Sophie finished up her bath, toweled off, and then changed into one of the new outfits she had purchased at the market. She decided on the pale green set. The fit was a little off, but it wasn’t too bad. She preferred the style of the linen pants to the grey dress, at least. And now she had pockets.

Her hair was a little damp, but there was no helping that. She usually let it air dry anyway, and so far she hadn’t exactly found a hair dryer in this strange fantasy world.

After the bathhouse, Sophie made her way over to the Crafter’s Guild, pushing open the heavy door again. The same man was working at the counter as before, but this time he looked a little bit happier to see her.

“Briony said you’d be by,” he greeted her. “She’s out on a job right now, though. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Euan, right? I’d still like to take a look at your chill boxes,” Sophie replied. “And Briony mentioned you might have some work for a priestess?”

“Yes, yes. I suppose we were never formally introduced. Euan it is. And you are Sophie Birch, if I recall correctly? Our new shrine priestess?”

Sophie nodded. “That’s me,” she confirmed. She felt like she was starting to get used to the idea of this whole shrine priestess thing. At least, it didn’t feel so weird to introduce herself as such.

“Well, as far as work goes, we usually contract out purification requests to the Adventurer’s Guild, since we haven’t had a local priestess until you came along,” Euan explained. “We get a few items in every now and then that need to be purified – or someone from town might stop by with a request. It’s terribly inefficient, though, since the nearest shrine is all the way over near Sentus, and traveling priests or priestesses are extremely rare, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Sophie couldn’t really imagine, but maybe it had something to do with the shrine spirit being bound to the shrine? She nodded politely, regardless, and let Euan continue.

“We’d love it if you could take these requests instead, of course. And beyond that, you could ask at the Adventurer’s Guild. They often have quests for entire locations that have been tainted by corrupted mana.”

Sophie shivered at the idea. It sounded dangerous, although she still didn’t understand what purification entailed. She also hadn’t heard of the Adventurer’s Guild, yet. How many guilds were there in this town?

Either way it didn’t matter, since there was one small problem…

“I don’t actually have the ability to purify mana, yet,” she confessed.

Euan didn’t seem as surprised to hear that as Sophie expected him to. “That’s alright,” he reassured her. “You only just got your class, right?”

Sophie nodded. “I do want to help as soon as I can, though.”

The words rang true, even as she spoke them. She wondered when she’d even start learning about purification. Elowen hadn’t mentioned a specific level or anything like that, yet.

“Well, in that case, I’ll show you one of our chill boxes, and you can decide on that today,” Euan replied. “I hear Briony also made a list of other jobs we could do for you. We’d be happy to do any of them in trade in the future, once you are ready to take on purification work.”

“That sounds great,” Sophie agreed.

Euan gestured for her to follow and began to lead her down a long hallway. It opened up to a large workroom, several times the size of the reception area. Sophie glanced around in awe at the amount of stuff back here – it was filled with tables, chairs, cabinets, and other wooden furniture. There was barely any room to walk. It didn’t fit Sophie’s image of a highly organized Clerk at all, and Sophie wondered who else might work with Euan and Briony here at the Crafter’s Guild.

“Just back here,” Euan explained, as he led her to a group of freestanding wooden boxes. He waved a hand at the set of them. “They are honestly all about the same, but Briony mentioned you wanted to look at one.” He sounded a bit uncertain about the request, as if it was perhaps unusual.

Sophie imagined it must be, because it probably wasn’t everyday that someone hadn’t already heard of a chill box before.

“Thank you,” she said, not bothering to explain. “Do you mind if I – ?”

“Not at all, go ahead. Feel free to open them and look inside.”

Sophie opened the one closest to her. A small puff of cold air greeted her, chilling her still-damp hair. She shivered and peered inside, but there was nothing in there. Nothing that she could see making it work, at least. “Is it using mana?”

“Of course. It tries to pull ambient mana from the environment, but as a priestess, you will be able to channel mana into it if it seems to be getting low. They last quite a while before they run out of mana, though. Most people will have a Crafter stop by once a season or so to recharge them, but I doubt you’ll need to worry about that.”

“How fascinating. And it keeps things cold? What about frozen items?”

“This one will only keep items chilled, but we do have frost boxes as well. Those would keep things frozen, although most families around here don’t have much use for one.”

Sophie considered this for a moment and thought about what she kept in her freezer back in Seattle. Mostly microwaved dinners, frozen pizzas, and ice cream. Since she unfortunately hadn’t found any of those here, she couldn’t imagine what use she would have for a frost box either.

“Alright, well… I think a chill box will be enough for me, as well. I’d love to buy one.”

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“Perfect! I assume you’d want it delivered? We could bring one by tomorrow afternoon. I heard the Forester cleared the path already, so we’ll test it out and see if we can get a delivery cart up that way.”

Tomorrow afternoon… At this rate, she was going to need some sort of calendar to keep track of all of her appointments. This was getting a bit ridiculous. How did people survive without the convenience of cell phone calendars?

“Ah, I already have an appointment then,” she said, hesitantly. “Would the next day work?”

Euan shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re booked through the next few days, if I’m not mistaken. Let’s go back up to the front to check.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Sophie said. “The next available day will work.” It’s not like she immediately needed the chill box, after all. It was more of a slice of home than anything.

Although it would help her in her quest to live off of market food if she could save leftovers somewhere.

“Great,” he said. “If you’ll just follow me, we can finish up, and I’ll get you in the books.”

***

After spending another two gold coins on the chill box, Sophie was really glad that she had found the offering box this morning. She would have to go through it and count stuff up to see how much was left over. She had a feeling that even with the existing offerings, she’d really need to figure out the whole purification thing before she would be able to afford much of the upgrades.

Bills, bills, bills…

Regardless, by the time she was done at the Crafter’s Guild, her stomach was already rumbling again. She had her bag of baked goods, but she remembered Acacia’s warning about eating real food. The friendly baker was right, after all. Maybe she should pick something else up at the market before heading back to the shrine.

Or maybe…

Maybe she could try one of those little restaurants she saw earlier near the bathhouse, instead. It wasn’t too far of a walk, and she was pretty sure she still had some daylight left.

She made her way back into that part of town, glancing at the unfamiliar signs. What kind of cuisine would they serve? She had no idea what to expect.

She also wasn’t sure yet what to expect with regards to the prices of prepared food. Even with the offering box money, she should probably be a little conservative until she could take real jobs. Once she learned mana purification, though, she could try every restaurant in the city!

She glanced around again at the inviting-looking places and felt excited about the idea. It reminded her of when she first moved to Seattle and everything had been so new and interesting. For the first time since being here, she felt like she had something to look forward to that wasn’t just fixing the portal and trying to get back.

Her eyes landed on a sign she had seen earlier today – the one that appeared to belong to a tavern. Bar food seemed like a safe bet. Although some of the bars in Seattle sold overpriced appetizers, hopefully here she would be able to find simpler fare.

And regardless, it would be less uncomfortable to sit at a bar than to sit at a table in an unfamiliar restaurant alone. There’s a reason why she relied heavily on delivery and takeout prior to coming here.

She opened the door, and a bell chimed above her head. A young woman at the bar glanced up, greeting her with a smile. There were a handful of other people – three at a table together and two sitting along the bar, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. It was quite early after all, especially for this type of establishment.

“A new face! I haven’t seen you around,” the woman greeted her.

Sophie set her packages down on the bar’s counter and nodded. “Yep, I’m new in town.”

The woman slid her a menu. “Do you want any food today? Or just drinks?”

Sophie laughed. “Oh, no drinks for me today. I just wanted some warm food before heading back to the shrine.”

“The shrine?” The woman immediately perked up at the mention. “Which one?”

Sophie immediately realized her mistake. “The one nearby,” she admitted. “I’m the new shrine priestess there.”

“So you’re the new priestess. I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about you. Is the shrine really haunted? Did you have to do something to get rid of the ghosts?”

Sophie laughed again. “No, there were no ghosts. Just one lonely, unhappy shrine spirit and a run-down old shrine. I’m trying to clean the place up a bit, though.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “That seems like quite a job,” she said. “Well, everyone’s really excited to have a shrine priestess around here again.”

Sophie nodded vaguely and turned her face down towards the menu to hide a sudden fit of shyness. Why was her class such an item of gossip? Was it really that important for a town to have a shrine priestess nearby? She supposed Euan made it sound like a hassle to get purification work done without a local priestess, but how important was that, really?

She scanned down the items on the menu, trying to distract herself. Thankfully, whatever language thing Elowen had done to her seemed to translate the strange dishes into things that sounded vaguely familiar in her head. Things like potato wedges and a lot of dishes that included fish. She had a sudden burst of curiosity about her location in the wider world. Were they near a large body of water? And where was this other town – Sentus – that everyone kept mentioning?

She’d save those questions for another day.

The bartender must have taken her silence as indecision, because she reached her hand out and tapped on a spot on the menu. “If you’re looking for something filling, I’d recommend this,” she said.

Fish and chips.

Sophie nearly laughed at the suggestion. “Sure, that sounds perfect,” she said, instead, and slid the menu back towards the other woman.

The bartender picked up the menu. “Coming right up,” she said with a grin and then made her way back to a window to call the order out to the kitchen in the back. She came back a few times to make friendly, idle chatter, until she finally brought Sophie’s food.

Sophie had been a little skeptical about what she might be getting right up until she received the steaming plate of potato wedges and fried fish.

It was, indeed, fish and chips. Seeing something so familiar made her feel strangely relieved, like maybe she could handle all of the unfamiliar things, as long as she could have this one piece of familiarity to cling onto. She ate it with relish.

In fact, after she finished, she ordered more of the potato wedges to go. So by the time she made it back out to the street, it was a whole lot darker than she expected, and it had started to rain.

Drat. At least it was just a drizzle – par for the course in Seattle, at least – so it barely even fazed her as she walked towards the town’s gates. She was more worried about walking along the path in the dark. She really needed to get a lamp or whatever passed for a lamp in this world.

She didn’t want to risk going back to find a shop that might carry one. So, instead she hurried along in the fading sunlight, trying to make her way as carefully as possible and trying not to think about what might be lurking in the dark forest around her.