called a murder, but more about cake?“A bit is how much I can afford to give you,” Abigail said. “Before I need to bake more.”“So how can we make the bit bigger?”She got a headpat for asking important questions, but they didn’t talk about it much more, because soon Dreamer was downstairs with friends and there was cake and laughter and fun. That was, until the door’s bell rang and a very weird group stepped in, wet from a rain that wasn’t happening.At least Dreamer knew her spell was working!
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Chapter Twelve — Bunch’a Brats
Chapter Twelve — Bunch’a Brats Crossover: Fluff by RavensDagger
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“I need to pee.”“I’m hungry.”“Look Boss, trash!”Emily wasn’t at her wit’s end. No, her wit’s end was about three blocks back, crying while rocking back and forth. She was well and truly past that. “I know, I know,” she said, vainly hoping that would be enough to placate her little sisters.Teddy nodded, but she was walking the walk of someone who really did need to use the washroom, despite Emily asking twice before they left the house. Athena kept staring at any ad with food they passed-which was seemingly all of them-and Trinity and all three of her bodies, kept pausing next to the big trash cans dotting the roadside.“We’ll find something,” Emily said. All she needed was a place where she could grab a bite and use the washrooms, that was it. And maybe a nice cup of coffee. She deserved it.“What about there?” Teddy asked. She was pointing to something across the street.She was pointing to a quaint little cafe, it was... it was... there was a fog around it, and it seemed to float in the air, at once there and not.Emily shook her head and blinked her eyes.“We’ll find something,” Emily said, again... or was it the first time? All she needed was a place where she could grab a bite and use the washrooms, that was it. And maybe grab a nice cup of coffee. A cafe, she needed a cafe.“What about there?” Teddy asked. She was pointing to something out ahead and near the entrance to an alley on their side of the street.Emily felt a strange sense of deja-vu for a moment. There was a cute little cafe, a big sign above a brick and mortar front. Dreamer’s Ten’Tea’cle Cafe. Lots of cat-themed decor, but all very clean and new looking.“Yeah, okay,” Emily said.Her sisters cheered, and with a very stiff-legged Teddy at the lead, they charged into the store to the protest of the front door’s jingling bell. Emily rolled her eyes, prayed that they didn’t break anything, and followed them in.Emily took a moment to inspect the interior. It was a pretty standard cafe. A few tables to the sides, with chairs around them that had cat head shaped backs, and a section at the rear-with a couple of steps leading up to it-had the cashier and a display full of cakes and other pastries.“Oh! Sorry,” a young woman said from off to one side. She had an apron on, with the cafe’s logo on it. It was obvious at a glance that Emily and her sisters had caught her and her friends mid-break. “Hi, welcome.”“Are you open?” Emily asked. It would be supremely awkward if they weren’t.“We are, we are,” the girl said. She put on the happy grin of someone working in retail, then gestured towards the back. “I’ll get behind the till. Feel free to browse around? Take a seat?”“Where can I poop?” Teddy asked with great tact.“Um. There's a washroom just over there. The doors with the boy cat and the girl cat on them.”Teddy scampered off, and Emily kept an eye on her other pests. “No touching anything,” she warned. One of Trinity’s hands snapped back and away from a rack of mugs.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.“So, what can I get for you?” the cashier asked as she took her place behind the counter.“Uh,” Emily said. She looked for a menu, found one, then stared. She didn’t recognize the numbers next to the items on the menu, and those ideas seemed a little blurry to her until she focused. “Can I have... what do you have that’s small? For my sisters.”“Oh, they’re your sisters?” the cashier asked. She and Emily stared at each other, processed what she said and the implications, then they both blushed and looked away in the same moment.There was, in that instant, an understanding between them. Like the awkward handshake of two companions meeting, only these two companions were strangers, and also terrible introverts. They both nodded, without meeting the other’s eye, and agreed to look past the awkwardness.“We have these little mini-cakes,” the girl said. “They’re not too big, and they’re filled with strawberry jam. Although, that might be messy.”“Right, that’s a lot of faces and hands to clean. Not to mention your nice tables.”“”We have chocolate pastries too. They’re nice when dipped in coffee. And we have hot chocolate too.”“I want that!” Trinity said in stereo.“We’ll take, uh, five of both,” Emily said. “And I need a coffee. Strong.”“No problem,” the girl said. She busied herself with the order while Emily wrangled her sisters. In the end, she aimed them towards a table in a corner where she figured they couldn’t do any harm. Teddy exited the washroom, looking relieved until Emily asked her if she washed her hands, then she was sent back to the washroom with a pout.“I’m sorry for... all of that,” Emily said to the girl across from the counter. She swallowed, grasping onto her limited bravery. “I’m Emily, by the way.”“Hi Emily, I’m Abigail, and don’t worry. I know... pretty much exactly what it’s like to take care of someone younger and a bit... bratty.”“How many do you need to watch over?” Emily asked. Abigail had a sister or two of her own, then?“Just the one, but I think she could out-brat all five of yours.”“I don’t know about that,” Emily said with a chuckle.Abigail laughed too as she set a tray on the counter. It had everything in neat little plates. “It’s hardly a competition. Ah, I need to ring you up. I’m not sure how this machine works though.”“Oh,” Emily said. She fumbled her card out, and gestured to the keypad next to the machine. “I think it’s a tap. Just enter the order and I tap it with my card.”“Uh,” Abigail said. She frowned in consternation, but after poking at the screen a few times, she figured it out. Emily figured she had no place to complain about the slowness, not when she could hear her sisters making a disaster for poor Abigail to pick up later in the back.“There you go,” Emily said as she paid up. Abigail still looked a little confused by it all.The cashier shrugged. “Well, alright then. Did you want to join my friends and I? It’ll give you a small break from all the... yeah.”“I... you know what, sure.”
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Chapter Thirteen — Big Sister Talk
Chapter Thirteen — Big Sister Talk Crossover: Fluff by RavensDagger
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“It’s worse than you can imagine,” Emily said.“It can’t be that bad,” Abigail replied.Abigail’s friends had both left soon after Emily arrived at Abigail’s table, which of course had all of Emily’s social anxiety alarms ringing their death knells. It was only seeing the Daphne girl give Abigail a peck on the cheek and promising to see her later that calmed Emily down.Somehow, that was enough to reassure Emily that she wasn’t the reason the other two girls had run off. They’d obviously had other things to do, and Emily’s presence wasn’t enough to scare them away.“They’re so cute though,” Abigail continued. She was taking frequent sips from a large mug filled with steaming tea. It was one of those more plain teas, not a fruity mess of berries and such like how Emily’s mom liked hers.Emily followed Abigail’s gaze towards her sisters. The five of them were recently joined by a sixth girl. She was about the same height as Trinity, with a round face covered in little freckles, and big ruddy cheeks. Her hair was the same as Abigail’s though. She looked rather sad, sad and confused, and Emily was proud to see that her sisters were trying to distract her.Unfortunately that mostly involved making fart noises with their armpits, and arguing about who was cooler, Emily or Abigail.“Sure, cute,” Emily said. “That’s your sister?”“Uh, sorta?” Abigail said. “She’s my... kind of like a little sister, I guess. It’s complicated?”Emily nodded. She understood complicated.“That’s Dreamer’s clone, really.”“Huh? Dreamer?”Abigail blushed. “My, uh, little sister, sorta. She’s... upstairs, I think? Honestly, I really should go see if she’s alright.” Abigail took another long sip of tea in lieu of seeing if things were alright.Emily took a sip from her coffee in understanding.So the brown-haired girl back there was Abigail’s sister’s friend, then? That tracked. She was probably disappointed that the other girl wasn’t around. Or something. Emily wasn’t going to dig too deep into any prepubescent drama, for her own sanity’s sake.“Your sisters seem mostly well-behaved.”“Yeah, right,” Emily said.“Really. They’re a bit loud-” Abigail paused to let Teddy finish screaming about finding joy in comradeship. “But I bet they don’t cause any sort of strange trouble.”“Strange trouble?” Emily asked.Abigail nodded, then paused. “You know. Weird things.”“Yes,” Emily agreed. “My sisters only cause normal problems. Perfectly ordinary ones.”Abigail nodded. “Yes, mine also is like that.”They both knew they were lying.Neither of them cared.Stolen story; please report.“So, any advice on how you manage to wrangle so many brats all at once?” Abigail asked.Emily considered it. “Mostly I think it comes down to setting boundaries and explaining what is or isn’t too much. They’re young, and rather dumb you know.”Abigail nodded. “They are.”“So you can’t expect them to know what is or isn’t okay. You need to outline what’s acceptable and what isn’t, and once that’s done, you must absolutely never let them get away with anything past that line.”“That sounds harsh.”Emily nodded. “I know. I hate it, and I’m terrible at it.”“I don’t know if I’m all that good at telling Dreamer what she can’t do. She always seems to want to do what she thinks is best.”“My sisters are the same. They’re really sweet, but sometimes what they think is the right thing to do is, ah, a terrible idea.”Abigail nodded. “Thanks. It’s good advice. I mean, I think I already knew all of that, but I guess hearing it helps a lot.”“Sometimes things are like that,” Emily agreed. “It’s why school repeats the same lessons sometimes.”“That makes sense,” Abigail said. “Do you go to school?”“I do,” Emily said. They started to chat about school, the hardships around that, and then a bunch of inconsequential nonsense in between.
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The clone, who was Dreamer and yet wasn’t, was confused. “I don’t understand.”The girl with the bear-ears growled, her little hands balling into a fist. “What is our purpose in life, if not to spread villainy, to do right by our big sisters, and to help our comrades in their times of need?” she asked.The clone considered this. “My purpose is to give people pamphlets.”“Sure! But that’s just a short-term goal. Something to do now, to spread the word” The bear-girl placed a hand on the clone’s shoulder. “Today we give pamphlets. Tomorrow, we will seize the means of production!”The clone nodded, it seemed like the right thing to do, even though... even though the thought was wrong.Her goal, her purpose, was to give people pamphlets. What was existence but a fleeting thing, the passage of time between the handing of folded paper to strangers?This message, about seizing things, that was like... like if her purpose in life was to take pamphlets instead. It was wrong.And yet, it felt so very, very tempting.“Alright girls,” the one the others called the Boss said. “We need to head back home. Put everything away for poor Abigail, and say bye to your new friend for now.”The bear girl nodded, then pat the clone on the back. “Don’t worry, comrade, you’ll figure it out.”But as the clone watched the children go, all of them holding onto one of the precious pamphlets she was destined to hand out, she wondered if she really would figure it all out one day.
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Chapter Fourteen — Domo Arigato
Chapter Fourteen — Domo Arigato Crossover: Calamitous Bob by Mecanimus
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Abigail was thinking as she manned the till.Today was the cafe’s second day, and while she couldn’t consider it a rousing success, it was making some decent money. Some of it was admittedly strange money, possibly from other worlds, but money was money, and she was sure it had some value to someone.“Have a nice day!” she said to the gentleman who picked up a paper cup of fresh coffee with a curious hum and headed out.So far, everything had been nice enough. The machinery in the shop was strange, but also easy to use. It took some poking and prodding to understand that some of the signs and symbols would react to her touch, and she still wasn’t used to the coffee pouring into strange paper cups on its own, but the taste was good, and there was certainly some novelty to the idea.She shook her head. She was trying to focus on what one of the clients she’d spoken to yesterday had said. Limits. Dreamer was... well, Abigail loved her dearly. The incomprehensible creature from beyond the stars, holder of immense power, was something like a mix between a smaller sibling, a summon, and maybe a daughter to Abigail.It was a complicated mix of emotions, but none of them were negative. She dearly loved Dreamer, and it seemed that Dreamer loved her back, and trusted her just as much.The problem was that Dreamer had issues with limits.Abigail glanced to the corner of the room where a slightly mal-formed Dreamer clone was glaring at a pamphlet for a mayoral candidate with confusion and consternation.Dreamer definitely needed some clearer limits on what was or wasn’t acceptable.The bell chimed, and Abigail banished her thoughts about Dreamer and put a smile on. She did love meeting new clients. It was the best (and sometimes worst) part of this kind of work.“Hello, and welcome to Dreeeeee-” Abigail’s voice rose in pitch until it passed dog-whistle levels and finally stopped with a squawk.The creature in her doorway was tall, impossibly tall for anything living and so thin. It was entirely made of bone, pale with the deathly quality of something long expired. A pair of glowing yellow orbs sat in the sockets of a horned skull. They locked onto Abigail, assessed her, then dismissed her just as easily to scan the room around them.//Realm change detected.“Uh, hi!” Abigail said. She plastered on the best smile she could manage. This was Dreamer’s fault. There wasn’t even the need to wonder how it was the girl’s fault, it just was, as plain as day and as certain as a sunrise.//Threat assessment in progress.//Threat level: disaster.//Query: I wish to return to my realm.The Dreamer clone in the corner looked up, then it reached into the fluff of its dress and pulled out a pamphlet which it extended towards the creature.It took the pamphlet and scanned it carefully.//This is unusual.//What are the methods to escape this location?Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.“Just buy some tea. That’s your purpose, isn’t it?” the pamphlet clone asked with a sigh. “This place calls on people who need its services, whose purpose, however fleetingly, is to get some tea. My purpose is to give people pamphlets about the tea shop.”//Interesting.The creature walked across the shop, making far less noise than something of that size should have, and walking with the liquid grace of a tomcat striding on a fence.It stopped in front of Abigail, then lowered itself to be eye-to-eye with her.//Fleshbag, I am here to acquire tea.//Specifically medicinal tea that can aid in the curing of menstrual cramping.“Uh,” Abigail said. Despite herself, she felt blood rushing to her cheeks. Was this a she-skeleton monster? “I, uh, we might have something like that.”//What forms of payment would be acceptable?“We accept silver, gold, um, just about any currency, I guess,” Abigail said. She tried a grin, then gestured to the side. “I’m going to go make some of that, ah, tea for you.”She was surprised that the tea machine in the kitchen had an option for what the machine had asked for, and made a note to mention as much to Daphne and Charlotte later. Maybe they could become popular in another way later on, after the large, homicidal-looking skeleton golem with menstrual cramps was gone.Abigail made sure the paper cup had its quaint cat-eared cap on, and rushed back to the counter where she placed the cup in front of the skeleton creature. “Ah, do you want anything else with that? We have cake.”//Query: Do you have anything to revitalize a dead empire?“No?”//Query: Do you have any magical devices that could decimate armies?//Failing that, do you have powerful poisons?“No, just pastries.” Abigail fidgetted under the inspection of the machine’s golden eyes. “That’ll be three coppers?”The machine reached to its hip, fiddled with a small purse, then deposited a small golden ingot on the counter. It was no bigger than Abigail’s pinkie.//This is a gold talent.//Goodbye.Abigail watched as the teacup was picked up and held almost endearingly against the skeletal machine’s chest. Then it skittered down the steps and towards the door.“Do you want a pamphlet, so that you can better remember your visit to Dreamer’s Ten’Tea’Cle cafe?” the pamphlet clone asked.//No.“It’s a nice pamphlet. It has the address, and a small text about the services provided at the cafe.”//The text has been memorized.//The pamphlet is unnecessary.//Goodbye.“Why do I even exist?” the clone whispered.The door jingled as it opened, and the machine stepped out. For a moment, Abigail suspected that her eyes were watery. When she blinked them, there was no more machine near the entrance.“Right, Dreamer clone, can you watch the counter please? I need to talk to Dreamer proper about... about limits.
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Chapter Fifteen — Existentialism, More or Less
Chapter Fifteen — Existentialism, More or Less “Thank you,” the Dreamer clone who was beginning to think of herself as the Pamphlet Clone said.She plastered on a smile as the man walked on, his attention on the folded piece of paper he had in hand. She stared at him until he rounded the corner and moved out of sight. Or, more accurately, she was staring at the pamphlet he held.That was her last one.She stared at her hand and the tentacle that was on the end of her misformed tentacle arm.She was out of pamphlets.“Oh,” she said, but there was no one to hear her, even on the otherwise busy street; her single syllable of vocalized emotion was drowned out by the shuffle of feet, the clack of hooves and the rumble of carts.Life, it seemed, went on despite her realization. At least, for others.Her purpose in life was giving people pamphlets.She was out of pamphlets to give.Did that mean that it was over?She let her arms drop. For some time now, she had been thinking, thinking between handing out pamphlets, thinking while she sat next to the cafe’s door at night, waiting for it to be day again and for there to be people out and about that she could give her pamphlets to...Why was she the Pamphlet Clone?There were others. Dreamer made a lot of clones. Some died, some lived, some earned the coveted headpats, others never received them. Most of them had a purpose that they lived, and died, for. And that was enough.Few of them, Pamphlet Clone knew, lasted as long as she had.She... didn’t know why she wanted to last as long as she had. It was just something she wanted to do. Maybe it was because her purpose... made her happy?She gave people pamphlets, and when she did, sometimes people smiled. They thanked her.Not only did she matter in that moment, not only was she fulfilling her purpose, she was making people a little bit happy while doing that.Of all the purposes she might have had... maybe this one wasn’t so bad?But now it was over.No more pamphlets to give. No more hiding and hugging her dwindling supply of pamphlets close to her chest in the alley when it rained to keep them dry, no more... no more anything.Pamphlet Clone looked up into the sky. It was grey. Clouds all over, with only a hint of a sun behind them.She wondered if, maybe, one day she might have run into a pamphlet that told her why. Why the sky was grey, why the rain fell, why she was who she was. But that wouldn’t happen now, because she had run out, as she would, inevitably.“Hey.”Pamphlet Clone turned. It was Charlotte, who was nice; she had taken one of her pamphlets once, had read the entire thing before her before giving the pamphlet back. At the time, she wasn’t sure what to think of that. For someone to give the pamphlet back was so strange. But now... perhaps that had been a small mercy?To take in the information on the pamphlet, fulfilling the pamphlet’s purpose by being read and treasured and fulfilling Pamphlet Clone’s own purpose in giving people a pamphlet, and yet still returning things to a neutral state afterwards.It bothered her, but it wasn’t a bad bother it just... maybe she could be replaced by nothing more than a mere sign.“Hello,” she said. “I don’t have any pamphlets anymore.”“You’re out?” Charlotte said. “Oh, that’s not fun. Why don’t you get more?”“Get... more?”Charlotte nodded, a quick smile on. “Here,” she said as she reached into her purse. She removed a small coin, flat and silvery. “Go by the printer on Venom’s street. There’s a shop there that prints them. I think they should still have the template.”She placed a hand on Pamphlet Clone’s head. A quick, gentle headpat on her way by.Pamphlet Clone barely felt it. She was eyeing the coin.Had... had she been deluding herself?She blinked fast, to get rid of the sting in her eyes, even as she hugged the coin close. “Th-thank you,” she said. But the door bell was already done ringing, and Charlotte was already in the shop, talking with Abigail and Dreamer.Pamphlet Clone started to walk, walk and think.She... she hadn’t realized.Of course, her purpose was still the same but... but if she didn’t want to end it, maybe it didn’t have to? Not if there were more pamphlets to get, more of them to hand out to people.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.Why had no one told her?In the end, she knew why.It didn’t matter to anyone.She was Pamphlet Clone, the clone that gave people pamphlets, and in the greater scheme of things, that didn’t matter. She was, to the universe, a one-off joke that should have ended a long time ago, but here she still was, puttering along, and looking for more pamphlets to give.She had choices she could make too. But she had been denied, by her purpose, by Dreamer, by the universe itself-denied the ability to have certainty that her choices would matter, that they would further her purpose.Pamphlet Clone had not thought to get more pamphlets, because she was blind to the choice that she could have made, and even now, pressed towards a choice that seemed to make her... tentatively hopeful, she wasn’t sure if the end result would be adequate to her.Wouldn’t she just run out of pamphlets again?Was that life now? A cycle. Grab the pamphlets, hand them out, get more.Was that satisfactory?She didn’t know, but for now... maybe it was enough that she have something to do?The printing shop wasn’t anything too nice. A small building with a lot of posters on its front and a big signboard above it. Something within whirled and clanked and clunked, a satisfying music, a mechanical beat that thrummed in time with her own heart.A sign hung by the door. Open.She stepped into the shop to the sound of a jingly bell and looked around at all the signs and booklets and little display pieces. There weren’t many pamphlets here. They seemed, she guessed, to focus more on signs than anything else.She could appreciate those. They had their own merits, though... no, she didn’t want to be the Sign Clone. She knew that she would rather be the Pamphlet Clone, even if she wasn’t sure what it fully meant to be that. It was still her.“Hello,” she said.From the back came an older man. He had a cap on, and big bushy brows that shaded clever, if rheumy eyes. “Hmm? Oh, hello,” he said while rubbing ink-stained hands on a dirty apron, his voice was a little loud.“Hi. I’m the Pamphlet Clone, and I want more pamphlets.”“What was that, dear?” he asked, his head tilting to the side. “You said you were Pam?”She considered it. “No, I’m the Pamphlet Clone. I want... pamphlets. Please?”“Ah!” he said. “Yes yes, I can help you, Pam, my dear. Now, do you have anything in mind?” And with that, the man reached under a counter and placed a thick book onto the top. When he opened the covers, it revealed dozens of pamphlets, held in place by a piece of twine affixed to the binding.“Oh,” she said.“I have double-sided, single-sided, bi-fold, tri-fold, and even some unique shapes,” he said. “Landscape size-for more information, and eight and sixteen fold maps, though I don’t suppose those are technically pamphlets. Brochures too, if that’s what you’re looking for. Folk confuse the two all the time, which is only fair, I always saw them as two sides of the same flyer. Haha! Don’t worry Pam, we’ll find what you’re looking for.”Pamphlet Clone... Pam. Maybe she was Pam. If this man, this expert in pamphlets said so. She swallowed, her throat thick. There were choices. So many of them. Some right, some wrong, and some strange.She tried to breathe, but couldn’t seem to remember how.Then a hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up into caring eyes. “Are you okay, Pam?”“I... I don’t know why I am,” Pam said.“Hmm? Oh, well, I suppose it’s a lot of options, ain’t it? Hey, how would you like to see the machines that make the magic happen, hmm? I’m sure that’ll cheer you right up!”Pam nodded. She would like that, she really would. “I have this,” she said, holding up the coin for the man who made the pamphlets.“That’s awfully nice of you, Pam,” he said with a grin. “But tell you what. I’ve got some scrap paper out back, a few mismatched sheets. How about I show you how to make your own? That way you can save yourself a few coins for candy and the like.” He winked at her.Pam nodded. She would like that too.Maybe her purpose wasn’t certain, maybe things would be confusing still, maybe there would always be too many choices. But then, maybe today wouldn’t be a bad day despite all that.
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Chapter Sixteen — God-ssips
Chapter Sixteen — God-ssips Crossover: Heart of Dorkness by RavensDagger
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A bell jingled above Luciana’s head and she paused to take in her surroundings.This was, she noted idly, not the room she had been entering.“Well, this is interesting,” her companion said from right behind her.Luciana carefully stepped to the side, letting Semper have an unobstructed view of the environs. It was a shop. The sort she’d seen in some of the more affluent cities the world over. More, it was a shop that smelled faintly of tea and... coffee?“I didn’t notice the change,” she said, speaking of course of the shift between realms. This wasn’t Monsterra. The emotional undercurrents of the world were all wrong. There were no monsters here, she knew.Glancing to the side, she noticed Semper eyeing the room as well, the Goddess of Contempt scowling at everything in a way that twisted her nose. Valeria had recently commented that the goddess was quite-in her own naive words-cute when she scowled, and so the amount of scowling Semper did had been reduced dramatically.It seemed as if this warranted some level of such expressions though.Luciana herself took in a deep breath, disgust welling in her with the depth and breadth of an ocean, enough to drown the world, but all carefully contained, all meticulously aimed. She rid herself of any emotion, resettling her expression to what her little scamp of a daughter called her ‘resting mom face.’“Oh! Hello!” A young woman waved from a raised section at the rear. “And welcome to Dreamer’s, ah, ten-tea-cle cafe. The counter’s up here, if you’re looking for anything in particular. We have all sorts of teas, and coffees as well, of course. The pastries are quite nice too.”Luciana nodded. There only seemed to be two people in the room.The first she had noticed was the young woman addressing them now, who seemed entirely oblivious to her own status, or Semper’s, for that matter. She didn’t sense any overwhelming emotions in the woman, so it was unlikely that she was a cultivator of any sort.The other was a malformed creature sitting in the corner, currently working on some sort of small arts and crafts project, crayons moving with more enthusiasm than skill to scribble across an already folded, homemade flyer of some sort. She was pinning it in place with a tentacled limb, and was pinching her tongue between her lips in a manner similar to how Valeria did when focusing.The child felt dangerous.“Is it common for the guests of this establishment to be from... elsewhere?” Luciana asked.The girl froze up. “Oh... ohh, you’re not from here. Right, that would explain all the eyes and the... well, nevermind. Ah, yes? Don’t worry, once you leave, you’ll probably be right back where you left!”She glanced to Semper, who shrugged. “This isn’t the strangest thing to happen this year for me.”“Truly?” Luciana asked. That sounded like excellent gossip.The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.“Oh, yes. See, I just learned that my best friend had a child, without me ever noticing.”The Goddess of Darkness rolled her eyes. Typical. “Perhaps you can continue to ridicule me over some tea, then?” she asked.“Of course.”They were both still on their guard as they approached one of the nearby tables and took a seat. The young woman working there brought them a pair of menus, and when asked, hurried off to procure two cups of tea. Black for Luciana, and a sugar-filled berry tea for Semper, whose contempt Luciana suspected applied to her own dentistry.“Have you ever realm-travelled?” Luciana asked as she settled down across from Semper.“No, not really. Was it more common before my time?”“Not particularly,” Luciana said. “Besters has frequently disappeared for a decade or two, and I suspect that he was off gallivanting to see other worlds and be disappointed about them. I believe Mortimer might have some... off-world accounts, as it were. Mostly no one bothers.”“Ah, but we are quite lazy, aren’t we?” Semper asked.Luciana nodded. “I suppose we are.”“Speaking of laziness... have I been so ill a friend that I missed your pregnancy? And the first, oh, I would guess thirteen years of your daughter’s life? Or are you merely quite good at hiding things from me?”“You hardly missed anything,” Luciana said.“Are you certain?” Semper asked. “Because I received a very nice letter from a concerned young woman-delivered by wyvern to one of my smaller temples no less-that thanked me for being your friend.”Luciana had a difficult time keeping her resting mom face in place. Was it too late to ground Valeria for that? Perhaps some time-out? A smack on the rear? She truly didn’t know.“Valeria was a.... Mistake.”Semper leaned forwards. “Please, do tell. Luciana the Dark Goddess herself having a... mistake. Who was it? Enano? He has this very... daddy like look to him.”“It was no one,” Luciana said.“Luto maybe? He’s quite fetching in a sad boy kind of way. Or perhaps you caught Alejandro in a bind? For all that he’s a glorified man-child he is the god of love.”“Ah, your, um, tea is here,” the waiting girl said. She placed a tray on the table, then carefully put two cups before Luciana and Semper. “Um, I brought cakes too, on the house!”“Thank you,” Luciana said. She fished out a golden coin from the void and placed it on the tray.“Oh, thank you!” the girl said before scampering off.Semper smiled. “So? Please tell me it was not Heroe.”Luciana recoiled. “That’s disgusting.”“Exactly!”She shook her head. “In a way... you are correct though.”The goddess across from Luciana gasped. “What?!”“Heroe tried to summon a new sacrifice to his useless cause, and he was as clumsy as he usually is. It resulted in a second child being pulled over. She found herself in my care, and one thing led to another.”“Oh, oh no girl, you are skipping far too much there.” Semper grabbed her cup of tea and leaned halfway across the table. “Tell me more.”
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Chapter Seventeen — Mango Cake
Chapter Seventeen — Mango Cake Crossover: Beneath the Dragoneye Moons by Selkie Myth
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A strange florp occurred, and I was suddenly in a cafe.Espresso machines gurgled, a slow-roaster ticked — all sounds that I recognized even though I hadn’t heard them in a long time. Was I on Earth?I looked around to reorientate myself, only now noticing the girl — about my own age — standing a few feet ahead of me with a wince on her face and a white towel around her hand. She was clutching a wound, something I’d seen plenty of times.Next to her was a girl. A girl with a rather cute pout and a not so cute amount of tentacles slipping out of her dress.“Hey there. Are you hurt? And is that a coffee machine?”“Oh? Yeah, that’s a coffee machine. I’m really sorry, I cut myself because I was clumsy, and then Dreamer tried to help but, ah, well, now you’re here. Are you a doctor?”She glanced down at my clothes, steel armour, skirt, sandals, and seemed to decide that I wasn’t. Maybe she couldn’t see my class? Hers was [Artisan] but it was about as pale as a class could be.“I’m a healer,” I said.I glanced at the strange girl with the tentacles. This obviously wasn’t Pallos, so maybe tentacle-girls were the norm here? [Dreamer — The Eater of Gods — She Who Is Pat — The Nightmare]The title was black.Not just black, it was a void, letters so dark they seemed to make the idea of colours fade.A tentacle slid out of nothing, one covered in eyes, and it prodded at the class, the title shifting to the side.Nope. Nope nope nope. I was going to be clever and pretend that I hadn’t even looked.“Abigail is hurt. Can you fix her?”“Please,” the girl I presumed was Abigail said.“Please.”“Healing, yes. I can heal, that is something I do,” I said as I rushed closer. It wasn’t often that I was distracted from healing, but then again... whatever Dreamer was felt like a great excuse for a momentary pause.I touched Abigail’s wrist, careful not to alarm her, and she surrendered her hand to me.“How are you hurt? The more I know, the better I can heal you.” I asked.“I was cleaning the bean grinder, and I sliced my thumb, it’s that...” Abigail paused and looked over to a counter where I presumed a bean grinder had been before.“It hurt you,” the small god-eating tentacle child said.The healing was easy. Ridiculously easy. My mana didn’t even have time to drop before it was back up to full. Abigail’s cut had been no worse than a bad papercut.“All healed,” I said as I helped Abigail unwrap her hand from the cloth she’d used to staunch her bleeding.“Oh, thank you,” Abigail said.“No problem, it’s what I do. Speaking of which, where am I?”“This is my and Dreamer’s tea shop. Would you like some tea before Dreamer sends you back? For the road, so to speak? Maybe some pastries?”“I don’t need payment for such a small bit of healing. Uh, do you usually summon healers whenever you get cut?”It would be a bit of a pain if they did that every time. What if I had been in the middle of an operation or something when I was yanked over? Urgh, I’d need to make a point of teaching Abigail not to yoink healers willy-nilly.“No, I thought I was fine, but Dreamer was afraid,” Abigail said. She reached over and Dreamer moved closer so that when Abigail’s hand came down, it landed on her head.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.The tentacle girl let out a content little sigh.“So, you can send me back, right?”“Yeah,” Dreamer said.“Cool. In that case, I’d love some tea?”This was unusual, but I was determined to make the best of it.Abigail escorted me out of the kitchen and into a dining area that felt more modern than anything I’d seen in a long time. She gestured to a seat at a table and I sat down. It wasn’t too far from the corner, where a girl that could have been the tentacle-girl’s twin was sitting and reading from — to my surprise — an actual paper pamphlet.“Here’s the menu,” Abigail said as she placed a cardstock menu on the table with a click.“Thanks,” I said.My eyes scanned the long list of teas, then zeroed in on the list of deserts.They had mango cake.They had whipped cream.Heck yeah!I was confused for a moment when my thumb brushed the menu and it moved. It was electronic!I was probably a little too excited as I clicked on the various options and enjoyed the little beeps and boops the menu made. Eventually though, I tampered down my gluttony and only ordered a slice of cake and some tea.I sat with rapidly decreasing patience while Abigail puttered away behind the counter and the girl with the pamphlets scribbled away. I had actually lost sight of Dreamer, which I would never admit to anyone with the rangers because losing sight of something like that was just embarrassing.“So, what’re you making there?” I asked.“Pamphlets,” the girl replied distractedly.“That’s neat. What are they about?”“They’re Not Today pamphlets,” she said.Her head rose.“Do you want one?”Uh. “Sure?”The paper alone might be interesting to have. A long tentacle slithered over to me and carefully placed a pamphlet over my menu with an amount of care and delicacy that something so obviously made by a child probably didn’t deserve.The cover had Not Today written on it, in crayon. Under that was a drawing of a one-armed, one-tentacled girl. The drawing’s face had a flat line for a mouth.I opened it up and scanned through the text.Today is not the day where you will die.That means that you still have things to do.Do the things you’re meant to do.You still have many days to live.The next page had a counter on it, the number displayed — in the thousands — was flickering up and down like a digital clock on the fritz, but it was drawn in crayon.“What’s this part?” I asked, a little nervous.“How many days until it is today.”I carefully laid the pamphlet down. “Nice, very, uh, nice.”“Thank you. I give people pamphlets. It’s my purpose in life. Now I make pamphlets to give to people. That isn’t my purpose, but it makes me happy.”“Well, we all need hobbies,” I said.Fortunately, Abigail showed up with a large wedge of cake on a plate, a steaming cup of tea, and a small cardboard box. “I saw you smiling when you saw the cake, and I don’t think it’s very popular, so I put the rest in the box. As an apology for Dreamer’s... Dreamerness.”I stared at the wedge. It was tall and fat, with the yellowy goodness of mango wedges dripping with some sort of sugary sauce jammed between layers of cake. There was icing. There were crushed almonds on top. There was an unhealthy amount of whipped cream slathered onto the whole thing.“Apology accepted,” I said.
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Chapter Eighteen — Finding Solutions
Chapter Eighteen — Finding Solutions Dreamer bounced on the seat across from Abigail.It was night time, so the cafe was closed. They only had a few lights on, and there was a sign on the door that read ‘Open,’ but only from the inside because the other side said the opposite. So, it was just Dreamer and Abigail, and one of Dreamer’s clones who was in the corner being quiet.Dreamer figured she’d get rid of that clone later, since they didn’t need to hand people pamphlets anymore, but for now it was time to spend special time with Abigail.“Okay,” Abigail said. “You understand what we’re doing, right?”Dreamer nodded. “Yes,” she said.“And that is...” Abigail said.Dreamer thought for just a moment. “You’re going to show me a thing with a situation on it, and then I’ll tell you how I’ll react.”“That’s right,” Abigail said. She smiled at Dreamer who smiled back. This was going to be very easy and Dreamer would earn lots of pats. Abigail lifted a stack of cardboard cue cards and straightens them out on the table with a satisfying clunk clunk. “Let’s start?”Dreamer nodded. She was ready.“Alright, so let’s see.” Abigail pulled out the first card and read it aloud. “While walking to school someone stops both of us on the side of the road, and insults us.”Abigail lowered the card and smiled.Dreamer frowned. She sensed a trap.“I... uh... tell the person not to do that?” Dreamer asked.“Yes, good,” Abigail said. “What else?”“I... hit them with a tentacle?”Abigail sighed. “No Dreamer. Someone insulting you or me is bad, but it’s a... not so bad thing. It’s like a little bad. And when things are only a little bad, then you need to react with an, uh, appropriate amount of... reaction.” She nodded.Dreamer considered it, then nodded too. “Okay.” It made sense. Small bad things deserved small bad things in return.“Alright,” Abigail said. She flipped to another cue card. “While we’re both at the cafe, someone breaks in and, with a knife, demands that I give him everything in the till.”“Will he pay for all the stuff?” Dreamer asked.“No, he’s a thief,” Abigail said.Dreamer nodded. That made sense. “In that case, if he’s going to steal from us, then I’ll steal their life from them.”Abigail shook her head. “While defending the shop and us is okay, that doesn’t mean that you can do a crime in return.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “In that case, I’ll just tentacle them.”“Tentacle them?” Abigail asked.“With a knife tentacle?” Dreamer added.“No dreamer, that would kill them,” Abigail said.Dreamer pouted. “I could knife tentacle them softly.”“I don’t think that’s entirely a, uh, good idea either. People die when they’re stabbed, and the, ah, gentleness of the stabbing doesn’t change things much.” Abigail shook her head. “No, that’s another very violent response to things.”If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“This is hard,” Dreamer said.“You’ll get the hang of it. We’ll work on it together. Look, this one is easy.” Abigail cleared her throat. “You and I are heading over to Daphne’s for an important event, when we realize that we’re almost late. It’s going to take ten minutes to arrive, and we only have five minutes left. What do we do?”Dreamer tilted her head to one side, then the other. There wasn’t anyone to tentacle in this one, so the problem was a little more complicated. “We’re going to be late?”“Yes,” Abigail said. “In fact, that’s not a wrong answer. It’s okay to be late sometimes, even if it’s not very polite. Life happens.”Dreamer nodded, happy that she’d gotten one right, even though it was by accident. “Good. I had another solution too, but if that one works it’s good.”“What was the other solution?” Abigail asked.“To stop time so that we wouldn’t be late.”“Ah,” Abigail said.“With tentacles.” She made grabby gestures in the air behind her. “Just grab onto time and tell it to stop moving for a little.”“I think, maybe, we should keep violations of causality to a minimum.”“Okay,” Dreamer said. Yet another thing to add to the list. It was growing super long. One day she’d need to talk to Abigail about it. No killing, no eating living things, no tentacling people, no experiments on the planet, and now no breaking causality. “This is too many rules.”“I... you’re right,” Abigail said.Dreamer wasn’t expecting that. “I am?” Usually, Dreamer was wrong about stuff in some nebulous, hard to understand way.Abigail set the cue cards on the table, and out of curiosity, Dreamer peeked at it to read the next prompt. Maybe she could get a head start in figuring out the next answer?We arrive at a restaurant, and there aren’t enough seats for all of us to sit and eat there. Without stealing seats or using tentacles, how do you address the situation?... How was she supposed to answer that without breaking causality?Abigail distracted Dreamer by coming around the table and squatting next to her. She smiled, then raised her arms for a hug that Dreamer eagerly fell into. It was a very nice hug, because it was a hug that Dreamer had both earned for doing hard work, and also because Abigail pat Dreamer’s head at the same time.“I’m sorry,” Abigail said. “I’m asking a lot of you, aren’t I? I feel like I do that a lot. You’re you, and I’m me, and I think there are some big big differences in how we see things.”That was true. Dreamer had a lot more eyes than Abigail.“So, sometimes we might not see things the same way, but I still love you, no matter what,” Abigail said. “And I’m sorry.”Dreamer tucked her head into the crook of Abigail’s neck. “It’s okay. I’m not a mortal-person, and you’re very confusing, but you give good pats and hugs, so I’ll try to do better to keep getting those.”Abigail laughed. “Well, at least you’re honest.”
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Chapter Nineteen — The Pursuit of Reason
Chapter Nineteen — The Pursuit of Reason Pam looked at the two pamphlets on the table. On the left was one of the pamphlets she existed to give out. It had the cafe’s logo on it, and the address. It was printed at the sign shop by the nice old mortal who named Pam Pam.On the right was another pamphlet. This one was one of those that she had made. It was called the Not Today pamphlet, and she had made several hundred of them. Each one was a little different, a little... better.Not always. Sometimes she did something wrong, sometimes, in her pursuit of a better pamphlet, she didn’t quite get it all right. The mistakes were lessons though, lessons on how to place the words, where to put the images, how to crease and fold the pamphlet.There was a lot more to it then she had ever considered.It was, she judged, a good goal to have in life: to learn how to make the perfect pamphlet.Hers weren’t.Her pamphlet was still a little uneven, and her handwriting a bit scratchy. The crayons she used weren’t as precise as the stamped ink on the old man’s pamphlets, and hers lacked a certain uniformity to them. When she stacked hers, they didn’t all feel the same.That was okay.Pam felt happy that she was getting better, and when she shared her pamphlets, the ones she made, it made her feel... special. Nervous, but special.The old mister made pamphlets for a living. He had said so himself. Maybe she could make pamphlets to keep on living too?She had made a lot of Not Today pamphlets, enough to last her a while. A good, proper (if crooked) stack of them. Now she was considering making another sort of pamphlet.“Hey, you.”Pam looked up and found that Dreamer was staring at her. “Hi,” she said.“Hi,” Dreamer said. “I should probably get rid of you, because we don’t need you anymore.”“Oh,” Pam said.That made sense. She was here to hand out pamphlets, but now that the cafe had a steady stream of customers-in part (she hoped) because of her efforts-they really didn’t need her there anymore.She could accept it. It would be the right thing to do. Dreamer would yoink her back into the big body, and Pam would be nommed away.Maybe if she was lucky some small part of her would remain, become one with the bigger whole that was Dreamer.She doubted it.Her speck, her existence, was a tiny thing.“I don’t want to,” Pam said.Dreamer blinked. “Yeah well, that doesn’t matter.”“I can still help,” Pam said.Dreamer frowned. “But we don’t need you anymore.”Pam opened and closed her mouth. Reality was warping, and she knew that she was about to end. “I can make things that you can’t,” she said.Dreamer paused. “What?”“I can make things that you can’t,” Pam said. She grabbed a Not Today pamphlet and gave it to Dreamer. There was that familiar jolt of happy as Dreamer took the pamphlet, but it was a small, distant thing. “That’s something I made. I can make others.”If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“This is weird,” Dreamer said.“I... I know,” Pam said. Her pamphlets were weird. They weren’t as good as other pamphlets. And despite how happy she was to see someone taking something she made, it still made tentacles wiggle in her stomach to have someone see something she made.Pam hesitated, then she lied, lied to herself and to Dreamer.“It’s a very good pamphlet. It has good information and, ah, visual design. And it’s very nice. I think that people would be very impressed seeing it.”“Yeah, okay?” Dreamer asked.Dreamer... didn’t get it. She wasn’t Pam. Pam had been Dreamer once, she knew how Dreamer thought, and Dreamer didn’t care about pamphlets. It was why Pam was made.It felt like... like she was a pamphlet in the hands of someone who didn’t care, and now she was being torn apart, ripped into little shreds.She was made because people didn’t care about the thing she was made to do. No one would ever understand her purpose.But, that wasn’t true. There was the old man.There was Pam.“I can make new kinds of pamphlets,” Pam said. “All sorts. I can make them about anything.”“Yeah, but I don’t need them,” Dreamer said. She was confused.Maybe that was good. Pam was often confused too. “I... I can make pamphlets about good things. About food, and about hugs and pats and Abigail. I can make them so good that when people read them, they’ll learn about how good those things are.”Dreamer hesitated. “That would be good.”“Yes!” Pam cheered. “Yes, I can make them so good that everyone that reads them will know how good the things are.”Dreamer looked at Pam’s Not Today pamphlet, the one she’d been given. It was the latest one, with her best ideas, her greatest efforts.“Okay,” Dreamer said.“Okay,” Pam said. She smiled.A new purpose. Sort of. She was still Pam the pamphlet clone, but she would continue to be, and she would make the best pamphlet that ever was.And in doing so... maybe she’d find a purpose behind her purpose. Maybe that would be enough for her to be happy, even if she might be nommed one day.Pam gathered her pamphlets with a big smile on and rushed to the door and then outside. She had to visit the old man again. He told her how he made his pamphlets, but maybe she could learn more.At the entrance she almost bumped into Charlotte, who was just walking in.“Oh, hey, it’s you,” Charlotte said. She smiled, then frowned. “Why are you crying?”Pam tried to speak, then had to sniff in hard to clear her nose. Talking was so much worse than just giving people a pamphlet, she found. “I... I was almost gone, but I’m here instead. I have a purpose.”“That’s wonderful.” Charlotte said. She squatted down so that her eyes were level with Pam’s. “Are you feeling okay?”Pam considered it. “I think so.”“Good, good,” Charlotte said. She raised her arms. “Come on, just a quick hug to make sure.”Pam discovered something else. She really enjoyed hugs.It was a very strange day.
Chapter Twenty — Magical Girls
Chapter Twenty — Magical Girls Crossover: The Agartha Loop, by RavensDagger
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“Yeah, but there’s just something about older women, you know, they have this...” Cassy paused mid-sentence, which was strange. She could really get going sometimes, at least when she was on a topic she cared about.Amber looked to her blue-blonde haired friend, then looked around. It didn’t take much to figure out why Cassy was acting strangely.They weren’t in the Academy anymore.They might have been in Norumbega. The decor-part rustic, part modern-would fit right in with some of the shops next to the portal back to Earth. She hadn’t ever heard of a cat-themed cafe, but then she didn’t spend that much time outside of the Academy.“Uh,” Jade said as she stepped up behind her.All three of them-Amber, Cassy, and Jade, turned to the fourth member of their group.Morgan, for her part, was frowning as she took in the room. “We were teleported,” she said.“Wow,” Cassy said. “I’m so glad that you’re the first person I turned to, because I would never have guessed. It’s almost like I was not in the place I was walking to. I didn’t think I could find that out just by looking around and noticing the obvious.”“Don’t be rude, Cassy,” Amber said. Though the statement had been a little obvious.Morgan sidestepped around Jade and Amber and walked up in the lead. “It could be a magical pulling a trick on us.”“Right,” Amber said. A trap, by those weird magicals that had tried to kill her a few times already. She felt herself tensing, ready to act. She wished that she was in her magical girl costume already, but she'd have to figure things out without the benefit of her costume.“I can’t sense anything too strange,” Morgan said. “Then again, my senses are hardly the sharpest. Amber, Jade, do you feel anything?”Amber shook her head, and Jade muttered a quiet ‘no’ next to her.“Hey, you’re not going to ask me?” Cassy asked.Morgan rolled her eyes. “Cassy, do you sense any differences in this place’s gravity?”Cassy crossed her arms. “As a matter of fact, I do.”Now they all turned to stare at Cassy, who had a distinct and powerfully smug look on. “Seriously?” Amber asked.“Yeah, this place is lighter.”“Lighter?” Morgan asked.“There’s less... gravity stuff,” Cassy added.“Could you be any less accurate?” Morgan added.Cassy glared right back. “Look, no one knows how gravity works, alright? Just because I can mess with it doesn’t mean I get it. All the sciency books I looked into just throw big meaningless words around because sciency sorts are too cowardly to admit that they don’t have the faintest clue. But I’m telling you that the gravity here is lighter.”“Uh, hello!”The four members of team Svallin looked up to find a girl just a year or two older than them, with a nice apron on, and a nervous smile. “Welcome to Dreamer’s cafe, ah, are you... not from around here?”“We’re not,” Amber confirmed.“That happens a lot, I hope you don’t mind being, ah, brought over. We have a discount for people who have travelled here.” She gestured to the side where a sign hung on the wall. It had a chalk menu, and at the top, right next to some symbols that seemed to swim around like optical illusions, was some text in big letters. Realm Travellers Get a 20% Discount!This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it“What is this place?” Morgan asked.“It’s a tea shop,” the girl said. “We get a lot of people from other worlds here. Ah, once you’re done, you should be able to go back home with no problems.”The girls glanced at each other. Surprisingly, Jade was the first to speak up. “I’ll be honest, this isn’t the strangest thing I’ve heard of.”“So, what do you serve here?” Cassy asked.“Tea, cake, coffee,” the woman said.“That sounds nice?” Amber tried. “Maybe we can just sit for a moment and look at the menus?”“Of course!” the serving woman said. She grabbed four menus from a little rack and handed them over. “Pick any seat, and I’ll bring your things over in no time. Don’t worry about currency, we accept just about anything, really.”The four of them moved over to a table off to the side and sat down, then they stared at the menus for a bit. “Okay, this is seriously weird, right?” Cassy asked.“You’re asking for confirmation?” Morgan asked.“Hey, I’ve only been doing the magic stuff for a month or so, for all I know girls end up in the magic coffee shop all the time,” Cassy shot back.“If they do, it’s news to me,” Morgan said. “Should we call the school?”“I checked my phone, there’s no signal,” Jade said. “Also, if gravity really is weird, we might not be on Agartha, or on Earth.”“The Seelie, then?” Amber asked.“You think they’ll show up?” Cassy asked. She placed her menu down, a few items already highlighted.Amber shrugged. “We can try?” At the chorus of nods, she closed her eyes and focused. “Seelie, Seelie, Seelie,” she said.Nothing happened for a moment.Then there was a commotion from the back of the cafe, and a young girl’s voice called out. “Abigail! There’s a kitty cat in the kitchen! Can I eat it?”Pots and pans banged and the girl that had given them the menus ran back into what Amber presumed was the kitchen. “Let go of that! It might be dirty.”More banging, and the distinct sound of a mug breaking.“Catch it!” the girl’s voice said. “It keeps slipping out of my tentacles.”Amber and the rest of team Svallin stared wide-eyed as a disheveled Seelie burst into their part of the cafe and flew into Amber’s arms. “Protect me!” it screamed in a way that didn’t suit the Seelie’s usual calm tones at all.The waitress and a little girl in a dress rushed into the room. “Did you see a— oh, there it is ,” the waitress said.“My snack!” the girl in the dress said.Amber hugged the Seelie closer. “I’m sorry, this is, ah, our friend?”“It will consume me, as it has consumed entire worlds,” the Seelie muttered. “It is the end of all things, the waking nightmare. Her reach is eternal through time and space. Why us, why us?” It was shivering.“That’s my snack,” the girl said to Amber.“Um.”The waitress placed a hand on the smaller girl’s head. “No Dreamer, it’s their cat, though... maybe don’t let your cat into the kitchen, please?”“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Amber promised.“Wonderful! So, have you decided what to order yet” she asked, switching tracks in the way that only someone who had seen it all could manage.
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Chapter Twenty-One — Secret Pamphlet Making Technique: Long Horizontal Fold!
Chapter Twenty-One — Secret Pamphlet Making Technique: Long Horizontal Fold! Pam had a lot in her pamphlet, her metaphorical one.Dreamer wouldn’t nom her, not as long as she was useful, which meant that she had to make herself useful. That wasn’t all that simple.Today she was out on the streets, walking at a good pace through the city with her head on a swivel. She had to find someone who could help her.Last time, that had been the nice pamphlet-making man. He had given her a name, had taught her how to make pamphlets and was very nice. She liked him, and he was just a normal mortal. Then again, so was Abigail, and even Pamphlet, who had barely interacted with Abigail at all, knew that she was pretty great.So now she was thinking very hard about finding another person who could help her.The problem was that there were a lot of people in Five Peaks, a whole city’s worth of them, and she didn’t know which one would be the best to ask for help. There was Daphne, but Daphne wasn’t an expert on what Pam was looking for.Charlotte was very nice, but she was also busy, so Pam couldn’t ask her.She sighed and slowed to a stop at the next street corner. A few carriages were blocking the intersection, the people driving them screaming at each other about who had the right to turn first while their horses neighed and looked uncomfortable about the whole thing.She looked around at all the people around her. Did any of them seem nice to talk to?There was a gentle old lady, and a young woman that looked a bit like Abigail nearby with a big basket before her. A less old-lady was whispering with an equally less-old friend next to her, trading gossip about the logos on the sides of the carriages.They didn’t seem right. Instead, Pam focused on an old man next to them. He had a nice suit on, and a tubular hat that marked him as a person of some middling importance. He also had a cane, but didn’t seem to have a limp, so Pam wasn’t sure what to think about that.“Hello mister,” she said.The man looked down at her. “I don’t give money to beggars,” he said.Pam shook her head. “I’m not a beggar. I’m a pamphlet giver.”“Well, I don’t want it,” he said.“That’s okay,” Pam said. She didn’t intend to give him one anyway. She only had Not Today pamphlets on her anyway. “I have a question.”The man sighed. “Well, ask someone then.”She nodded. He was someone. “I have questions about stuff, who can I ask?”The man chuckled. “Have you tried asking the Inquisition? They’re rather fond of those.” He sniffed, then walked around her. The congestion on the road finally freed up as one carriage pulled out ahead of the other.Pam considered what he’d said. The Inquisition were those people that Dreamer had gotten some of her nicer hats from. They were the very rude people that used to meddle in Abigail’s stuff until Dreamer kindly asked them not to and threatened them with the great bapping paper of bapping.There were always a few of them spying on the cafe, on Abigail, and on her friends.Pam had even given a few of them some of her pamphlets. They had placed the pamphlet in a little baggie with some long metal tongs before running off.She glanced over to a nearby alleyway between a house and a bakery, and the Inquisitor spying on her ducked back in a hurry.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.Well, if the old man said so...Pam walked over to the alley, then into it.There were two people there, both young men in very normal clothes. They weren’t even wearing any hats. But they felt like Inquisitors. All of those Inquisitor people had meddled with a certain amount of eldritch magic, which left a stain on them that was easy to spot. “Hello Inquisitor people, I have a question,” she said.“Uh, hey there, I don’t know what you mean,” the one on the left said. He was shorter, and had boring brown hair and boring brown eyes. He smiled strangely and took a step back and away from Pam.The other man didn’t seem nearly as nervous. He was taller, with more muscles, and a mean look in his eyes. “Don’t need to be afraid, it’s just one of the thing’s clones.”“My question is who can I ask about hugs?”“Uh, we, ah, we have to go,” the shyer one said.“C’mon, look at it—it’s hardly a threat.”“You weren’t there when it broke into the headquarters and made a mess of everything.”The bigger one shook his head. “You Five Peaks people are so weak. It’s unbelievable. I’d rather die than cower in front of a bloody child.”Pam blinked. “Oh,” she said. She reached into her pretty dress, which had a few ribbons she used to tie pamphlets with, and undid one that held onto a Not Today pamphlet. “Here,” she said as she extended the pamphlet to the man.It was one of her latest ones, her very best work.He scoffed and slapped her hand to the side. Her pamphlet flipped over in the air and landed in a puddle of dirty water without even a splash. “Don’t approach me, you extra-dimensional filth.”Pam looked at her pamphlet, then backed up to the man. She felt a feeling in her tummy. It was very warm and she didn’t like it.“Hey, don’t antagonize it,” the softer guy hissed.“Oh, please, it’s not even human.” The big guy stepped up to Pam, then jabbed his forefingers onto her head. It wasn’t a pat, it was a poke, and it hurt.“Stop that,” Pam said.“Or what?” the man asked. He poked her again.The warm in her tummy turned cold.Her purpose was to make pamphlets, that’s all she was good for, but making pamphlets was an art, and all art came with advantages. She stepped forwards and shot her hand out, smacking the man in the chest with a tiny whump.“Was that meant to hurt?” the man asked. “See, it’s useless.”She pouted. She wasn’t useless. “Secret Pamphlet Making Technique: Long Horizontal Fold!”The man’s laughter cut off as his feet twisted, toes turning to point at each other. Humans were able to do that much, it wasn’t even hard. Then his knees snapped around and faced each other, with something in his hips popping.When his hips folded in half he screamed, even as his stomach bent in on itself.The scream stopped when his ribs folded forwards and touched each other, then his neck, and finally his face.It was weird, seeing a person’s face squish into itself, then twist around so that their eyes smacked into each other.The man fell to the ground, folded in the middle.Pam shook her hand out and looked to the softer man, who was breathing very hard. “I’m looking for people who are good at hugs,” she asked.
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Chapter Twenty-Two — Close Physical Affection of the Third Kind
Chapter Twenty-Two — Close Physical Affection of the Third Kind Pam wished she had a map.Maps were kind of neat, especially the big foldy ones. They were like pamphlets that told people where to go and stuff, which was very neat.Also, they were spelled M-A-P, which was just Pam backwards.Not all maps were pamphlet-like, or course, and not everything was edible either, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t some overlap.Pam shook her head, she had to refocus and remember the directions the nice inquisitor had given her. A right here, cross a road there, move past the place with all the shops at the end of this road... and then she was there.The district she was in had a lot of nice houses with porches on the front. Long cloth banners hung from one side of the street to the other, and there were lights all along the street with red glass panels around the magical bulbs. The doors on all the houses were also red.She paused on the sidewalk and glanced around. There weren’t many carts moving through the area, and even fewer people were standing around than usual. It was a little strange. The porches leading into some of the homes were occupied though, often by women that were wearing very flowy sorts of dresses.They were nice, but a little too loose for Pam’s taste. Pam had a lot to say about her progenitor, but Dreamer definitely had great tastes in pretty dresses.“Hey, sweetie,” someone said.Pam turned and found a young woman, just a bit older than Abigail, approaching her. She bent down to be at the same height as Pam. That was nice of her.“Hey, are you looking for someone?” the lady asked.Pam nodded. “I am. I’m looking for someone that’s good at hugging.”“Ah,” the lady said. She stared Pam up and down. “Aren’t you... very young for that?”“For hugs?” Pam asked. She was confused.“Are you here on your own, sweetie?” the lady asked.Pam nodded. “Yeah.”“Where are your parents?”Pam considered it. Did she have parents? Dreamer was... not a parent. Her progenitor, certainly, but she hadn’t given birth to Pam, and she didn’t parent her. She made Pam, but that was the extent of it. “I have no parents, I was created whole cloth from the void with a singular purpose which I one day hope to transcend so that I can better understand myself and the world around me. Right now, the next step in that transcendence is a better understanding of hugs.”“Uh. Okay, you’re an orphan then. Poor thing, you don’t even have any shoes on. Come on, we’ll go see Madam Graham.”“Does she know a lot about hugs?” Pam asked.“She knows a lot about everything,” the lady said. She extended a hand for Pam to take, and she did, the lady leading her over to one of the nicer homes along the street.They stepped in just as a man walked out, he was tugging his shirt on straight, his hair a mess under his hat, though he seemed to be in a good mood despite the state of his clothes. The house had a lounge in the entrance, with sofas here and there, a few little tables with nice plants on them, and lots of curtains on the walls and over the windows. There was a lot of red around, for reasons that Pamphlet couldn’t figure out.Stolen story; please report.Maybe it was to hide the blood? She could vaguely recall hearing something like that when she was still Dreamer.“Madam Graham,” the lady leading Pam said.A big woman turned. She was the oldest miss in the room, a lot of makeup on and keen eyes that took Pam in at a glance. “Who’s this little lady?” she asked.“Hi,” Pam said. “I’m Pam.”“Hello Pam,” the lady said.“Madam Graham, Pam here, ah, was asking about... things on the street. I thought it best that she not stay out there on her own,” the lady still holding onto Pam’s hand said.“That’s likely for the best,” Madam Graham said. The other women in the room were looking at Pam, and she overhead some saying that she was very cute, which made her feel nice.“I’m here because I had questions,” Pam said.“Ah, so you’re not here looking for a wayward father then,” Madam Graham said.Some of the women giggled at that. Pam shook her head. “That’s not why I’m here, miss Madam. I’m looking for someone that can tell me about hugs. I’m making a pamphlet about hugs.”“Ah,” the lady said. She looked up to the girl holding onto Pam’s hand. “Let’s go talk in my office, shall we? Cindy, keep an eye on things while I’m busy. That man in the pumpernickel room looks like the sort who gets rowdy once he has a drink or two in his blood.”“Yes ma’am,” one of the women said.Pam followed Madam into an opulent office, with a big desk and a lot of dressers against the walls. There were more mirrors in this room, and even more curtains. “Sit down, dear,” the lady said with a gesture to a plush seat in front of the desk.Pam let go of the hand she was still holding onto and plopped herself down. “Are you going to teach me about hugging?” Pam asked.Madam Graham sat on the front edge of her desk. “When you say hugging, what do you mean?” she asked.Pam was already familiar with such existential questions.“I mean when someone hugs you and it feels good.”“Just hugging?” she asked.Pam nodded, then hesitated. “Sometimes they pat-pat your head and that’s nice too.”“I see,” Madam Graham said. She looked relieved. “Well, in that case, I think... do you know about the different kinds of love? No, you’re too young. There are many sorts of love. There’s the physical, the love you feel for a comrade, and the love that comes from being safe in the presence of another. There are more, of course, but hugging gives you all three of those.”“Oh,” Pam said. That was a more complicated answer than she expected. Then again, there was a lot of things that were more complicated than she thought at first. “What else is there?”She was determined to learn though. Soon, she’d be able to make pamphlets that would teach anyone that read them to be the very greatest huggers!
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Chapter Twenty-Three — About Hugs
Chapter Twenty-Three — About Hugs “You want to know all of this to... make a pamphlet about it?” Madam Graham asked.Pam nodded. “Yeah. A pamphlet about hugs.”“That’s interesting, dear, but why a pamphlet? I can hardly imagine a scenario where someone needs to learn that hugs, that physical affection in general, are good,” she said. Madam Graham gestured past Pam and to the nice lady that had escorted Pam to her. “Can you get us some tea, dear, just plain black.”“Yes, ma’am,” the lady said before leaving the office.Madam Graham leaned forwards. “So, tell me, Pam, you really just want to know to make a pamphlet? That seems... strange to me.”Pam shrugged. “It’s why I exist. To distribute pamphlets. But sometimes, I’ve learned, the reason you live can’t be something so simple. Sometimes you need more. Like giving people pamphlets is a good reason to exist, I think, but those pamphlets need to come from somewhere, someone needs to make them. And there’s a quality tied to it. Good pamphlets and bad ones. You don’t want the spirit of the reason you exist to be tainted by poor quality.”Madam Graham blinked a few times. It was an expression that Pam found didn’t suit her very make-up covered face. “That was a little deeper than I was expecting, I’ll be honest,” she said.Pamphlet rooted around and found one of her Not Today pamphlets. She placed it on the table and slid it forwards. “Here,” she said.The lady took it, opened it, then carefully read through it. Her expression changed a few times, becoming a weird mashup of happy and sad that Pam understood all too well.“May I keep this?” she asked. “I think, maybe, some of my girls might appreciate it.”Pam nodded very quickly. “That’s what they’re for.”“This is impressive work, Pam. I’ll be honest, I was expecting something very different. Usually, when a girl off the street... well, nevermind. You said you wanted to know about hugs?”“Yes. So that I can make a pamphlet about them, because hugs are good, so maybe... maybe I can make a pamphlet that’s like a hug. Reading a pamphlet tells you things, it makes you feel feelings, and I want to make something that helps people feel those feels just from reading the pamphlet.”“That seems like a tall order,” the lady said.“Maybe,” Pam replied. “But this is what I live for, and it seems like a good thing to do, a good reason to keep on going, yeah?”“I suppose so,” Madam Graham said. She leaned to the side, eyes half-lidded as she considered things. “I haven’t considered physical affection from the point of view of someone who doesn’t have any carnal needs in some time.”“What are those?” Pam asked.“Nevermind that,” Madam Graham said. Pam made a mental note to ask Abigail later. “Hugs, and any kind of close physical affection of the sort, are a way to be close to someone, to share in their warmth and assure them and yourself that things will be alright.”Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.Pam nodded very hard, and removed a crayon from inside her dress, then a piece of paper she had for future pamphlet making. She started taking notes, in bullet form, along one half of the paper.Hugs = warmHugs = two peopleHugs are sharingShe nodded some more. This was good material.The nice lady that had escorted her to Madam Graham’s arrived, with a tray that had tea and some biscuits on it. Madam Graham poured two cups, then gave one-on a little saucer with some biscuits and a dab of honey-to Pam.“What else?” Pam asked as she set her stuff on her lap and took the tea cup.“Well, there’s an amount of shared intimacy in a hug. It’s not necessarily a more... degenerate sort of intimacy either. Rather, it is the closeness of allowing someone you care about within your personal space.”“That’s good,” Pam said. She downed her tea. It was good, and warm, then she picked up her paper and pencil and added a few lines to her notes. “What about, ah, things to make hugs better?”That was important too, she figured. It wasn’t enough to know why hugs were good. If she was really going to teach people about them, then her pamphlets had to not only sell people on the idea of hugs, but also explain to them that hugs, like all things, were an art, and that because of that, they could be improved.“Well, I suppose the strength of the hug matters. One that’s too tight can obviously hurt, and you don’t want to grab a person the wrong way. Of course, there’s one factor that might be easily overlooked in times of distress, but which I find more important than the rest.”“What’s that?” Pam asked. A few biscuit crumbs flew out out her mouth, and she licked her lips to help them stay in.“The smell of a person. I insist that all my girls bathe regularly. No one wants to have to smell another person who hasn’t taken the time, and decency, to bathe.”“Oh,” Pam said.Baths were awful though. She reluctantly added that to her list.Smelling nice was probably a bonus. She imagined hugging someone that smelled like fart, then someone that smelled like freshly cut paper, and the latter sounded a lot more fun to hug.“Okay,” Pam said. “That’s a lot of things. I think I can work with that. Thank you.”“You’re very welcome,” Madam Graham said. “Now, if you’re heading out, let me escort you to the edge of the red light district, just in case.Pam opened her mouth as wide as she could and fit the teacup into it. Madam Graham and the nice lady watched as she crunched and munched through the cup, chewing as quick as she could to be polite.“Okay,” she said after swallowing. “Let’s go then!”
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Chapter Twenty-Four — Vim and Vigor
Chapter Twenty-Four — Vim and Vigor Crossover: Vigor Mortis, by ThundaMoo I step into the shop first. Penelope is a lot more fragile than I am, and it only makes sense that I be in front in case someone tries something. I always have a few tentacles, ready to reach out and attack. It’s probably why I’m the first to notice that we’re not where we’re supposed to be.“This is bizarre,” Penelope says hesitantly.“This isn’t the place we were going to,” I say.The place is a cafe, so it’s not too different from where we were going, but this one has a very different decor. An illusion maybe? But I think I would be able to tell, maybe. I’ve seen a lot of Rowan’s illusions, and this one is very realistic if it is one. Maybe mind magic, but that doesn’t work on me the way it works on others.“Hello,” a lady says brightly.She’s standing at the top of two little steps halfway into the room. There are glass-covered shelves behind her with pastries in them, and a long counter with a big till sitting on it. She has an apron on, and a clean dress on under that. She probably looks very ordinary, but I can’t help but notice the tentacles gently wrapped around her soul.It’s not one tentacle. It’s hundreds of them. Tiny ones, that are carefully wrapped around the lady’s bright warm soul.They’re hugging her.Somehow I find that a little disarming. Is there someone else here like me? The tentacles reach out behind her and just sort of stop in midair, as though they’re frayed apart. But new ones poke through reality and caress the soul again every few seconds.“We have excellent tea,” the lady continues. “And some really nice cakes.” she glances between Penelope and me, then blushes a little as she adds, “Cakes that are great for sharing.”I glance back and onto the street. There’s people out there, just walking by. It looks like we might be in one of the nicer parts of Skyhope, from the way they’re dressed.“Let’s play along,” Penelope whispers. She smiles up at the lady. “We’ll take some tea, and one of those cakes for sharing, please.”The lady nods and goes off, likely to prepare all of that. Penelope grabs me by the hand and starts leading me towards the quietest corner of the room. I think she’s in a plotting mood. I fully expect her to start telling me about what kind of trouble we’re in, but she stops mid-step, and I glance before her, finally noticing the other person in the room.She’s so short that I must have missed her behind one of the tables. It’s a girl, with a fancy purple dress. She’s looking up at me and Penelope, and I can’t help but stare at her eyes. They’re two black disks, with little dots in them. A field of stars, constantly spinning.Her soul is a mess of tentacles, small and large, writhing around like a loose banner on a windy day. Strangely, the soul feels like... a pamphlet. Some of her tentacles are reaching down to the paper things she’s holding in her hand, others to the same folded paper things on the table behind her.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“Could I interest you in a pamphlet about hugs?” she asks.“A pamphlet about hugs?” Penelope asks.The girl nods. “Yes. Or one about why killing yourself, or allowing yourself to die after your purpose in life has ended, isn’t good.”“I think the one about hugs might be better,” Penelope says. She’s smiling with her lips, but I can feel the alarm around her. I reach out with a few tentacles and hug her soul, reminding her that I’m there.“That’s interesting,” the girl says. She raises an arm-no, a tentacle. An actual fleshy, non-soul meat-tentacle, and points to Penelope. “Are you hugging her with your essence?”“Yeah,” I say.Penelope shots me a look, but I have no idea why she looks so suddenly angry at me.The girl makes a wiggly gesture with her tentacle arm. “Does that feel nice?” She’s asking Penelope.Penelope seems even more alarmed now. “Yes? It’s, ah, nice and... it makes me feel safe and very close to Vita.”The girl nods, and a smaller tentacle slips out from under her dress to pick up a notebook from on the table. She grabs a small wax pencil, then starts to take notes. “Is this an intimate feeling?”“Pardon?” Penelope asks.She’s quick to hide her blush, but I can tell the question made her uncomfortable.“Why do you want to know that?” I ask.The girl shrugs. “My purpose in life right now is to make a pamphlet that helps people give better hugs, and understand why hugs and cuddles are good.”I nod. A noble goal.“How important would you rate the inclusion of tentacles in making a hug better?” she asks Penelope.Penelope takes a moment to answer. “I will admit that they do improve the overall hug experience,” she says.“Good, good,” the girl says. “Do you only use soul-tacles, or do you also use physical ones?”“Physical ones?” Penelope asks.The girl wiggles hers around.“No, we don’t use that,” Penelope says.“Do you wish that your partner had more tentacles? If so, how many more? What sort of tentacles do you wish your cuddlebuddy had?” the girl continues.“There’s more kinds of tentacles?” I ask.She nods while waving and making an ‘of course’ sort of gesture without looking up from her notes. “There’s lots. Metatentacles, pretentacles, the experimental hugtacles, timetacles, which show up sometimes even though we haven’t invented them yet.”“Pam, sweetie, don’t scare the customers,” the lady running the shop says as she comes down with a tray. She places it on one of the tables nearby, then sets out the mugs and a big slice of cake. “Please enjoy! Oh, and don’t worry if you’re not from this dimension, you’ll be right back home when you walk out.”“Thank you,” Penelope says. She glances at me, but I don’t understand any more than she does.
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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?”
* * *
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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Chapter Twenty-Eight — Numero
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Numero Charlotte leaned over the map and squinted down the middle of it. There wasn’t much detail. It was a map of most of the country, so the space between Five Peaks and Six Hills wasn’t all that great.
“This is useless,” she said as she looked up.The carriage she and Dreamer had taken was rumbling along one of the better maintained roads that connected most bigger towns and cities together. That meant that for all that the road was bumpy and rough, it was still cobbled and well-maintained, with a cleared ditch on the side and potholes recently refilled with gravel to make the path a bit less cumbersome to travel.They had left Five Peaks in the morning, and it was nearing the early evening. She wasn’t sure how much longer they’d have to travel before they got to Six Hills, and the older gentleman driving their cart didn’t seem all that talkative.Which left either asking Dreamer, or some of the other passengers.They didn’t have the coin to rent a carriage all to themselves, which meant that they were sharing the ride with a few others. An older lady who was knitting with an ease and speed that suggested long practice, and a pair of gentlemen in finer clothes that Charlotte labelled as businessmen. The last was an older guy wearing some armour over a gambeson and with a big, clanking pack at his feet.“Um, forgive me for asking,” Charlotte said into the silence. A few heads turned her way, either from the books they were reading or from staring out of windows. Dreamer looked away from the lady next to her’s knitting needles. “We’re heading over to Six Hills, but we’ve never been there before. Do you think we’ll be arriving before nightfall?”“By a few hours, at least,” The younger of the two businessmen asked. He smiled at Charlotte, his whiskery mustache twitching up. “Are you visiting family?”“Not quite, no,” Charlotte said. She didn’t want to give away the reason for the visit if she could avoid it.“We’re going to buy a winter solstice gift for Abigail,” Dreamer said.“Winter Solstice?” the man repeated. “That’s not for... well, more than half a year. Do you mean the Summer Solstice, maybe?”Dreamer looked around towards Charlotte. “There’s a summer one too? Is there one in the other seasons? Wait, how many seasons are there?”“Four seasons, sweetie, and there are only two solstices. One in summer, one in winter. The longest and shortest day of the year, respectively. The Winter Solstice is spent with family and friends, and during the Summer Solstice there’s a great big festival.”“Bah, I remember when I was young. The festival was a grand thing,” the old woman muttered. “All the pretty dames, dressed to perfection like mid-summer flowers, and all the beaus chasing after them like rabbits in season. That was before the Inquisition, mind. Back in my day a little bit of sun worship didn’t bother anyone.”Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.Charlotte had to stop herself from cringing back, and the others in the carriage weren’t so restrained in their looks of distaste. Mentioning religion like that was a bit of a faux-pas, and a good way to have the inquisition poking around one’s business. Then again, she figured the older lady was at that age where people stopped caring all that much about the opinion of others.“Why would you worship a sun?” Dreamer asked. “That’s stupid. It’s just a lot of plasma holding itself together because it’s so fat.”“You know what suns are?” Charlotte asked.“Yeah, tasty,” Dreamer said. “I don’t know why mortals would want to worship one, it’s hardly alive. It makes more sense when they worship ideas, or like, the planet’s magic or even a tadpole. Maybe they’d give you something for worshiping them, at least.”“Right, right,” Charlotte said. She started patting Dreamer on the head, which led to the girl leaning into her side, and also stopped her from talking. The Inquisition didn’t like using the term 'heresy,’ because of its religious connotations, but that’s what Dreamer was spewing. “So, uh, what’s Six Hills like?”“It’s a nice enough place,” one of the businessmen said. “The hills have a few clay processing factories. They make a lot of earthenware that’s shipped back to Five Peaks. Lots of pottery as well.”“Plenty of artists live there,” the other businessmen said. “The less cerebral arts. Crafting, painting, pottery-making. Some of the things they produce are quite nice, and can fetch a good price elsewhere, if you can manage to transport them far enough without breaking them.”The adventurer-looking guy glanced up. “Safe place. For the most part. Roads are well patrolled around the town. Not the safest though.”“Any problems lately?” Charlotte asked him. She didn’t care much for pottery.“Nothing official,” he said. “But there have been people going missing lately. Kids, mostly.”“Oh,” Charlotte said.“I think there were three missing children, it’s hardly anything to be worried about,” the younger businessman said. He smiled at Charlotte in a way he probably thought was reassuring. It really wasn’t.“Five,” the adventurer corrected. “You two watch out while you’re around town,” he said with a nod towards Dreamer.Charlotte nodded. Though really, she doubted anything could really harm the girl.“Just a few goblins or the like causing trouble,” the businessman said.The old woman sniffed. “They know better than to sneak into a town. And they’re noisy besides. A clan of the bastards wouldn’t last a week before the guard rooted them out. Got to be something else. Something more nefarious.”“Now, now, that’s just superstition talking,” the businessman said. “Though, that might not be bad for business, I suppose.”“Right,” Charlotte said. “Right.”She was beginning to wonder what kind of trouble they were travelling to.
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Chapter Twenty-Nine — North Hill
Chapter Twenty-Nine — North Hill Dreamer waggled from side to side as the carriage rode up and down the hilly countryside. It was more fun to waggle than to sit still, and if the mortals across from her told her to stop, she could just ignore them because they didn’t matter.“Almost there,” Charlotte said.“Really?” Dreamer asked between one waggle and the next.... When did a waggle begin? Was each tilt to the side a single waggle, or was a waggle a full back-and-forth? Maybe a waggle was the entire act of waggling, regardless of how much or how little there was. After all, going for ‘a run’ didn’t really imply any sort of distance necessary for it to be considered a run.“Yep, I can see the town already. Not a very big place,” Charlotte said.“Six Hills isn’t that impressive from afar,” One of the mortals who didn’t matter said. “But the town’s spread out over a wide area. It’s nearly as big as Five Peaks, but without nearly as much density.”Dreamer didn’t understand how a town could be thick, but she had other things to think about. Maybe she could ask Abigail about her waggle conundrum? Abigail was smart. But that would have to wait for eight or so months.“Um,” Charlotte said. It was a very concerning sort of um.“What is it?” Dreamer asked.“I think I saw something when we crested that hill. There’s a group blocking the road ahead.”The others in the carriage all tensed except for the old lady. “Bandits?” The one with the armour and the weapons asked. “So close to the town?”“I don’t think so,” Charlotte asked. She had her face pressed up against the glass, but Dreamer imagined she couldn’t see all that well.“Let me see,” the man said. He opened the door and stood up, most of him sticking out of the carriage to see the road ahead. “It’s the Inquisition,” he said when he swung back in.“Oh, them,” Dreamer said. For some reason that got the old lady to laugh.The carriage rumbled onwards, and Charlotte shifted next to Dreamer. She had a hand on the hilt of her sword, and her other hand snaked down and grabbed Dreamer’s.The carriage stopped, and the guy sitting in front of it talked to some people who circled around the carriage. Then the door opened and a young guy with a rather small hat poked his head in, mustaches twitching as he looked everyone over. “Hello citizens,” he said.“Can we help you, sir?” one of the well-dressed mortals asked.“Just keeping an eye on things. Would you mind terribly telling me where you’re destined for?”The people in the cart rattled off some places that Dreamer didn’t care about until it came to Dreamer’s turn. “The place with the plushies,” she said.The inquisition guy’s smile grew a little strained. “Ah, that’s on North Hill. That area’s quarantined for now.”“It is?” Charlotte asked. “What for?”“Inquisition business, ma’am,” he said with another lame smile.Dreamer sniffed. “If you told us, it’d be our business too,” Dreamer said.“It’s fine,” Charlotte said. “We’re heading over to the, uh, East Hill. I have family there. But I promised her we’d go see the plushie place. Um, some other time, maybe,” she said.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“Mmhmm,” the guy said. “Well, thanks for your time everyone, have a safe ride, and welcome to Six Hills.” He backed up and closed the door, then the carriage started riding again.The old lady sniffed. “There’s no East Hill here. Two of the hills are to the east. No one could agree on which one should be called the East hill, so neither are. At least, that’s the local legend from back when I was about this brat’s age.”“Oh,” Charlotte said.“It’s fine. You don’t owe it to anyone to tell them what you’re up to,” the old lady said.The carriage stopped at a place in town with a bunch of horses and stables and stuff, and everyone got out in a hurry. Charlotte and Dreamer didn’t really bring anything with them, so they took off hand-in-hand and crossed a busy street.There were plenty of people around, but not nearly as many of them as there were in Five Peaks. It also smelled a lot less like bathrooms outside, and there was more room between the homes. The town might have been as big as Five Peaks, but a lot of it was trees and gardens and little barns with chickens and other tasty animals in pens.There were six hills though, which pleased Dreamer because if there were only five or if there were seven it would have been a very silly place.“That’s the North Hill,” Charlotte said. She pointed to one of the hills. There were factories to the east (Abigail had taught Dreamer her directions in a few months) and to the west were some nice homes atop some of the hills that way. The hill to the south had a little castle on it.“That’s where the plushie person is,” Dreamer said.“Apparently,” Charlotte agreed. “But that Inquisition officer said that it was quarantined.”“I don’t know what that is,” Dreamer said.Charlotte hummed. “That’s when you block an area off to stop people from going there. Usually because there’s something dangerous.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “Well, I’m more dangerous, so we can go there no problem.”Charlotte reached down and ruffled Dreamer’s head. “A few problems, actually. We want to be sneaky, right?”“Do we?” Dreamer asked.“We do,” Charlotte said. “We don’t just want to reach the shop, we want to get a commission. Which means that we need to talk to the artisan that makes those plushies. Then they’ll need to make your gift.”“Oh, right,” Dreamer said.“That’ll take some time. If we get into a big fight with the Inquisition, they’ll be all over the hill, and you can bet that it’ll be a lot harder to convince the artisan to make anything.”Dreamer pinched her lips together. Why did things always need to be so complicated? Back when she just floated through the void doing nothing for millenia, she never had to think so much. “Okay, fine,” she said.Charlotte nodded. “It’s getting on in the day. We’ll try to sneak over, see if we can get that commission of yours, and then figure things out from there. Get ready to fight if we need to. But, ah, try not to kill anyone.”“Okay,” Dreamer agreed. It was easy to agree to that. She was trying not to kill anyone already, so technically she’d succeeded already.Charlotte gave Dreamer her hand again. “Alright, let’s get sneaking!”
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Chapter Thirty — Sneaky Scary Tentacles Send Shivers Down Your Mind
Chapter Thirty — Sneaky Scary Tentacles Send Shivers Down Your Mind When Charlotte told Dreamer what she meant by ‘be sneaky’ she tried to keep it simple. Dreamer, the... somewhat innocent girl that she was, had a better time understanding simple things.Charlotte laid out a plan to approach the North hill from the north, as opposed to from the town itself. There were likely to be fewer eyes that way, and if they were caught, they could always pretend that they were just heading to the town from the north, on foot.It wasn’t the best excuse, but Charlotte was ready to give it a go.So she instructed Dreamer to make sure she stayed silent.Dreamer’s response was to ‘eat’ all the sound around them, rendering them entirely, impossibly, silent.Charlotte felt that maybe no matter how much she planned or tried to think ahead, Dreamer would always just... be Dreamer.“Okay,” Charlotte whispered as they hid behind a large bush at the base of the hill. Dreamer kindly refrained from eating Charlotte’s voice, which was nice. There was a switch-back path cut into the hillside, and a palisade halfway up it. Likely to keep out any wandering animals. She pointed up the hill, where the setting sun turned the yellowing grass to orange-gold. “There’s a little gate there, that’s the only way in, which means...”Dreamer rubbed at her chin. “It means that that’s where normal people go in?”“That’s right. And the Inquisition doesn't want people inside. Which in turn means,” Charlotte said. She paused again, to let Dreamer think. The girl wasn’t dumb. Unusual, certainly... very certainly, but not dumb.“Oh, we can’t go there because they’re looking for people to pass by there.”Charlotte gave Dreamer’s head a rub. “That’s right, little genius. Let’s go that way instead, see where there’s a bunch of rocks and the big bush. It’ll keep us covered. Then we can figure out another way in. Either under, over, or through.”Dreamer nodded, and together they scurried up the slope. It was strange to not have her footsteps make any noise, or the bushes they rustled past or loose rocks that clattered behind them.When they reached the hillside right under the palisade, Dreamer summoned a few tentacles to act as steps and they climbed right up to the edge of the wall.Charlotte leaned against it. The wall was fairly thick, wooden beams, cut in half lengthwise and staked into the earth, with stacked stones along the base cemented in place. Some small effort had gone into making it look nice, a wooden beam crosswise to the rest had simple carvings in it, but otherwise the wall was simple and tough.“Okay, Web, it’s your turn,” Charlotte said. She reached down the front of her shirt and pulled out her little arachnid summon. She rubbed Web’s abdomen, the way the spider liked it. “Up and over the wall, tell me if anyone’s there,” Charlotte instructed before she brought Web close to the wall.The spider climbed up the wall, both Dreamer and Charlotte watching her go.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.“I could have looked,” Dreamer said. “I have eyetacles.”“But then poor Web wouldn’t have any part to play,” Charlotte said. She wasn’t going to admit that she trusted Web’s judgement a bit better than Dreamer’s.The spider disappeared for a minute, then reappeared at the top of the wall. It wiggled its forelegs around, then made a cross with them while shifting from side to side.“Coast is clear.”“What coast, this is a hill,” Dreamer said.Charlotte patted her on the head again. “Come on, I’ll boost you up and over, then you help me.” A moment later, the two of them were on the other side, properly sneaky-like.The town was, expectedly, entirely empty. The North hill had a few large factory-like places, though they were nothing like the factories back in Five Peaks. There were also a few shops, all of them built around a neat square in the middle of the hill.That was about all that Charlotte could tell from peeking around alleyways.There was one other thing she couldn’t fail to notice.“Where’s all the Inquisition people?” Dreamer asked.There were ropes across some road, blocking them off, and placards had been left around, with large letter-number combinations on them, but there weren’t any signs of life that Charlotte could see.“Dreamer, can you get one of your eyetacles to, uh, spawn really high up? Tell me if you see any Inquisitors anywhere on the hill?”“Okay,” Dreamer said. She blinked. “Nope, there’s none.”“Not a single one?” Charlotte asked.“Not on the hills. There’s lots near the hill, and some are walking in big circles around it. Also, there’s lots of blood over that way, and one of their nice hats on the ground.” Dreamer pointed.“Huh,” Charlotte said. “Let’s stay sneaky anyway, alright?”They moved out and stuck to the edges of buildings, with Dreamer keeping an eye out on all the Inquisition around the hill.They found the spot Dreamer had mentioned in short order. The girl was right, there was a lot of blood, a whole puddle of it, with bootprints and marks as if someone had been dragged through it. “Looks dry,” Charlotte said.She knelt next to the old puddle, then looked around, at all the workshops with darkened windows where shadows lurked deep and undisturbed.“What happened here?” Charlotte asked.“Feels like the Inquisition place in Five Peaks,” Dreamer said.“How so?”Dreamer shrugged. “Someone poked holes from here to elsewhere, and they didn’t close them up good. That’s a silly thing to do, some monsters can come through those, you know? Tasty, tasty monsters.”“Maybe that’s what happened here,” Charlotte muttered.“Maybe,” Dreamer said. “Or maybe it’s something here trying to get to the elsewhere. Hard to tell. I’d need to poke at the holes to see.”“Where are they?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer pointed back towards the square at the very top of the hill. “That way.”“Well, maybe we can go poke ourselves. It feels like there’s a lot of things missing here.”“Does that mean the plushie shop’s closed?”
Chapter Thirty-One — Plushie Shop!
Chapter Thirty-One — Plushie Shop! “In here?” Charlotte asked. The plushie shop wasn’t in the square. It was just past that, a two-story building, all stone and wood, with an alley tucked in next to it, and a pair of large windows overlooking a pair of tiny rooms at the front where wares could be displayed. There was nothing in them now except for a few bits of furniture sized for dolls, some advertisements for the shop itself, and a single plush doll sitting forlornly on the ground in the middle of the display.The street ahead of the shop was more interesting. There were two large tents, with the seal of the Inquisition printed onto their sides. It wasn’t normal to see that kind of thing installed in the middle of what must once have been a busy street.“Yep, that’s where I’m feeling the stuff from,” Dreamer said. “That’s the plushie shop, right?”“Looks like it,” Charlotte said. “Before we go in, do you sense anything from those tents?”Dreamer shook her head. “No.”“Do you mind if I check inside?”“We have until the Winter Solstice,” Dreamer said. “So it’s okay.”Charlotte chuckled. “I guess time’s not really an issue then.” She carefully removed her sword from its sheath, then used the end to push open the flap leading into the tent.There wasn’t much in there. A few racks with some weapons, more shelves with what looked like reagents and alchemical supplies, and a lot of blood on the ground.Charlotte stepped in, and slowly spun around to take the tent in. “Not much here,” she muttered. She imagined that someone like Abigail might be able to tell a lot from the ingredients, but that wasn’t her speciality.She did grab a small mage-lantern on the way out, one filled to the brim with liquid aether. A flick of the ignition knob on the side and the lantern lit up with a cool blue light. She shut it down and hooked the little light to her belt. “Nothing in that one,” she muttered. “Just going to poke in this one too.”The second tent was an officer’s. There was a desk, with some papers strewn about it, and a few fold-out chairs next to a dresser. Charlotte stepped in, eyed the glass cabinet in the corner and the drinks within it, then decided that the day hadn’t been that weird.She leaned over the desk and eyed the papers. “Oh, this is a winner,” she said.“What is it?” Dreamer asked. She stood on the edge of the desk on her toes to see everything.“Reports,” Charlotte said. They were out of order, but it wasn’t hard to set them up so that the oldest was first. “Looks like... the Inquisition got reports that something strange was going on here.”She flipped to the next page.“Alright, so they sent in some... I guess spies? Plains-clothes watchers to see what was going on. They didn’t see anything, but their tests said that there’s... they call it an ‘anomaly in the smoothness of the fabric?’”A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.“Makes sense,” Dreamer said.“Sure,” Charlotte said. “They poked around and found that a lot of local strays were missing. The owner of the plushie shop, Miss Bouvier, started acting strangely too. When they questioned her in the open, she seemed nervous and hysterical.”Dreamer tilted her head to the side, “Why was she like that?”“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. She scanned the rest of the report, then set it aside and picked up the next page. It didn’t have much more. It took two more before she found something. “She went missing,” She said. “About four days ago. And... the shop was empty when they looked for her. People started going missing that night too.”“That’s not good, right?” Dreamer asked.“I don’t think it is, no,” Charlotte said. “Ah... well, this is weird. It says here that a lot of knitting and clothier supplies started going missing at the same time. The Inquisition suspected an occult movement, and came into the region in force. They quarantined the area.”“Okay,” Dreamer said.“It... looks like some of the plushies came to life,” Charlotte said. “Or someone used some obscure magic to control them from afar. But this next page says that they started laying out traps across the town.”Charlotte lowered the pages after scanning through the rest. There wasn’t much there that was helpful. She stepped out of the tent and looked at the shop again. The doll in the display was gone.“Whelp,” she said. “That’s very creepifying.”“Do all dolls do that?” Dreamer asked.“Not the ones I played with,” Charlotte said. “Do you think we should go in there?”“Sure,” Dreamer said. She walked up to the front door of the shop, then tugged it open.Something twanged within, a whoosh sounded, and Charlotte reached out for Dreamer.An axe swung by, only missing Dreamer’s head because she was so short.Dreamer stared at the axe as it swung back around, its momentum leaving it as it clanked against the door frame and spun on the end of the rope holding it in place. “Is that normal?”“No, no it’s not,” Charlotte said. “I think that whoever’s in that shop wants future guests to be, ah, dead.”Dreamer sniffed. “Abigail said that customers should be treated nicely. Hitting people with sharp metal things is rude.”“That it is,” Charlotte agreed.“Well, I’m going in,” Dreamer said. And with that, she stepped in, tripped over a wire on the ground, and then sighed as a rake snapped around and buried itself spikes-first into her chest. “Dang it, my dress.”“I’m sure we can patch that up,” Charlotte said. “Uh, how are you?”“Just holes in my body,” Dreamer said as she pried the rake out. “Can you make light?”“That... I can, yes.”
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Chapter Thirty-Two — Shedding Some Light
Chapter Thirty-Two — Shedding Some Light Charlotte raised the mage lantern she’d picked out of one of the tents and flicked it on. It glowed brighter and brighter with an ethereal blue light that gently filled the shop, revealing more than what they could see with just the light from the doorway.The shop wasn’t all that big. She imagined that someone that made plushies, even someone who was well-known for it, didn’t make all that much money. There were a few stands where she imagined dolls and plushies would normally sit, and some small decorations next to these, large sewing needles, a few sepia photographs.There was only one plushie in the entire room. A small plushie of a farmboy, with a tiny straw hat on his head and a pitchfork set on his lap. The plush was sitting on the counter at the far end of the room, right next to the till.“Do you see any more traps?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer yanked the rake buried in her chest out, then tossed it aside. She glanced around. “Nope.”“Hmm, well, let’s move carefully anyway,” Charlotte said. “I don’t know if I could resist as many rakes to the chest as you.”“I’m very tough,” Dreamer said. She poked the fingers of one hand into the holes in her chest, then realized that the holes were spaced too far apart, so she had to use both hands to plut the bleeding.Charlotte rubbed Dreamer’s head. “You might want to heal up?”“Okay,” Dreamer agreed. It only took a bit of focus to reknit her body back. Fixing her dress was a lot harder. The fabric could be resewn with a few tiny tentacles, but washing things was tricky, it was why Abigail always did it for her.Charlotte scanned the room for more traps, then grinned as she spotted one. “There’s a tile on the floor there that’s raised up, see that little wire leading out of it. I bet that’s a trap. And there’s a trip wire there too.” She pointed at both.Dreamer summoned a few tentacles out of thin air and smacked both. A brick on the end of a rope came swinging down from the ceiling over the pressure-plate trap, and a box filled with nails twisted together into caltrops fell out of one of the displays and spread out across that corner of the room.“Well done,” Charlotte said. “I’m certain there are more traps, but if we keep our eyes peeled, we’ll be fine.”“Yeah,” Dreamer agreed.Charlotte was feeling pretty confident as they moved into the room. That was, until the door slammed closed behind her.She spun around, hand gripping the hilt of her sword while her eyes darted around the room which was only lit by the lantern swinging in her off-hand, the shadows danced with every swing, and she felt as if she was being watched from every direction.“Oh, what a pretty dress.”Charlotte turned back towards the counter.The farmer boy doll was standing up now, its head tilted to the side slightly. “So so pretty.”Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!“Thank you,” Dreamer said. “Abigail bought it for me.”“But the flesh it’s over. So imperfect. Too warm. It’s a sack of skin over meat and bones. What are you stuffed with?” the doll asked.“I had breakfast,” Dreamer answered.“Uh, Dreamer,” Charlotte said. “Talking dolls aren’t normal.”Dreamer looked up to her, then back down at the doll. “They’re not?”“Not usually, no,” Charlotte replied. She nodded to the doll. “You’re the one that set up all those traps?”“Me? No, Us.” The doll said. He gestured around with his pitchfork and from the shadows came others. Not just dolls, but plushies of cute animals and little figures who walked like stilted clockwork machines.“And what are you?” Charlotte asked. She slowly removed her sword from its sheath, then held it low by her side.“We are our master’s failed creations. Oh! The pain of knowing that you are but a step on the path.” The doll twisted this way and that, its skin of crocheted yarn stretching in strange ways as if its insides wanted to burst out. “Master’s dream will come true. Oh yes, yes it will. But not if we don’t help!”The dolls and plushies started moving closer. A lot of them were armed. Kitchen knives, forks with sharpened tines, a number of them had long needles in their little hands.“Wait,” Charlotte said. “I have a few questions.”“The fresh materials have questions?” the farmerboy doll asked.“Yeah, I do, and while I don’t mind being called fresh, I’m not sure about being called materials, you know?” she asked. “Who’s your master, and how are you all alive?”“Our master is the great craftsman, the maker. They brought smiles to the children with their creations, plushies and dolls so joyous and happy. But they were flawed. We still are, all of us here. Just steps on the path. True joy can only be brought by the living, and we were not, still are not! But the master is improving! New materials were needed for a new generation of dolls!”“They’re being used by a thing on the other side,” Dreamer said. “You know those holes I talked about. There’s small ones in all the plushies here.”“Huh,” Charlotte said. “And how do we fix those?”“Just close the holes,” Dreamer said.The farmerboy doll raised his little pitchfork and pointed it at Charlotte and Dreamer. “Come, brothers and sisters of flesh and plush, let us harvest!”A plush of a cat leapt towards Charlotte’s face, but she sliced it out of the air.It fell onto the ground in two screeching halves, its stuffing-filled interior spilling real blood across the ground.The rest of the dolls screamed and howled as they started to rush them.“Dreamer! Tentacle them! Tentacle them all!” Charlotte said.Dreamer smiled. “Okay,” she said.And then a million tiny holes in reality were torn apart, and a million and more knife-tipped tentacles tore out of those holes, hissing through the air as they sought out plush and stuffing.
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Chapter Thirty-Three — A Customer-Friendly Experience
Chapter Thirty-Three — A Customer-Friendly Experience The first thing to hit Charlotte was the smell.So many things cut apart, so many rotting bodies splashed across the floor of the shop. Stuffing soaked in blood and offal, skin torn apart under a thin layer of felt. The dolls and plushies that had attacked them were filled with once-living meat.“Well,” Charlotte said as she raised her lantern. “That wasn’t pleasant.” She shook her sword to dislodge a bit of doll stuck on the edge of it.Dreamer’s tentacles were retreating back to wherever they came from, leaving behind punctured bodies. “Yeah. Are all plushies like that?”“I think these are the exception rather than the rule,” Charlotte said. “I imagine that this wasn’t all of them.”“I can still feel holes,” Dreamer said. “There’s a big one that way.” She pointed down and towards the south side of the shop.Charlotte drew a mental map of the North hill in her mind, then nodded. “How far?”“About... sixty Abigails.”“Abigail as measured from shoulder to shoulder, or Abigail from head to toe?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer shook her head. “Abigail from hand to shoulder. That’s her patting range.”“Right,” Charlotte said. She mentally converted that to about a metre, give or take. “That would place the big hole at about the middle of the hill. Still below ground too. I imagine you can feel a lot of smaller holes too, right?”“Yeah,” Dreamer said.“Great. More creepy murder dolls.”“They’re easy to kill,” Dreamer said.“That doesn’t make dealing with them any more fun,” Charlotte said. “Come on, let’s keep moving. I bet there’s a way to get to that big hole from here.” They moved towards the back of the shop. A door led into a workshop, one that was about as big as the front store, though with far more tables and workbenches. There were jars of buttons and bags of stuffing, but no incomplete dolls laying around.Dreamer skipped past Charlotte, ignored a spray of needles that she caught on a tentacle, then grinned as she pointed to part of the floor that was cleared of furniture. “There’s a hole here,” she said.“A trapdoor?” Charlotte asked as she walked over. There was a loop bolted to some planks, and a tightly fit square left on the floor that marked out the shape of the trapdoor. A cord was tied to the loop, leading up to the ceiling where a pulley waited. “Must be to allow the dolls to pull it up,” she muttered. She couldn’t imagine the little things being all that strong.They worked together to open the trapdoor. To Charlotte’s surprise, there weren’t any traps that went off when the door was slid off the hole. There was just a darkened pit, with a ladder up against one side and not much else.She brought her lamp out over the hole and looked over the edge. It wasn’t as deep as she’d feared. Maybe three paces down to what looked like a room with a wooden floor.Dreamer stepped over the edge of the hole and crashed onto the ground below with the grace of a sack of potatoes. She pushed herself back to her feet, then looked around. “It’s safe!” she said.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.Charlotte sheathed her sword and set the lamp next to the hole before climbing down at a more discrete pace. She picked it up once she was almost down, then illuminated the room properly.There wasn’t much to see. Some cobwebs in the corners, a few discarded boxes. The most interesting thing was an old stone-lined well near the centre of the room. She inched over to it. There was water not too far from the lip, and some copper pipes sinking into it. Likely there was some sort of pump in the shop that could draw water up.“There’s a door,” Dreamer said. She was pointing at one of the walls where, indeed, there was a door left ajar.Charlotte moved closer to it, then knelt down next to the entrance. There were markings in the dust. Like cloth gently passed over previously undisturbed ground, and smaller prints too. Not animals. Just round spots in a pattern similar to footprints. “The plushies have moved though here.”“Should we catch one for Abigail’s gift?” Dreamer asked.“I... don’t think that’s exactly the kind of gift Abigail would want,” Charlotte said.“She wouldn’t want a plushie?” Dreamer asked.“Oh, sure, but not one that’s... sapient? Sentient? I’m not sure. Certainly not one filled with rotten meat.”“Okay,” Dreamer said.Charlotte tore the door open while making sure to keep herself behind it. Nothing happened. She poked her head around, and squinted into what was clearly just a corridor.There were more doors in the passageway. They weren’t evenly spaced, and not all of them were closed. Charlotte caught a glimpse of other basements, some of them filled with crates, other barren.“It’s an underground access way to all the shops in the city?” Charlotte asked.There were large pipes running along the ground, always at just a slight angle. One was leaking, and the faint stink that hit her clued her in.“It’s the sewage system. That, and I guess a sort of accessway to different buildings. Strange.”“It’s warm,” Dreamer said.“Yeah, we’re below ground. I guess. That means it’ll be warmer.”Something rumbled out ahead, and Charlotte paused, heart beating in her throat.She was swept up in this sudden feeling of vertigo, as if the world was twisting on its side, but there was no such motion. Nothing had moved. She swallowed, pressing down the foreign emotion, the overbearing sense of wrongness trying to slip into her mind like a distant whisper.“Smells like poop in here,” Dreamer said.“Y-you don’t feel that?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer looked up to her. “You mean the unending wrongness, the sense that you are tiny, a speck caught in a whirlwind drawing you ever closer to a single, tiny point in space where everything that you are and were will be ripped apart into nothing?”“Uh... yeah,” Charlotte said.“Nope,” Dreamer said. She grabbed Charlotte’s hand. “Come on. I think there’s weird stuff that way.”
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Chapter Thirty-Four — Gerard the Very Very Sane Plushie-Maker
Chapter Thirty-Four — Gerard the Very Very Sane Plushie-Maker The weird stuff turned out to be a sort of constant, rhythmic chanting. Charlotte couldn’t make out the words, not quite.They sounded like she should understand them, almost familiar but not. She had once tried to learn another language from a cousin who spoke two fluently. Just a word here and there, and maybe a sentence or two.It had been a wasted effort, in the end. She didn’t have a gift for languages, and no real opportunities or needs to practice.The chanting ahead reminded her of hearing snatches of that language, a few words that sounded almost, tantalisingly, familiar.She shifted her shoulders and tried to ignore the shivers crawling up her spine.Dreamer stopped in front of a door. It was one of the last ones in the long corridor. Light was spilling out from beneath it, oranges and yellows and reds, the colours of open flames. Charlotte suspected that they were somewhere under the centre of the hill.“Do you have a plan?” Charlotte whispered.“A plan?” Dreamer asked.“Well, I’m pretty sure that whatever’s on the other side of this door, they’re not going to be too happy to see us,” Charlotte said.“That sounds like a them problem,” Dreamer said.Charlotte exhaled from her nose. “Maybe. I’m just worried they might attack before we have time to ask any questions or find out what’s happening.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. She frowned and crossed her arms. It was a strangely Daphne-like gesture to make. “Okay, so I’m going to grab everyone in there before we walk in. then even if they want to attack, they won’t be able to.”“That sounds like the start-” Charlotte cut off as screams, squeals, and a few shouts of panic came from the other side of the doorway. “Did you already grab them all?” she asked.Dreamer nodded. “What’s the next part of the plan?”Charlotte sighed. She reached over to the door and shoved it open. “We assess things, I guess,” she said as she pulled her sword out of its sheath and held it up in a simple guard posture.Dreamer skipped into the room ahead of her, head tilted back to take it all in.Unlike most of the rooms they passed, this one seemed far more unfinished. It was more of a cavern, wide and deep, with a good half of the area taken up by a shallow pool of water that disappeared into a crack in the far wall. Two large braziers burned bright, wood and books within them making the room uncomfortably warm.Charlotte only spent a moment taking in the room itself. What interested her a lot more were the people held in mid-air by coiling tentacles that sprouted from nothing and that grasped them around the waist and head and arms.In reality, there was only one person in the room. All the other tentacles were gripped around dolls. Hundreds of dolls who were trashing and fighting and screaming.“Wow, they’re noisy,” Dreamer said.“Yeah, I guess they are,” Charlotte said. She held her sword lower, ready to snap it out towards anything that jumped at her, but it seemed that Dreamer had everything in hand... so to speak.“Right, well enough of that,” Dreamer said.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.There was a single loud squelch, and all the dolls in the room were crushed the same way Charlotte might squish an over-ripe lemon. Plush and entrails splattered to the floor, some of them disappearing into the gaps where Dreamer’s tentacles retreated to.It left the room blessedly silent.The only remaining person was gently swung around so that he hovered before Charlotte and Dreamer.He was an older man, in dirty clothes stained by water and blood. He had an apron on, with a few tools left in it, and a mod of frizzy white hair on his head, somehow unstained despite the rest of him. His eyes were wild as they took Dreamer and Charlotte in. “W-who are you?” he gasped.“Hello sir,” Charlotte said. “You wouldn’t happen to work at the plush shop?”“We’re looking for a plushie for the Winter Solstice,” Dreamer explained. “It’s for Abigail.”“A... what?” he asked. He blinked slowly. “You’re not with the Inquisition? You’re not here to stop me?”“No?” Dreamer said. “We’re here for a plushie.”“That’s why I’m here too!” he said. “I’m here to make the greatest doll of them all. One so life-like, so real that it will be indistinguishable from the living! No! It will be better than the living!”Charlotte sighed. “He’s insane.”“I am not insane! I am Gerard the plushie-maker! And I have never been more sane!”Charlotte lowered her sword. “Is that why you were chanting while surrounded by living meat-dolls?”“We were chanting to a greater being! I sought guidance, counsel from beyond the veil! Let me go, and give me your flesh so that I might make life!” Gerard screamed.Dreamer stared at him for a bit, then turned to Charlotte. “He’s nuts, right?”“I think so, yeah,” Charlotte said.The air between the braziers warped and twisted. “Quick! Give me your flesh! I must feed the being from beyond the stars! Feed it, and it will give me the spark of life!”Dreamer sighed.A pair of tentacles appeared above and below and reached into the warping space between the braziers. They pulled, and it opened a hole in the world.Charlotte stared in. It was dark, darkness unending, but filled with billions of specks. They twisted around and blinked, and Charlotte realized that they were a multitude of eyes.“Hey,” Dreamer said into the pit. “This guy’s one of yours, yeah?”Something passed through the void.“Yeah, okay,” Dreamer said.She tossed Gerard in. The man’s screams were muffled almost as soon as he was past the gap.“Now go away. This place is mine.”The eyes blinked at her.“Fine, then I’ll-” Dreamer began.The opened shut, like an eye blinking closed on being poked.“Oh, it left,” Dreamer said. “I barely started to eat it at all.”“W-what was it?” Charlotte asked. She took a moment to compose herself. Things were moving fast.“Just a tadpole that thought it was bigger than it is. If it really was strong, then it wouldn’t be bothering with some human for its lunch.”Dreamer turned and started to leave the room.“Where are you going?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer shrugged. “To get an Abigail Plushie. This one didn’t work out at all. But it’s a good thing we can time travel, that means we’re not wasting any actual time.”
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Chapter Thirty-Five — A Bit Silly
Chapter Thirty-Five — A Bit Silly Dreamer felt... a bit silly.It was strange, she’d never really bothered feeling that way before.Sure, she’d made a mistake or two during her long, long, long life, but before when she did something wrong it didn’t really matter. She’d acknowledge it, or she wouldn’t, and then she’d go on doing whatever it was that she felt like doing.The whole ‘feeling silly’ thing that now happened sometimes-usually when she made some sort of mistake-was entirely new.Was her exposure to humans and friends and pats changing her? Would she continue to change? Would she wake up from her eternal dream one day only to discover that she was an entirely different Dreamer?She thought about it...Nah, she was fine.She tossed the thought aside and forgot all about it.She didn’t feel like having to deal with the consequences of her own actions. That was for weak beings that had to deal with causality.“Okay,” she said to Charlotte as they exited from the plushie shop. None of the plushies that remained were good enough for Abigail. They were all too meaty according to Charlotte. “This is the plan now. We’re going to go even further back in time to before that plushie maker guy went nuts, and we’ll buy a plushie from him then.”Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t we have done that from the start?”“Don’t be silly,” Dreamer said.She raised her arms above her head and stretched a bit. She didn’t mind being stuck in deep underground tunnels much-there was a certain feel to them that was nice-but she liked being outside more.Even if outside currently had about twenty Inquisitors with strange hats on and crossbows pointing at them.“Uh,” Charlotte said. She slowly raised her arms over her head. Was she stretching too?“Surrender! Drop your weapons and step away from the anomaly!” one of the inquisitors said.Dreamer glanced back to Charlotte. “Should we do something about them?” she asked.“If we can find a way to escape, that would certainly help, yeah,” Charlotte said. She lowered her arms a little. “I don’t know if there’s much more for us to do here.”“Okay,” Dreamer said.“Drop to your knees!” shouted the Inquisitor with the biggest hat.Dreamer sighed.A rift opened in space above her, and she heard the men gasp. From the rift came Dreamer’s hat. It was a nice hat, stolen from the most important inquisitor she had ever met, and modified by Dreamer herself with little tentacles that clung onto other, smaller hats.She placed the hat onto her head. There were little tentacles on the inside that kept it even, mostly because the hat was about as big as Dreamer’s little body. “No. You get on your knees,” Dreamer ordered.One of the inquisitors fired.A tiny tentacle snatched the bolt out of midair, freezing it halfway between Dreamer and the man who’d fired.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.“Why aren’t they listening?” she asked. “My hat’s bigger.”“I think they have other things in mind,” Charlotte said. “Dreamer, could you tie them all up for us? We should probably get going.”“Sure,” Dreamer said.The inquisitors had a lot to say about her tying them up with tentacles pouring out of rifts torn open in reality, but Dreamer didn’t care for their complaining enough to actually pay it any attention. If they weren’t going to play by the rules (in which the person with the most tentacles and biggest hat was the person you listened to) then she didn’t see why she had to listen to them screaming about their rights to not be tentacle-tied.“Okay, we need to go back into the past now,” Dreamer said.“We’ll have to travel all the way back home?” Charlotte asked as she stepped past the Inquisitors. She took one of their crossbows, eyed it up, then slung it over her shoulder. Dreamer didn’t comment on the looting. She had her own tentacles going through their pockets and taking all of their coins and snacks. “I don’t think we need to go all the way back. I’ll just grab the TARDIS and pull it closer so that we can get in from here. That way we won’t have to travel all the way over again.”“That’s... handy,” Charlotte said.“It’s actually tentacle-y,” Dreamer corrected.Once they were done with the looting (including all the hats) and the snacking (excluding the inquisitors) Dreamer yoinked the time machine closer. At Charlotte’s suggestion, she placed it in a nearby alleyway so that the inquisitors wouldn’t see it.“Alright,” Dreamer said as she walked back up to the machine. “How far back do we need to go to see the plushie maker man?”“About two weeks,” Charlotte said. “Three to be safe.”Dreamer nodded, Charlotte got into the machine, and then she clawed at time, grabbed a tight hold of it, and pulled herself backwards through it.It was hard to tell how far back they were going. Time was like a big river, but instead of water there was time, and instead of riverbacks, there was more time, and instead of all the stuff around big rivers, there was the chaotic and unstoppable flow of causality ripping itself apart and recreating itself anew with no concept of when.Pinpointing ‘three weeks ago’ was pretty tricky.But Dreamer managed.She stepped out of time and into the present three week ago.The little factory village, with all of its workshops and crafter homes was busy and bright. People were moving by on the street, many of them with the slow pace of window shoppers, others carrying cartloads of materials.Charlotte stumbled out of the TARDIS, looking a bit paler than she had been three weeks from then. “Oh, I’m not going to be getting used to that,” she said.“It’s okay,” Dreamer said. “We’re in the right time, I think. Now, let’s go buy that plushie. I have a lot of money I looted now!”
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Chapter Thirty-Six — Back to the Future’s Past
Chapter Thirty-Six — Back to the Future’s Past Charlotte couldn’t help but feel a little weirded out as she entered the plushie shop.The shelves were covered in soft dolls and carefully crafted puppets. There was lace and soft pastel material all over, as well as hundreds of cute smiling faces looking at her wherever she turned. A shiver ran down her back at the sight of so many shiny bead eyes.She took just a moment to compose herself. Charlotte had always prided herself on being composed in the face of adversity. She didn’t want to lose that now just because she spent some time fighting meat-plushies in a haunted village.“Hello, hello!”A familiar older gentleman was behind the counter at the end of the shop. He had an apron on, with a few odds and ends tucked away in large pouches, and while he was a little stooped and wrinkled, there was no doubting the genuine kindness in his eyes.“Ah, hello,” Charlotte said. “We’re looking for a plush doll.”“It’s a gift for Abigail,” Dreamer said.“Oh hoh,” the man said. He had been working behind the counter, adjusting a tiny tin crown atop the head of an equally tiny princess doll. “And who is this Abigail lady?”“Abigail is the best,” Dreamer said with the absolute certainty that only children and horrific cross-dimensional monstrosities could have. “I’m getting her a gift for the winter solstice.”“A bit early,” the shopkeep said. “But there’s no such thing as too early when it comes to a good and proper gift.” He reached up and stroked his bushy moustache. “Now, what sort of gift are we looking for? A nice princess? Maybe a knight? Maybe a little home for Abigail’s other dolls to live in? Or are you looking for something really special?”Dreamer froze up for a moment. “Abigail’s special, so that would be good.”“Hmm hmm. Well, I have a bit of time for a pretty young lady. Now now, there are all sorts of special kinds available out there. What kind do you think would fit your friend Abigail best?” The man leaned onto the counter with his elbows and smiled through his moustache.Charlotte had to give it to him, he was probably really good with children. Then again, she imagined that it was one of those skills he had to hone when his job was making toys for said children.“Charlotte, what kind of special doll should we get for Abigail?” Dreamer asked.“Well, you could make her a plush of herself, but I don’t think Abigail is that... narcissistic? How about a teeny tiny Dreamer plushie? I’m sure Abigail wouldn’t mind sleeping with that on her bed?”Dreamer’s eyes widened. “That's a great idea! We can make her one that will protect her while she’s sleeping, and make sure she sleeps well.”“That does sound mighty special,” the shopkeep said. He chuckled. “Are you miss Dreamer?”“Yeah, that’s me,” Dreamer said. “Can you make a plush like me?”“Oh, sure, sure, easy as pie,” he said.“Just make sure that when you give it life, you do it the right way, okay?” Dreamer said. “While using the meat and flesh of a living person to encapsulate their soul and lock it into the form of a plushie works, it’s very messy, and I don’t want a plush that’ll go squish when Abigail hugs it.”Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.“Pardon?” the shopkeep asked.Dreamer nodded. “Yes.”He chuckled, a bit less certain this time, then asked them to give him a minute or two.The man was fast. He had some ready-made plushies that were mostly shapeless figures of people. It only took him a few minutes to sow long threads of ‘hair’ onto the dolls head, then he found a tiny dress that was about the right shade of purple, added a bit of lace to it with a few quick swipes of needle and thread, and finally he set about giving the little doll some beady eyes.Charlotte was impressed, it was fast work, and well-crafted too. Maybe the man really did earn his reputation.“There there,” he said. “We’re nearly all done,”“That’s Plushie Dreamer?” Dreamer asked.He nodded. “That’s right. What do you think of her? Will your Miss Abigail like her as a friend?”Dreamer looked at the plushie. “It’s nice, but it needs more tentacles.”“Hmm?”“And it’s not really alive, is it?”“I like to think that, with a pure heart filled with imagination, every one of my little creations can come alive for the boys and girls that play with them,” he said with genuine reverence. “They’re not just toys you know. They’re companions and friends, sometimes when a little someone has nothing else.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “I get it.”He grinned. “You do?”“Yeah, you give it pretend life. I guess that makes a lot of sense. It’s real clever, for a mortal.” The air behind Dreamer started to waver as if caught in a heat-haze, and Charlotte started to worry. “Life that’s not true, but is born from creation and the act of willing it to be true so much that it almost becomes real. I guess it’s a bit like living in a dream.”The air rent softly, and something formless came pouring out of the void.Charlotte and the shopkeep stared at the nothing as it came in and caressed the doll.He gasped and stumbled back a step, dropping it.It didn’t fall. Instead, the tiny plush Dreamer caught itself with a flex of cloth knees, then stood up tall. “I’m Plushie Dreamer, and I’m going to be Abigail’s best friend!” the plushie declared.Dreamer sighed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said as she reached up and grabbed the doll. A tentacle appeared out of nothing and dropped a few small coin purses onto the table with a clink of metal on metal. “Bye now!”The man stared.“It was alive,” he muttered. “How?”Charlotte cleared her throat. “Sometimes, sir, it’s best not to ask things that you don’t want to know the answer to.”“But... but my creation was truly alive,” he said.The reverence there creeped Charlotte right out. “Uh-huh... well, have a nice day then,” she said before following Dreamer back out.Hopefully, their next stop would be home... home in a few months, that was.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Seven — Cult
Chapter Thirty-Seven — Cult The figure in the long cloak glanced around the cavern. Grey walls, streaked with scintillating white where cracked geodes of some crystalline rock were poking through surrounded them, lit only by the flickering red light from a few candles strategically placed around the room.The air smelled of incense, sweat, and that nervous energy that they only recalled smelling just before a big exam. It energised them, sent thrills down their spine that were only suppressed by the creeping fear that lingered in the dark.“Have all the members arrived?” they intoned, voice deep and tenebrous.There were six other figures in the room, all wearing long robes that masked their faces and made their bodies entirely indistinct. No one would be able to tell much about them other than their height and perhaps a hint of their gender in the set of their shoulders.With no reply but the bob of a few cowls, the speaker continued. “In that case, I declare the start of the sixth bimonthly meeting of the Cult of the Dreaming Hopefuls.”“Oh come on!”“That’s the worst one yet.”“Nah, that’s Marge’s idea. The Dreamy Dreamers? I still can’t get over it.”As was normal for one of their meetings, it immediately devolved into a bunch of bickering and whining. John was glad for his hood. It prevented the others from seeing his eyes roll or hear the longsuffering sigh he let out.It was an hour’s walk away from the academy to get to this cave. An hour where they had to make sure no Inquisitor was following them and where they had to carry their stuff with them. This week he was responsible for the candles and after-ceremony snacks. Those were the speaker’s job, and he took his job seriously... when it was his turn.John cleared his throat. “Regardless of what we call it,” he said. His name wasn’t that bad, was it? “The meeting has begun. First, shall any of the dreamers here express any news? New dreams to enlighten the future? New visions of our lady?”A hand raised. He thought it might be Smith. “So, I had a dream about Miss Desperau again,” he said.Everyone groaned.“Hey! It might actually have been a vision this time,” Smith said.“Was she punishing you again?” Another asked.“Well, sort of,” Smith said.There was a giggle from one of the smaller members whom John pretended not to know was Cynthia. “Did she have a cane this time? Or was it a ruler? Did she bend you over your desk?”“It wasn’t anything like that!” Smith said.“Did you wake up with some wetness around your loins?”“Okay,” John said. “Setting aside Smith’s... dream. Did anyone else have a dream or vision from our lady? A real one.”He waited a heartbeat, then was about to move on to the next part with someone coughed. Cynthia? “Um, I had a dream where the lady entered an Inquisition call box, then was whisked away. Everything in the world started to move backwards, birds flying in the wrong way, people walking backwards, leaves fell up onto trees. It was strange.”The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.John agreed, that was strange.“And you complained about my dreams,” Smith muttered.“We’ll keep an eye out for, ah, the Inquisition and any... time related things,” John said.Everyone nodded along. It was always best to be safe with these kinds of things.“That brings us to the most important part of the meeting.” The air grew a little more sombre, and it almost felt like the shadows twitched in anticipation.Two of the group members scurried off to the side and returned with a great big cast-iron bowl (Smith’s family had a lot of blacksmiths in it, and he got the bowl custom made for them. It had convenient little handles on the sides). They placed it in the middle of the cavern, where everyone could see into it.John, as the speaker for the night, bowed to the bowl first even as he reached under his robes. “I offer onto thee, our lady of dreams, this box of fine pastries.”He pulled out a box of pastries, tied with a neat bow at the top. Inside were cookies and a slice of cake, as well as a few slightly burned croissants.His sister made them.He placed it into the bowl and stepped back.The next places a large loaf of bread, then some sausages. Everyone rolled their eyes as a member added a large jug filled with expensive wine. Timothy always trying to flaunt his wealth.Finally, the bowl was filled with enough food to feed someone to bursting. John reached his hands out to the side, and they were gripped by those nearest him. The circle was formed of living bodies. “Oh, Dreamer, She who Eternally Lies. We give unto you this bounty, that you may bless us and ours so that we may feed your eternal dreams forevermore!”John loved the way his voice bounced off the walls.He paused, nervous for a moment about whether or not the lady would reply.Then the air rent, and from that rent came a flurry of tentacles that poured into the bowl like intestines falling out of a sliced gut.They rested there for a moment, then were pulled upwards, leaving the bowl entirely empty.There was a long silence, then a sigh.“That last part always makes me nervous,” Smith said.“I know,” Cynthia agreed.“Whelp, that’s it for this week’s meeting,” John said. “Did anyone bring cards?”“I did!”“Oh, I brought some cake from that little cafe, the new one? Anyone want some?”It was strange, being part of a cult. It meant that John had to spend a lot more time with some very strange people than he’d normally want, but in the end it proved to be a lot of fun. He was actually growing fond of his strange new friends.It was a small price to pay for immortality.
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Chapter Thirty-Eight — Solstice
Chapter Thirty-Eight — Solstice Dreamer was very excited.The cafe, and their home above, was all nice and decorated. There were more plants than usual, some of them cut up into wreaths that Abigail explained symbolised various alchemical circles that helped people in different ways. There was a thin layer of snow outside too, the crunchy kind that went ‘cruk cruk’ when people stepped on it.There were other decorations too, of course. Pam, Dreamer’s weird clone, had figured out how to make long strung out paper hangy things using long bits of folded paper. With Charlotte’s help, they’d strung those out over the doors and across the room.There was a weird plant hanging over the kitchen door called a mistletoe. Abigail had explained that when two people stood under it at the same time, they had to hug, and if they were special friends they could kiss too.For some reason she had vetoed Dreamer’s mistletacles. The mistletoe didn’t actually make people hug, it was only a traditional thing.Dreamer suspected that it was less a tradition and more an excuse that Abigail and Daphne came up with so that they could tentacle wrestle with their tongues some more.When evening of the Winter Solstice came, they closed up the cafe and all of their friends gathered upstairs in their living room. It was Dreamer and Pam, and of course Abigail. Charlotte was there with Poutine, who looked a bit nervous, and Daphne was fussing over a few pretty boxes with bows tied up above them.Dreamer was bouncing on the spot she was so excited for this part.Everyone picked out a place to sit, some of them next to piles of gifts, and Dreamer’s entire being twitched as she saw her name on some of the tags hanging from some gifts.“Alright,” Abigail said. “Who wants to start?”“Me!” Dreamer shouted.There were chuckles all around. “I would never have imagined that you wanted to go first,” Daphne said.Dreamer nodded very fast. “Yes.”Rents opened in space, and from those came her gifts. She didn’t know how wrapping worked, so she had mostly just wrapped the gifts in layers and layers of colourful wrapping paper, then there had been an incident with a roll of tape (even now, two of her tentacles kept trading the same tiny ball of tape back and forth, eternally unable to get it off without the tape sticking to the tentacle removing it from the other).Still, her gifts were all there.“Okay, okay,” Dreamer said. She grabbed her gifts and ran around the room, giving them to her friends. To Charlotte she gave a teeny tiny time travel box. That way she could put something in it if she wanted it yesterday. She gave Daphne a picture of Abigail sleeping. She got Charlotte to help her frame it. Charlotte thought that it was a very funny gift, but Dreamer didn’t get that. She just knew that Daphne liked it when Abigail slept.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.For Poutine she gave him a styrofoam cup. They didn’t even have those in this universe, so she really had to go far to get one. He seemed confused by it, but that was fine.Pam got to live, which was a great gift, Dreamer figured.And then it was time to give Abigail her gift.Abigail sat on the edge of her seat, a smile just itching to come out. “Did you get me anything special?” she asked.Dreamer nodded. “Yes,” she said. She pulled the plushie out from a rift, then held the box carefully. She had gotten help to wrap this one because it was special. “Here,” she said.Abigail took the box and carefully undid all the tape holding the paper around it in place. Dreamer bounced while she waited. Why did Abigail have to be so... Abigail about the paper?Then it was all off and folded on the side, and Abigail carefully opened the box.“Oh!” she said. She raised the plushie, then grinned at Dreamer. “It’s very cute,” she said.Dreamer nodded. It was. “Yeah, it’s a me, but small and plush. So that you have something to hug and keep you happy, even when I’m not there, which I won’t not be because you have plushie me.”“I think I get it,” Abigail said. She hugged the plushie, then patted her lap for Dreamer to sit on. “Alright, does anyone mind if I go next?”No one did, so Abigail reached behind her seat-which was tricky with Dreamer on her lap-and pulled out some gifts of her own.Most of them were nice and simple things. Socks and felt hats, and whatever it was that Daphne got, it made her blush a lot before she closed her box and hid it under her seat.“And this is yours,” Abigail said.She placed a gift box on Dreamer’s lap.Dreamer ripped the box apart, shreds of wrapping paper flying all over, soon followed by the cardboard underneath as she dug for her gift.She gasped.Carefully, Dreamer raised her gift up.It was a hat.Not just any hat though.It was a bowler hat.Only important people wore those.Hers had little felt tentacles on the brim, and on the very front, embroidered into the dome-like cap, was her name. “Dreamer.”“It’s so pretty!” Dreamer said. She wiggled it a bit and was immensely satisfied by the way the tentacles sticking out of it bounced.“I’m glad you like it,” Abigail said. “Try it on?”Dreamer did. It fit just right.“I’m going to put this at the very very top of my tower of hats,” Dreamer said. That way, any who saw it would gasp in awe, and they would know that it was the greatest of all hats.More gifts were passed around, snacks were brought out, hugs were given, the mistletoe used its strange traditional magics on Daphne and Abigail some more, awesome hats were worn, and all in all, it was the best night ever.
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Chapter Thirty-Nine — RacerGirl
Chapter Thirty-Nine — RacerGirl “Uh?” Diana said. She looked around the interior of... a cafe? A weird one, with wood and stuff all over. It looked like a place that was decorated to look like it was around a long time ago.She jumped up and down on the spot a few times.More or less Earth-normal gravity, she judged. No connections on any of her augs either.“Are you okay?” There was a young-human?-woman by some counters up a little set of stairs.“Yeah, give me a minute?”“Sure?” the woman said.Diana tried to connect with ChaOS, but that gave her a lot of nothing. “Hey, which planet am I on?”“Oh, you’re not from this dimension,” the waitress said.Diana blinked. “Wow, I must have been going really fast there. I’ve never dimension travelled before. Sorry, if I’m a bit lost.”“It’s fine,” the woman said. “You’ll probably make it back to your own dimension just fine once you’re done here. That’s how it works out.”“Here!”Diana blinked. She hadn’t noticed the little girl sitting in one corner of the cafe until the girl slid off her chair and pattered over on bare feet. She lifted something up for Diana to take, a piece of... paper (really, paper?) pinched between little chubby fingers.“Thanks,” Diana said as she took the paper. It was a pamphlet, folded carefully and with a colourful crayon drawing on the front of a stick figure falling into a portal, their head surrounded by moving questions marks. So You’re In Another Dimension: Now What? A guide by Pam.Diana flicked it open, eyebrows rising as she took in the simple instructions. They were mostly about breathing carefully, letting go of stress, not thinking too much about it, and there were some instructions about things not to do when in another world.“Who’s Abigail, and why shouldn’t I ask her for any sort of physical affection?” Diana asked.The waitress sighed. “I’m Abigail, and that’s just Dreamer and Pam being jealous.”“Okay,” Diana said. She held the pamphlet for a moment, then with a shrug, tucked it away in a pocket on the side of her jumpsuit. The pocket sized itself to fit the pamphlet just right. “Well, this is interesting. I kind of expected any place I dimension-hopped to to be more... high tech, you know? Are those gas lanterns?”“They are?” the waitress said, or asked, she didn’t seem entirely certain about the question.“Wild,” Diana said. “Yeah, if you accept Federation board credits, Core Bones, or like, gold, I’ll have whatever you can fab.”The waitress grabbed a menu from next to the cash register (which Diana only recognized from some classic video games) and handed it over. “Pick whatever you want. We’re usually pretty generous with whatever currency a dimensional traveller has.”“That’s neat,” Diana said. “Huh, the menu cover is made of paper too. How many trees died to make this place?”“I don’t know?” Abigail asked.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.“Bet some ecologist sorts would be freaking out right about now. Don’t really care that much myself,” Diana said. She tapped a few items on the menu, only taking a split second to figure it out. “That’s what I’ll have.”“Oh, uh, I’ll deliver it to your seat,” Abigail said. “Sit wherever.”“Thanks!” Diana said. She glanced over to the girl-Pam?-who had given her the bit of advertising and found her sitting in the corner again, head bobbing left and right as she drew something. “So, what’re you doing?” Diana asked.“I’m making a pamphlet to replace the one I gave you,” Pam said.“Oh, did you want it back?”“No,” Pam said.“Alrighty then,” Diana said. “You make all the pamphlets here?”“That’s what I’m for,” Pam said.“Neat. You know, I’m somewhat familiar with advertising myself,” Diana said. “Mostly when it comes to racing-related stuff, and sponsorship deals, but its all linked.”“Advertising?” Pam asked. “I’m making pamphlets.”Diana nodded. “Aren’t pamphlets a form of advertising, though? Like, what’s the purpose of a pamphlet?”“I ask myself that every day,” the girl said in a tone that didn’t fit her age at all.“Uh,” Diana said. “Well, that was somewhat rhetorical. I mostly meant to say that the goal is to tell people something, right? It’s like a glimpse of information on a subject. Not the whole story, but enough to tell people what they need to know and why they might want to learn more.”“Yes,” Pam said. “Pamphlets have great limitations. It’s part of their form. They tell you only a little bit of stuff. It’s hard to fit all the things I want to say in them sometimes, but I think that that’s the way a lot of things in life are.”“What do you mean?”“It’s shorter than you want it to be, and you can only fit so much into it,” Pam said. She didn’t look up from the pamphlet she was colouring in as she spoke. “You can put some big things in, but then you won’t have space for as many smaller things. And if it’s all smaller things, then it’s all... weird and broken up. You need to be real clever, pick the right words, and know how to say the big things the right way so that they all fit.”“I feel like this has somehow turned into a weird analogy for something,” Diana said. “Uh, I’m just a simple person, you know. I’m not fit for introspection or anything like that.”Pam glanced up at her. “Maybe you’re not,” she said. “But maybe that doesn’t matter. The folds on a pamphlet don’t know that they’re folds, but they’re still there.”“I genuinely don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounded real deep.”Abigail appeared over her shoulder, a tray in hand from which she grabbed and placed Diana’s order before her. “Pam’s like that. She means well though.”Diana shrugged. “Hey, we all need a hobby.”“Hobbies are one of the things that can either give you meaning, or becoming the meaning for why you are,” Pam said. “Mine’s pamphlets. What’s yours?”Diana chuckled. “I guess... going fast.”
* * *
Chapter Forty — A Visitor
Chapter Forty — A Visitor Dreamer was just minding her business one day-she was practising drawing with Pam, who was infuriatingly better than her-when she felt someone coming close.Not in the cafe. There was just the usual slow trickle of clients in and out. Locals that knew that Abigail made the very best coffee and cakes with her fancy machines that made those things for her.No, the person approaching was far, far outside of the planet, in the empty void of the space between spaces.She split her attention between drawing within the lines with her wax crayons and inspecting the thing ripping its way through several dimensions on its way closer.“Oh,” she said as she made out the form of the thing.It was quite small, all things considered. A lot of not much, packed in tight. It cut through the void like the point of a knife being stabbed into jello (which reminded her, she hadn’t eaten in entire minutes) and raced ever closer.It wasn’t just a thing though. Things tended to flip and flop about on the other side all the time. Lost items, bits of mortal civilisations that had tried interesting ideas to interesting effect, the long rotted corpses of great beings. Sure, there were usually millenia between the things, but there were lots of them there to bump into.This thing was more than just a chunk of matter hurtling through nothing. It had purpose. That alone set it apart from a lot of other things.Dreamer had met a few things like herself. Some had even been stronger than her. What they lacked was a purpose, a thing which they did above all else, and that made them weak, even if they were stronger.The thing coming closer was still galaxies away, but that wouldn’t last. It would be here soon, dragged ever closer by the purpose that powered it.She reached out to it.Before, all of a few months ago, her initial reaction would be to bat the thing aside, or maybe bring it in close for a nibble. Now... now Dreamer was a changed girl.She hadn’t even been a girl a while ago, so it was a pretty big deal.“I’ll be back,” Dreamer said as she stood up. She walked over to the counter, squeezed past a client, then grabbed the edge of the counter and pulled her head up so she could see Abigail on the other side.“Hey Dreamer,” Abigail said. “Did you want a snack?”Dreamer considered it.Did she want a snack?“Yes,” Dreamer said. She did want a snack. “Also, someone’s coming.”“Okay,” Abigail said. “I’ll take care of these clients and then bring you your snack, okay? Will this person want a snack too?”Dreamer thought for a moment, then nodded. Probably. Crossing worlds was hungry business.Now that she’d told Abigail that someone was coming, she returned to her desk and resumed her colouring work. The little two-dimensional Abigail she was drawing didn’t look right. Abigail’s skin wasn’t the right shade, she didn’t have a dress of the same green as the crayons Dreamer had. And all of Abigail’s self was within the lines of her body.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.But Dreamer was clever, and little bits sticking out could easily be turned into combat tentacles.Speaking of tentacles, she had a few billion of those (Daphne had taught her bigger numbers, which was proving useful when she had to describe how many of something she was doing to someone) spear out across the universe to intercept the thing moving in close.They didn’t grab it, but shifted their trajectory so that they surrounded it on all sides and kept a close eye on it.“Hello!” Dreamer said to the thing.It slowed down.The thing hesitated, then finally it came to a stop somewhere between Abigail’s world and nowhere in particular. “Hello,” it sent back to her.Not quite. It wasn’t the word, but more the idea of a greeting. In either case, Dreamer understood what it was trying to say.“So, what are you doing around here?” Dreamer asked.“Who are you?” was its reply.A little bit rude. Abigail had taught her everything she needed to know, and a bunch more, about how to greet people and say hi and be polite. Saying your name was part of that, but usually you said it-or an appropriate nickname-before you asked someone for their name.Dreamer screeched her name at the thing, which wobbled a bit at the onslaught of information. “But you can call me Dreamer,” she said.“I am-” and the thing sliced at Dreamer. For a moment she though it was an attack, but no, it just had a weird name. “But you can call me Death.”“Hi Death.” Dreamer waved some tentacles at it. “What are you doing around here?”“I’m here to reap the souls of those who have passed,” it said. “Specifically, those from this place.” It sliced a bunch of information at her, which she realized pointed right towards her new home.“No, I have people I like there. Go do that kind of stuff somewhere else.”“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Death said.“I could just eat you,” Dreamer said.Death considered this. “I still need to visit. Maybe we can come to some sort of compromise.”“Do you like tea?”“What?Dreamer thought for a moment. “Oh, you like coffee better?”“Are you trying to bribe me with tea and coffee?”“No, I’m being a good host,” Dreamer said. Was it really so complicated? “If you behave like a good guest, then we can talk over tea and pastries. Pastries are good. They’re like bread, but better.”“Very well, what is the dress-code for this event?”Dreamer grinned as she started adding the finishing touches to her drawing. It was looking pretty nice, all things considered. She’d be done just before her guest arrived.She never had a guest before. She hoped it would be a lot of fun.And if it wasn’t, more snacks for her!
* * *
Chapter Forty-One — Death
Chapter Forty-One — Death Abigail hummed to herself as she prepared a little plate for Dreamer. The afternoon rush was coming to an end (at last) and she had promised Dreamer some snacks. It wouldn’t do for her favourite little monster to throw a fit.Actually, now that Abigail thought about it, Dreamer had never really been overly upset about anything. At most she might violate some natural laws to get rid of an irritant, but for the most part Dreamer was a well-behaved young girl.That was probably for the best, seeing how powerful Dreamer was.Maybe all the beings like Dreamer were actually fairly nice. It was probably a little optimistic to imagine that every powerful being was kind and helpful and a bit silly, but it was a nice thought to have all the same.“Abigail!” Dreamer called from the cafe’s main floor. “My guest is here.”“Alright,” Abigail said absently. Then the words really registered.Dreamer had a guest.Dreamer had a guest.It was probably not a problem, but it was definitely something she would need to look into. There were all sorts of scary creatures that might want to visit Dreamer, and there were plenty of strange and vile people that might want to harm someone that appeared the way Dreamer did. It wouldn’t do not to supervise.Abigail placed a few more cupcakes onto the platter, then she walked around the counter and into the cafe with a bit of haste. She shivered on the way into the main room. Had someone left the door open? It was mid-winter; people should know better.Dreamer was in the room, as was Pam. Abigail didn’t pay them much mind. Her attention focused on the other being standing by the door.It was a tall creature, cold and ancient. Its power was swift and unrelenting, a presence that she realized she had always known but never felt before.She blinked and tried to see the person there. There had to be something.It was like chasing a fly in a darkened room. The moment she thought she saw something, the dark swallowed it. “Uh,” she said.“Abigail, this is...” Dreamer began. She frowned, then looked into the space where her guest was. “Hey, you got a name?”“I am He Who-”Abigail shuddered as the person’s, the thing’s, voice clawed at her ears and gripped her mind, chilling and cold and ebbing with painful certainty. Like when she drank something cold too quickly, but all over.“No no,” Dreamer said. “That’s too long. You need a short name that the mortals can say. They talk with meat flapping, it’s slow.”“I see,” the space said. “In that case, call me... Death.”“Death,” Abigail repeated.“Yes. The end of all things.”Abigail swallowed, then glanced down at the platter she was holding. “Would you like a cupcake?”“... Yes please,” Death said.“Come on, sit down and stuff,” Dreamer said. She pulled a seat out at one of the round tables, then she took a seat for herself next to Death. “Wanna sit with us too?” Dreamer asked.This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.“Uh,” Abigail said.“You don’t need to be afraid of him, he can’t hurt you.”“I can,” Death replied.Dreamer rolled her eyes, and Abigail made a tiny mental note (with the part of her mind not screaming) that she had to find out who taught her how to do that. “Yes,” Dreamer said. “You could hurt Abigail. But then I’d eat you and wipe out your very concept from everything so that you could never come back.”“You cannot kill the concept of death, for in killing the concept you must have realized it,” Death said.Dreamer crossed her arms. “What if I try really hard?”“I don’t think effort is part of this particular equation.”“That’s just cause no one’s tried hard enough before,” Dreamer said. “Hurt Abigail and nothing in this universe or the next would stop me. I’d search the umbral plains for the one that hurt her and consume the fabric of reality itself until the ones I hunt rest eternally in a nightmare of my making,” Dreamer said. “Can I have a cupcake too?”“Sure,” Abigail said. She placed a cupcake in front of Dreamer, then another in front of the embodiment (insofar as it might have a body) of Death. “Do you want some tea? Uh, coffee?”“Coffee please.”“How do you like it?” Abigail asked. This was familiar, well-threaded, ground.“Six sugars, a dash of cream.”Abigail nodded. “Good, good.”“Can I get a coffee?” Dreamer asked.“No,” Abigail said without giving it a second thought.Dreamer pouted but it had no effect on Abigail. She nodded in the general direction of Death, then scurried off back to the counter where she could prepare Death’s coffee and hyperventilate in peace.When she returned it was to find that Death had either left and someone else had taken his place, or the concept of mortality had taken on the shape of a middle aged man with a touch of grey at the temples and a nice well-manicured moustache. “Ah, my coffee,” he said.“Here you go,” Abigail said as she set his mug down. “And here’s an eclair, uh, on the house, since you’re a friend of Dreamer’s.”“Oh, we’re not exactly friends. Dreamer is just being polite.”“I was gonna eat him, but then I remembered some of the stuff Daphne said at me,” Dreamer said. “So I invited him here instead.”“Oh, that’s nice,” Abigail said. “Um, were you coming here on business?”“Yes, yes, to reap the souls of every living thing in this solar system,” Death said.Dreamer shook her head. “Silly, you can’t do that. I said so.”“Yes, I’m beginning to see that. Perhaps we can compromise on some of the finer details?”“Yeah, okay,” Dreamer said.Abigail was quite certain that the fate of her entire world now rested on Dreamer’s ability to negotiate. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was supposed to be more afraid of anymore.
* * *
Chapter Forty-Two — The Inspector
Chapter Forty-Two — The Inspector Cornelius had been with the administrative wing of the Adventurer’s guild for... about seven years? An administrator ought to know how long he’d been administrating, but the years sometimes blurred by.It was simple, honest work. He was responsible for tabulating results, ensuring that the quality of returned materials was consistent, and occasionally he oversaw training and some guild chapterhouses.The guild was large enough that it needed regular inspections in order to keep things nice and neat. Otherwise, some members might try to abuse the system, or clients could start making demands that didn’t conform to guild regulations.The guild was, in the end, an interesting place to work, with strange people doing their best to help the citizenry against monsters and alchemical creations and even humble bandits. There were heroes in the guild, members that rose up and became legends in their own right through great deeds and accomplishments, and when Cornelius could help some of those heroes, he felt like a little bit of a hero himself.Recently, a little team out in the boonies past Five Peaks had been making a name for themselves. Three adventurer’s guild members and one extra non-member assistant. Nothing too unusual there, except that the team were doing really well.Too well.They’d taken out entire bandit forts, wiped a colony of rabid sword-swans, captured a bandit lord and protected a little town from an entire force of goblin savages.If they were older, more experienced, then maybe it wouldn’t have risen as many suspicions. But the team was made up for a pair of rejects from Five Peak’s academy, and an older adventurer who had never made a name for himself and only took odd low-risk jobs.Something didn’t add up.So he met the team in Treescore as they were preparing for another mission. This one might well have been their most dangerous. A clutch of wyverns had settled into the mountains to the north-west of the town and were beginning to threaten the cattle and citizens of the little town.Wyverns weren’t a joke.Cornelius wasn’t unfamiliar with a difficult mission or two. Before joining the administration team, he had five good years of adventuring guild work under his belt. He made a point of staying in shape, and had had a few adventures with teams on inspection runs to keep sharp.Which is to say, he knew what went into preparing for the kind of work they did.The team he met was anything but prepared.Two of the members, both young women from Five Peaks, had the kind of gear he expected to see on adventurers that never tackled anything rougher than a goblin. The third member, the older more experienced adventurer, had good armour and a good sword by his hip, but it was all the kind of gear that either the exceptionally talented and rich, or foolish and rich carried.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.Swords didn’t need filigree on their blades to work well.The fourth and final member of the little group bothered him the most.She was a child, maybe in her early teens. Cornelius made a point of avoiding children. They were loud and annoying and irrational. This one seened no different.“So, how many of them are there?” the girl-the others called her Girl, which he imagined was a nickname of some sort-asked.“There’re supposed to be a clutch of them,” Feli Simmers said. She grinned down at Girl as she hoisted her pack back on. The team was carrying a lot of food. More than they needed by far, but perhaps they had a trick in store.If Cornilius had to kill over a dozen young wyvern, he would certainly try poisoning some meat to kill them without getting close.Perhaps the team wasn’t as unprepared as he thought. Their success had to come from somewhere. There was no faking the multitude of reports they’d been receiving from the team’s activities.For the moment, Cornilius decided to assume that the team was under equipped because they decided not to fight the enemy head-on, which was wise in this case, and being light on their feet would serve them better than having too much gear. The child was likely something like a team pet. That had happened often enough. Precocious orphans joining teams on adventures for a little while.They reached the edge of the mountains to the north of Treescore and found a trail leading up the edge of the rocky terrain.By mid-day, Cornelius was beginning to suspect that something was wrong with the child.Did all children eat that much? For that matter, why did she not have boots on?Also, why were the members of the team praising her for every little thing and occasionally pausing to... pat her head? It was bizarre.“Alright,” Jean guy, the team’s nominal leader, said as they reached a sort of plateau on the side of the mountain. He cupped his hands over his eyes and searched the surroundings for a moment. “The villagers said the wyverns were around here.”“Is it those birds?” the girl asked while pointing.Cornelius followed her pointing finger to a flock above. “No, those are pigeons,” he said.“Oh. Is it those birds?”This time, she was pointing to what was very clearly an entire roost of wyverns resting next to a cavern on the mountainside. They were hard to make out against the rocks around them, their grey scales blending in with the stones around them.“That’s them,” Feli said. “Think we should get closer, or do you want to... you know, do your thing from here?”What thing, Cornelius wondered.“Yeah, I can grab them from here. I can’t eat all of them, right?”“Leave the heads,” Guy said.“Pardon, but what exactly is the plan here?” Cornelius asked.And then the sky above them ripped apart and from the screaming void came an uncountable number of fleshy tendrils.The wyverns screamed.Cornelius screamed too.
* * *
Chapter Forty-Three — The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer)
Chapter Forty-Three — The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer) The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer) sat on a rock and chewed at a particularly tough piece of jerky. The meat was singed on the edges, cooked in a fire that Feli had lit next to one of the wyvern corpses.She watched the inspector with narrowed, suspicious eyes.The Girl-With-No-Name was a tough, battle-hardened warrior.She had fought bandit lords and eaten them, she had trampled goblin hoards and eaten them, and she had been patted by even the most scarred members of the Adventurer’s Guild. Those that saw her knew that she meant business.Her pretty dress was stitched up and was covered by a bandoneer with snack bottles. She had a knife in a sheath by her hip, and another tucked under her ruffles. Her body was as scarred and grizzled as her gear.There was a plaster on a boo-boo she’d gotten on her shin one time when she tripped while running to eat a troll. A scar that she looked on fondly now that it had stopped hurting.“Wha’ch’a want?” she asked the inspector.The man had tagged along with her party as they went on a mission to eat a whole flock of wyverns. So far, they tasted like chicken, but chewier. It was pretty good meat.Someone at the guild told her that eating meat would make her big and strong, so she ate all the meat she could.She ate all the meat she could before learning that too, but maybe with less enthusiasm.“I just had a few questions,” the inspector said. “About you, mostly.”The Girl-With-No-Name monched down on a bone and cracked it so that she could slurp out the marrow inside. Nice and gooey. “Mmm, go on then,” she said before tossing the bone down her throat. She loved wings, they were so fun to eat.“Who are you, exactly?” he asked.This guy had shown up to inspect her party. Not much to say there. They were all tough-as-leather adventurers. Some of the best in the world, even. “Just a girl with no name,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. “But I actually do have a name, but I don’t want to use it or else the other me might find out I’m here.”“Pardon?”“Yeah, alright,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. “But I won’t be forgetting.”She didn’t know what that meant, but she’d heard it in an inn once from one of the cooler adventurers, and she always wanted to use the line.“Okay,” the inspector said. “Where do you come from, then?”The Girl-With-No-Name sighed. She pulled another wing from the edge of the fire. Lorean had brought some sauce, and it was sizzling nicely on the fatty skin. “Look, lemme tell you my deep dark origin story, okay?”Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.“Uh, alright.”“So, one day, I was with this girl. The best girl in the whole world. My job at the time was to find these bandits. Low-level runts. Wastes of space and time, but someone had to take care of them.”The inspector nodded. He’d probably heard of the sort.The Girl-With-No-Name shifted on her rock. Her bum was getting sore, but she couldn’t sit on the grass. That was too soft and nice, and a proper hard boiled adventurer wouldn’t do that.Besides, it was hard to get the grass stains out of her dress. The blood stains at least looked cool. “So, I needed to find these bandits in a hurry. I made several hundred of myself to scour the woods. The me who found the bandits first would win a prize beyond compare.”“What?”The Girl-With-No-Name sighed again. “A head pat,” she muttered as she looked into the sky longingly. “I was one of those me’s. Lost in the woods, too slow to return, and guaranteed to lose besides. So I just... wandered off. Maybe I’d find more bandits and get pats for those, you know?”“I... think I understand.”“So, I found bandits, then more of them, then I ran into these three buffoons. Junior adventurers, trying their best. I decided to lend them a hand.”“You stole all our food,” Feli said.“And since then, they’ve grown into an excellent team,” The Girl-With-No-Name continued.“All I do is pamper you all day. I haven’t fought anything in months,” Jean said.The Girl-With-No-Name chuckled. “That’s not true. Sometimes you give me piggyback rides. You’re a valuable member of the team.”“I am increasingly confused,” the inspector said.“Look, I was lost, so I found a new thing to do, a new... purpose,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. She closed her fist and narrowed her eyes. “A new reason to live. I’m going to be the very best adventurer, until everyone knows my name.”“Which you don’t have.”“And then she’s going to welcome me back with open arms and so many pats.”The inspector looked at her party members, but they mostly just shrugged.“These stories, they’re always about a girl, aren’t they?” The Girl-With-No-Name asked.“Trust me when I say I’ve never heard a story even remotely like this, and if I hadn’t seen you summon tentacles from the void to kill a group of wyverns I would be far less likely to entertain you.”The Girl-With-No-Name sniffed and shook her head. He didn’t believe her. Not entirely.It didn’t matter. With time and effort, she would prove herself, and once she did, she’d return, triumphant and powerful, back home.She looked forward to it.“Hey, can we cook the eyeballs too? Those are juicy!”
* * *
Chapter Forty-Four — GWNN
Chapter Forty-Four — GWNN “What do you mean?” the Girl-With-No-Name asked.Meetings at the adventurer’s guild were very very serious business. That’s what her friends told her, at least. Jean had gone through several lectures about how their team had to look presentable and professional when meeting at the guild so that others would take them seriously.The Girl-With-No-Name even took a bath before the meeting, and put on her freshly patched pretty dress and all of her armour bits on too.She looked presentable and professional as she stood in front of the guild’s main counter on her tippy-toes and pouted professionally at the lady behind the counter.“I’m sorry, but your team has been marked as, ah, under certain regulations that prevent us from allowing you to take on any more missions for the moment,” the lady said.“That’s outrageous!” The Girl-With-No-Name said. That was a word she learned recently, and one that sounded very professional too. “I demand to see your manager.” The Girl-With-No-Name did her best impersonation of Feli that one time she found a fly in her soup.“I... yes, I can accommodate that much,” the lady said.Things moved quickly after that. The Girl-With-No-Name called over her team, who were all a little miffed about the sanctions, and then they moved over to an office where the current leader of the guild was waiting for them.“Well, you see,” he said. “It’s not so much that the team isn’t allowed to take on missions, it’s that, ah, it’s the guild’s opinion that certain members of your team aren’t old enough to apply for membership within the guild.”“What?” the Girl-With-No-Name asked. “Who’s not old enough?” she squinted at Jean, but Jean had a couple of wrinkles and a bit of white hair at the temples that he trimmed to hide sometimes.“That would be you,” the guild officer said with a gesture towards the Girl-With-No-Name.She crossed her arms. “That’s wrong.”“Pardon?”“I’m older than time. I can’t be too young because there was no young when I was made,” she said.That earned her a lot of confused looks and not much else. She insisted that she be allowed to take on more missions. She was only just starting to get really famous, and she’d need every bit of that to be able to return to Abigail all proud and happy.The guild officer guy refused.“But I’m old enough!” the Girl-With-No-Name insisted.“You look like you’re barely thirteen,” he replied, and that was that.The Girl-With-No-Name considered forcing the issue, she considered forcing the officer’s head through a wall, and she considered forcing her tentacles all over until everything was broken, but in the end she decided to be the bigger person. “Fine then. How old do I need to be to join?”The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.“At least an adult,” the officer said.The Girl-With-No-Name had no idea how long that was! Everything was unfair, and mortals sucked. She crossed her arms and stormed out of the room, her teammates following after her.“Hey, it’s not all bad,” Lorean said.“It’s fine,” the Girl-With-No-Name muttered. She rubbed at her eyes which had gotten a bit wet because of how frustrated she was. “I guess I should just go back to Abigail then. I just... I wanted to go see her like a big hero.”“Come on,” Jean said. “You’ve saved dozens of small towns, taken out bandits, wrecked wyverns. You are a hero, even if the guild refuses to see that.”“Yeah, but you’re not a hero unless people know about it,” the Girl-With-No-Name said. “And Abigail won’t hear about my exploits if I can’t continue exploiting things.”Feli patted the Girl-With-No-Name on the head. “Hey, hey, don’t worry. Look, where does this Abigail live? You’ve been talking about her for ages, but you never said before.”“She lives in that city with the five hills.”“Alright, that’s a little ways to the south, but we’ve travelled further before,” Feli said. “How about we all go with you? The four of us. Maybe we can have a few adventures on the way? There’s plenty of small towns on the way south, and nothing says we can’t help the locals without being part of the guild.”Lorean raised a finger. She did that whenever she was about to tell someone that they were wrong. Telling people they were wrong was Lorean’s hobby. “Point of fact,, the guild charter says exactly that.”“Then screw the guild charter,” Feli said. “They’re not letting us do any more quests? Too bad, we’ll do the quests anyway, and they won’t see a penny of it.”“Ah, I’ll have to look, but we might be able to take on non-paying missions and quests, actually,” Lorean said. “We’ll need to cover things on our own though.”“We can afford it,” Jean said.“Yeah! And helping people without accepting payment is like... half again as heroic as doing it for coin,” Feli said. She patted the Girl-With-No-Name some more. “See? It’ll all work out.”The Girl-With-No-Name looked up to her fellows, then wiped her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said. She had a great feeling about this plan. Her tentacles practically twitching with eagerness to get going.So they got going. Jean found a cart and bought some donkeys, the girls dragged the Girl-With-No-Name around as they gathered supplies, and by nightfall the Girl-With-No-Name and her friends were on the way south, to be big damn heroes and to go meet Abigail at long last!
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