The world's only functioning deity remaining, the Old Soul, transmigrator, reincarnator, arguably the most powerful spellcaster but definitely the toughest MF alive on this planet – no, seriously. It would take almost a quintillion (that's ten to the power of eighteen) damage to kill me (after factoring my defenses), when people struggle to reach the tens of thousands of damage – the biggest repository of knowledge, you got the gist, me.
I was forced, by having a daughter who reached her teens after an epiphany, to become a glorified seamstress.
Miriel found her passion and calling in clothing. It seems that during the summit, she spent a lot of time ogling the garments of the dignitaries, from the brutalist armor of the Minotaur King, to the sublime and ephemeral raiment of the fairy Elders, passing through the gorgeous couture of the elven Queens, and let's not forget the fashionable clothing of the human visitors too. The peak of clothing and design from the most prominent human nations of three continents.
She thought the fact her diamond body was fully exposed at all times to be a normal thing. Only when she saw Kalael putting on clothes did the other shoe drop.
And now I was bringing her designs to life.
Miriel hovered over a sheaf of paper, drawing. In front of her, hovering open in the air, the [Lost Sage Encyclopedia] showed her images from both the thousands of books it had copied but also from mom's memories. Turns out a person on Earth was exposed to a fucking lot of different types of clothing. Let's not forget that the tome also had all the clothing mom had even seen or glimpsed in those several centuries she's been around in this world.
All of this became inspiration for the fairy, who mixed and matched styles and ideas without any preconception or restraint. Then she would pass her designs to me and I had to make them a reality. All the while working in the impossible scale of a foot tall fairy.
She would then see the finished product based on her drafts and drawings, demand some change, add this, remove that, and then wear the clothes, make sure I saw everything, and then use the Encyclopedia as both mirror and scrapbook because what I saw was recorded in my pages, then the Encyclopedia would copy it because it copies books and I am a book mimic. Whew. What a mouthful.
Let's not forget that Kalael would come and give some ideas or make a request of her own. It usually involved making some superhero costume for her. My memories were locked. I never checked. But turns out Earth had a few more than a dozen superheroes. The irony and sarcasm were totally intentional.
Like forging her a red and yellow power armor from some popular movie about a bearded playboy who used to sell weapons. Why the hell does this thing have a flashlight in the middle of the chest? It is so dumb. It's like saying, "shoot me here". I was baffled when I learned that the flashlight is also the whole power supply for the armor.
Yes. Haute couture for one fairy, and superhero cosplay for the other.
At least they required little room to store their outfits. Their hundreds of outfits. Well, no. I took a room at one of the castles for the dignitaries and added a lot of floors, two feet tall, making a maze of rooms and hallways only fairies could navigate. Some short gnomes too if they don't mind lowering their heads at the doorways. But two feet tall floors for fairies was already spacious. I made it all out of hardwood and added lots of lighting and accent colors. Miriel found architecture and interior design interesting but not as much as clothing.
Working for my daughter (daughters? Was Kalael also my daughter? Probably yes) was heaven. Yes, it was hard, and the two fairies were demanding but seeing their joy was rewarding.
My mistake was to work too close to the fairy meadow. It took one curious and loose-lipped pixie (spoiler alert, they all are) to bring three dozen fairies to my workshop, begging for Miriel to design them some outfit, and then pester me to make them.
Fairies, let me tell you, have no concept of patience or even what a queue was. Also, they have little to no respect for private property. If it's lying on the forest floor, it's fair game, unless a squirrel is screeching at them. Then it is a game of tag or steal the flag. The squirrel will always give up after a while and go for the next acorn lying on the forest floor.
The concept of what constitutes a "forest floor" is very, very fluid when fairies are involved. Do you have a hardwood floor in your home? Well, that's too bad, because it is a floor and it is made of wood and wood comes from trees and if there's trees it is a forest so... HEY THAT BALL OF LINT BEHIND YOUR COUCH IS SO COLORFUL!
Fairy logic 101: There's no logic.
Some places and things are respected, though. For example, the geode-like spawning cave full of rough gemstones for the Crystal Fairies is definitely not the forest floor. Any formation meant to spawn fairies isn't. Items with big emotional value are also left alone. For example, the fairies always ask Miriel and Kalael if they could try some outfit on. It was not the fact they belonged to someone else but the emotional value the Crystal fairies placed on them.
Fairies never "stole" mementos or heirlooms. Perhaps there was some logic, only inscrutable by mere mortals.
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Barbara knocked on the door. I knew it was her because our link always told me where she was.
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"Yes, mom!" All the fairies replied at once.
I heard giggles on the other side of the door as I crawled on a dozen ribbon legs to open it. The door swung open, revealing the open floors of the fairy castle. I intentionally left it open, without a wall facing the door to let people see inside as far as the inner walls between fairy floors allowed it. The wire racks full of costumes were right in sight but not the dressing rooms. Fairies clad in the most diverse gowns and spandex costumes walked to and fro.
"What's going on here?" Barbara asked. "Also, I'm back! I bought you some new books a [Merchant] brought from the north. Can you believe there's nomad tribes roaming the icy wastes north of the dragon mountains?"
Now with the Empire gone, only a quarter of the massive Pekothas continent was civilized. Mostly our peninsula and Fulgen. Can't really call the Centaur wilds civilized, the dragon mountains were too inhospitable except for their namesake extinct creatures, and the frozen north was uncharted land.
"Oh, great! I got to shop a lot, eat tons of delicious food! Rose and I had a blast of a time!" She was so excited she almost gloated.
Barbara picked me up.
"I did. Here's how it went."
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Night in the city. And a brave couple of ladies was ready to face a fiendish dinner. Not really fiendish but closer to heavenly.
Barbara and Rosewise sat in a private dining room at a restaurant in the Noble district of Espero. The locals treated them as visiting royalty. Chaperoned by Elizabeth and a half-dozen squad of [Kingsguard Knights], all doors opened for the couple of Halflings. Of which Eleons were a sub-species. The room was adapted to shorter people. Even the decorations and furniture were of the heartier style favored by the nature-loving small folk.
"Are you tired?" Rose asked.
"Not at all," Barbara smiled. "Too bad the shops closed. I wanted to buy more souvenirs."
The Eleon chuckled. "You are crazy, buying souvenirs for everyone in Clovehaven."
Barbara took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Her smile didn't falter. "They deserve it. We're past the halfway mark. Just a few more days and we'll be done."
"Well, it's not like we have anything better to do. I'd rather have you shopping around than holed up in that workshop."
"I have fun in the lab, so you know," She poked the tip of her tongue at the other woman.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to..."
Barbara laughed Rose's worries off and sidled to the edge of her chair as she reached to grasp Rose's hand. "I wouldn't take offense at anything you say to me, Rose. I have something to confess to you."
"Co-confess?" The [Eldritch Sorceress] stuttered.
"Easy, easy," Barbara massaged the hand. "I figured it out, Rose. Nobody told me and Nethe confirmed it is alright for me to know."
"I don't understand," Rose squinted and thought about retrieving her hand but Barbara's soft touch warmed her so much she would like to give away that hand.
"Let me tell you this. Pay attention, okay? And... don't interrupt me," Barbara wavered in her resolve. It was hard for her too.
"Sure."
Barbara modulated her voice to sound as much like her previous incarnation as possible. "I am okay and I am happy, Rosie. I appreciate what you did for our homeland and hold you deep in my heart of hearts. Let go of your guilty. Or I'll have to show you again how much fun we can have in a workshop." She purred that last sentence.
Rosewise suffered from a horrible case of brain BSOD.
"Take your time. It's not like we have anything better to do," Barbara shot Rose's words back at her but with a soft sultry lilt.
"Hold it. Who told you to say this to me?" Rose became suspicious and almost pulled her hand back. Something held her, indecision or perhaps the wistful wish that it could be true.
"Nobody. I told you. I figured out who I was in a previous life," Barbara brought Rose's hand to rest between her collarbones. Her heart drummed too quickly. "I was [Queen] Lorna of Windemere, former slave, former [Prostitute]. Your wife and lover."
"Oh, Goddess." Rose lowered her head. Barbara held it with her other hand.
"I'm okay, Rose. I'm happy. Nethe and Lakerta explained everything to me after I convinced them to. Though I'm Lorna's reincarnation, I'm not her. Not yet. Am I hurting you?"
"Yes," Rose whispered and whimpered and sobbed. "But it is a good kind of hurt."
"Lakerta had her closure. All the years we spent together in Windemere, Lorna's twilight years. But you, you spent your power to bring a nation back to life. One you were saddled with but grew to love, nonetheless. Now, I want you to find your own closure, Rosie. I'll help however I can. Here."
Barbara took a special storage ring that could stop things in time too. It was ridiculously expensive for its small size and it contained a single item. A loaf of Honorcoin fruit bread, the original recipe from a few thousand years ago. This one was shaped like an armored knight lying on their back, with fruits arranged around the chest to seem like Windemere’s emblem on the Tabard. It was still steaming and filling the room with a nostalgic and delicious aroma, fresh out of the oven of a [Baker] so skilled their pastries were innately magical.
"I asked Nethe's mom to bake this one. Should we eat it together? For our past lives, in Windemere's honor?"
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Damn. That was as touching as it was cheesy. Look at me, lampshading like a boss. Any way.
"Do you remember that you kissed Kasumi?" Barbara asked with a mischievous grin.
"Well, I shared a peck on the lips with Rosie," Barbara fidgeted.
"Are you mad?" She asked, hinting that she half-expected me to be. She came here expecting a fight.
"NO?" Her voice slipped and rose an octave, doubling in volume. "I don't think..."
"Of course," she stifled a titter with her hand.
"I don't know, though." Barbara added after a moment. "Isn't it weird?"
"Is this what we're doing? Necromancy with extra steps? Do I have to eat you at some point?"
Barbara puckered her lips and wheezed as she drew an angry breath. "I... was... joking..." she grumbled through a pained and embarrassed exhale.
"Who's kissing [Necromancers]?" Miriel innocently asked from the open ledge of the third-floor hardwood floor.
Barbara looked up. I shifted my perception. A few dozen fairies of all kinds were sitting on the edge of the exposed floors, tiny legs dangling and swinging, watching our one-sided conversation with great interest.
Baroness Clovehaven sputtered and fainted from shame, her damp cheeks almost letting out steam.