As Jadis, Sabina, and Sorcha made their way down the street, they spoke quietly amongst themselves about what they were looking to buy and where they might be able to find it. Roy and the knights with him kept a respectful distance, but Jadis wasn’t worried about them overhearing their discussion. Nothing they were talking about was anything that would reveal any sensitive information about her and Sabina’s plans. Jadis still kept her voices low, though, since she didn’t want to broadcast their shopping list to whoever they might pass by on the street.
The main thing that Sabina wanted to get straight away was the equipment she would need for a smith’s forge. That meant hammers, anvils, crucibles, grindstones, and all manner of other bobs and ends that Sabina listed with enthusiasm but Jadis had no clue as to their function. Sabina had a good number of supplies already in the wagon, but that gear was intended for travel and thus more suited to spot-repairs. To get her experiments out of her head and into the world, she needed real, heavy-duty equipment. Jadis didn’t know much about what would be suitable, but Sabina did, so she was happy to let the half-elf take the lead while she acted as the wallet.
As Sabina rambled on about the various tools and supplies that she wanted to buy, she absently took Dys’ hand in hers and laced their fingers together. The gesture was so casually intimate that Jadis almost didn’t notice that it had happened, and when she did realize, a warmth spread throughout her bodies, making her feel giddy with delight. It really didn’t matter how many times it happened, holding hands with one of her lovers warmed her in a way nothing else could.
“Tsk. She makes that look so easy.”
Syd glanced down at Sorcha to see the goblin woman staring enviously at where Dys and Sabina had locked hands together. She must have sensed the gaze on her, though, because after a second, she glanced up at Syd and a dark flush crept over her features. She cleared her throat before speaking.
“Uh, where were we. Talking about lumber, right?”
“Do you want to hold my hand?” Syd asked, completely ignoring Sorcha’s attempt at deflection and going straight to the heart of the matter.
“Who said I wanted to hold your hand?” Sorcha balked as her voice went high-pitched. “It’s a silly sort of gesture, isn’t it? That sort of public display is a bunch of lovebird nonsense, right? Anyway, you’re way too tall and I’m too short to even think about it. I’d dangle from your hand like a bag.”
Jadis was suddenly reminded of Shakespeare, though she resisted the urge to quote Hamlet. Sorcha wouldn’t have gotten the joke, anyway.
“I could walk on my knees if that would help,” Syd offered with deadpan seriousness.
“You will not, you arse!” Sorcha hissed as she slapped the back of Syd’s leg. “Your giant bloody bodies attract enough attention as is. I won’t have you doing something stupid like that and dragging me down with you.”
“Well, if you won’t let me drag you down, how about I drag you up?”
Sorcha cocked her head to one side, her large ears flopping in a cute way as she screwed up her face in confusion. Before she could ask what Syd meant, she let out a yelp of surprise as Jay swooped in from her other side, picking her up with hands around her tiny waist. In the next moment Jay set Sorcha on Syd’s shoulder like some kind of overgrown green parrot.
The goblin squawked like a parrot, at least.
“What are you doing!?” she practically screeched as she wrapped both hands around Syd’s head in an attempt to keep her balance. “Put me down!”
“Look, I don’t have any stilts or a cart you can sit on while we walk here, so just ride on my shoulder, okay?” Syd told the squirming witch, her voice slightly muffled by the grip Sorcha had around her face. “I want to be able to talk to you without raising my voice or putting a crimp in my neck. Plus, now you have an excuse to hold my hand.”
With those words, Syd lifted up her right hand, offering Sorcha an easy way to stabilize her seat.
The goblin glowered at the hand, then at Syd, then at Jay, before finally bracing herself by wrapping her much smaller fingers around Syd’s.
“How do you manage to be both romantic and an idiot?” Sorcha grumbled as she settled into her new elevated spot.
“Romance makes fools of us all,” Syd spoke with all the gravitas of an ancient sage. “I accept that foolishness without hesitation, and thus I am free to be as romantic as I want to be.”
“You’re a bloody git.”
Syd grinned, not bothering to argue with the assessment. Instead, she nuzzled her head into Sorcha’s side, enjoying the warmth her goblin girlfriend provided. It was almost as nice as having a pair of thighs wrapped around her head, though with only one goblin sitting on her right shoulder, her left ear was still feeling cold. Maybe she could try to balance Eir on her left side some other time? The elf was probably small enough. Maybe.
“So, what about your supplies?” Syd asked as she strolled along behind Sabina and her other self.
“My supplies?” Sorcha asked, the question having caught her off guard. “What supplies?”
“You know, the ones you need for being a witch,” Syd elaborated. “You’ll need materials so you can cast spells and stuff like that, right?”
“Oh,” Sorcha said in a small voice, almost as though the idea of casting spells hadn’t even occurred to her. “Well, you only broke the one wand. As long as I can get some stuff I need to make a new one of those, I don’t really need anything else.”
“Nothing?” Syd asked, surprised by the goblin’s response. “I thought witches made potions and other stuff like that. Don’t you need, I don’t know, a cauldron? Some eye of newt? Powdered mandrake? Bat wings?”
“Bat wings? What’s a bat?”
“Just—uh, just a flying animal kind of like a bird I heard about once. But seriously, don’t you need to supply yourself with materials for the items you use to cast spells? I thought that was how witches work.”
Sorcha didn’t respond right away. She was quiet as Syd carried her along, her cold fingers unconsciously squeezing Syd’s hand. After a short while, their little group made it to the first smithy that Sabina had wanted to visit. Jay and Dys went inside with Sabina to talk to the owners and see what she might be able to buy from them, but Syd stayed outside with Sorcha still perched on her shoulder. Two of the knights followed Jadis’ other selves inside the building, but Roy and another knight stayed outside. They both kept their distance, quietly talking just barely out of easy earshot.
“I’m not a very good witch,” Sorcha quietly announced a couple of minutes later, her sudden response almost making Syd jump.
“You seem pretty good to me,” Syd said, her tone matching Sorcha’s seriousness. “I mean, you can turn people invisible and can paralyze your enemies. That’s pretty cool. I don’t know what your other wands can do, but I bet they're strong spells. I’m sure you’ve got potions and stuff you can make too. How does any of that make you a not very good witch?”
“Because I can’t make potions,” Sorcha admitted as her left hand settled on top of Syd’s head. “I can’t do potions or staves or tokens or totems or bloody anything but wands. Just wands. That’s all my class will let me do. And I don’t have that many. I only know how to make the four that you’ve seen. Yeah, I can turn people partially invisible for a short duration, but anyone with high enough Resilience can see right through it. I have a wand that can slow people down, but it’s single-target and I have to channel through it to make it work. The paralysis wand was really the only good wand that I have. Had. Whatever. But it’s got a hard limit to it. It paralyzes someone for two minutes, minus a number of seconds equal to the target’s Resilience. If I used it on you right now, it’d freeze you up for all of five seconds. It’s a good enough spell, but it costs a lot of magic to cast so I can’t use it that often.”
Sorcha sighed, then rested her chin on top of her hand that was on top of Syd’s head.
“Look, I’m not trying to be all pitiful here, I’m just… I didn’t get that great of a witch class. I’m limited. So no, I don’t need a cauldron or newt eyes or whatever the fuck it was you said. All I need is a few things to make a replacement wand for the one Kerr broke and that’s it. No sense wasting any extra gold on me.”
Sorcha sounded resigned, like the disappointment she had about her class was just another part of her life that she’d accepted. There was no use in getting upset when she couldn’t do anything to change it, so why bother?
Not a sentiment Jadis liked to hear.
“What about your fourth wand?” Syd asked quietly. “You never said what that does.”
“Oh, uh, it’s for herb collecting. It dries out bundles of leaves and stuff like that for quick preservation. Just something I thought would be useful for my primary class before I got the bright idea to become a mercenary.”
“That sounds pretty cool, actually,” Syd murmured after a moment. As she spoke, she squeezed Sorcha’s hand. “I mean, none of your wands sound bad to me, actually. The invisibility and the paralyzing wands are super strong. Most people don’t have the kind of Resilience that I have now. I sure as shit didn’t when we met, so you really fucked my ass up. Plus, that slowing wand literally saved lives when Eike got loose. So what if it’s single target? That’s an amazing power, to be able to slow down an enemy’s movements. Paralyzing, slowing, invisibility—to me it just sounds like you’re a great support mage. So what if you can’t make potions? Does it matter when you can literally freeze monsters in their tracks with a wave of your wand?”
As Sorcha continued her silence, hopefully mulling over Syd’s words, she continued with another point.
“Besides, look at Aila and Bridget. Neither of them got the classes they wanted when they started out. Bridget’s class didn’t have the stats to support it and Aila was a, well, Cart Driver. Look at them now. I don’t think you’d call either of them ‘not very good’ at this point.”
“No, but that’s because you’re empowering them,” Sorcha pointed out with a bit of petulance in her voice.
“Yeah, I am. You don’t think I’ll do the same for you?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sorcha said after a moment, her voice slightly muffled as she buried her face into Syd’s hair. “I’m just saying I don’t have an amazing witch class, is all. I don’t need any special considerations.”
“You’re my girlfriend,” Syd enunciated slowly. “You get anything you want that I can provide. Don’t tell me you deserve less than anyone else, because you don’t.”
“Well I—”
“Have you seen how much I can do in five seconds?” Syd asked, interrupting Sorcha before she could denigrate herself any further. “Freezing me for five seconds is a massive game changer on the battlefield. If you had had that wand back in Far Felsen and had used it on Runar during our fight, I would have fucking destroyed him. Even if all you did was give me five seconds, that would have won me the fight. So don’t talk about you not being all that good or any shit like that. You’re amazing, Sorcha. You’re just specialized.”
Jadis couldn’t see Sorcha’s face while she waited for a response since the goblin was sitting on her shoulder and her other two bodies were inside the smithy, but when she finally replied, there was a tightness in her voice that spoke of strong emotions.
“Thanks, Jay, that means a lot to me. I, um, I don’t want to be an anchor. I don’t weigh much, so I’d be pretty shit at that, anyway.”
“Just speaking the truth,” Syd smiled as she squeezed Sorcha’s hand. “Also, you need to get better at telling me apart. I’m Syd.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Sorcha said as she roughly tousled Syd’s hair. “Sabina’s the only one who can tell you buggers apart and that’s because she’s some kind of savant.”
“Maybe,” Syd shrugged the shoulder Sorcha wasn’t sitting on. “Or maybe you just need to pay better attention.”
The banter between them continued for a few more minutes, a happy back-and-forth that kept both of them grinning the entire time. As Jadis’ other selves and Sabina started wrapping up their business inside the smithy, a thought struck her that Syd decided to ask.
“Hey, you said your primary class is an herbalist one, right?”
“Ah, yeah,” Sorcha answered. “Nothing special. Just a plain sort of herbalist class you might see in any village.”
“Now don’t start—”
“I’m not talking shit about my class,” Sorcha cut Syd off before she could get going. “I’m just letting you know it’s not an alchemy class or anything like that. It’s just a very plain version of the class. It’s called Garden Herbalist.”
“Garden?”
“Yeah, garden,” Sorcha confirmed. “I’m from a town outside of Glitnir called Bell’s Ford. Most of the land around where I grew up was farms and pastures. Not a lot of gathering to do in woods, you know? I grew most of the herbs I collected in the garden out back of my parents’ house.”
“I guess that means you’re pretty good at gardening then, huh? To get a class that focuses on it, I mean,” Syd mused as the gears in her head ticked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Sorcha agreed, though Syd could feel the goblin shrug. “I’m no Dryad but I made decent coin selling my harvest. Enough that I probably could have bought my own little cottage if I’d stuck with it for a few more years, rather than trying to make it big being a bloody witch.”
“So you’re saying you have a green thumb.”
Sorcha was silent for a long moment before replying with a confused and suspicious tone in her voice.
“…Yeah, Syd. My thumbs are green. I’m a goblin. We’re all green.”
“Well, I’ve got a few ideas about gardening that I haven’t seen anyone around here use so far,” Syd continued, pushing past her failed attempt at a pun. “How about we buy a few things that I think might help and I show you some Nephilim gardening tricks?”
“That sounds fun,” Sorcha agreed, the smile back in her voice. “I doubt you know more about growing plants than me, you big lug, since if you did, you’d know we can’t do much growing right now since it’s the middle of winter. But who knows, maybe you can impress me.”
“Just maybe…” Syd murmured as a grin of anticipation stretched across her face.
290