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.

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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.

***