~ Gisopi Minari’s, The Cobbler’s Art, Chapter Four - The Difference, Summarized
So then, a shoe is a category of footwear that is worn to cover the foot and can be used for a number of activities, including walking, jogging, and dancing. Shoes are often constructed from supple materials like leather or canvas, and they are intended to be comfortable and simple to walk in.
A boot is a sort of footwear that goes up the leg and covers the foot, the ankle, and occasionally even the calf or the knee. Boots are often made of leather and have a high top. Boots are often constructed out of durable materials such as leather or rubber, and they are intended to provide the wearer with both protection and support. They have a wide range of applications and may be worn for things like business, hiking, or even fashion.
There is a wide variety of footwear, including shoes, boots, and sandals, and the particular distinctions between these items might vary. Shoes are often meant to be worn on a daily basis and for activities that are less strenuous, so they are lighter and more flexible than boots. Boots, on the other hand, are typically used for tasks that require a higher level of specialization or in circumstances in which greater support and protection are required. Boots are typically heavier and more robust than shoes.
Now that we know the difference between both, let us speak of the components that they are made up out of, so that we might peer into the complexity of the art.
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Midnight moonlight silhouettes her form as she flies over the darkened city, the gaps between the many houses are lit aglow by the warmth releasing from the thousands of windows. Behind each sheet of glass is something obscured. Shadows move as people prepare their evening meals. Sounds of laughter come from larger buildings, where many of the humans, elves, orcs, dwarves, and other creatures seem to have gathered together in shared places.
Mirabelle stares, hovering down onto a small rooftop and peering down through the windows across from herself. A large building is there, and inside are many people. It looks like some kind of festivity. They’re laughing.
The wind blows, and the fairy clutches herself, shuddering, realizing suddenly how cold it is out here.
Lifting off into the breeze, she continues to fly, not sure what it is that she’s doing as she hovers above the city, darting from one place to the next as she looks for… As she looks for them.
The little fairy presses her face against a pane of glass, looking into a room in which two dark-elven children are playing, running around in pursuit of each other. A very tired woman sits in the center of the room, sighing but smiling.
Mirabelle pulls away and flies down the street, peeking into a lower ground floor window to her left.
A man sits there by himself. He is old, with a long beard that has the same gray tinge as the stone of her grotto. Calmly, he lifts a cup and takes a long sip of its steaming contents, sparing a glance towards his left, towards a portrait of a woman that hangs above a now empty chair. That empty chair, as well as his own, are the only two things in the room that aren’t dusty. It’s as if they were the only things that the man had the strength to care for in this world.
He sets his cup down, and Mirabelle pulls away, flying further.
Where are they?
They’re here. They have to be. Those… things.
The cruel fairy flies down the streets, down the alleys, and down the roads, taking a turn here and a twist there.
Abruptly, a door flies open, a boot having kicked it from the inside.
“- And stay out!” yells an angry woman. A thin young man flies out of the door, having been cast out by her strong pair of very muscular arms. He tumbles over the cobbled street. “You F-ranking philanderer!”
The door slams shut, and Mirabelle watches as the outcast, with very nice hair, sits upright, rubbing his head, and then gets up, dusting himself off and sighing. He straightens his collar, rolls his shoulders, and then looks around himself, checking to see if anyone has seen him.
She ducks back behind the wall, peeking out a few seconds later to watch him sulk away, off alone into the night.
No… there aren’t any of them here either.
Eventually, she reaches something green. Despite the darkness of the night, the enclosed area inside the city carries a lush tinge to it. It carries a certain familiarity. This is the pond. She remembers it because of the shape it has. Even now, after all of these years, it has that shape. It looks a bit like a bean, and in the middle, there’s a small island on which a large, old tree now sits. It looks exactly like she remembers it. The night can’t hide that fact from her.
Mirabelle flies around, looking at the area. A few people, couples, walk together, their arms linked as they stroll through the darkened place, surrounded by city on all sides. But that’s about it. There are no signs of any other fairies.
The fairy lowers herself to the ground, landing next to the water, ducking between a series of tall fronds and cat-tails.
She doesn’t understand.
They aren’t… they aren’t what she remembers. They aren’t the bad things that she remembers. These aren’t the things that destroyed her home and killed her family. These people are as clean and as innocent as the beetles that she’s fought and the hawk that she killed. They’re just animals, surviving in their own way.
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Mirabelle stares down at her reflection, shocked at what she sees.
The person beneath herself is covered in goo, covered in viscera. The girl that she sees in the water, in her desperate desire to get what it is that she herself had wanted, had done the same thing as them. She had taken from the world. Her actions, while fueled by a feeling that she holds for being strong and true, had as an end result, only made the world worse.
That’s the joke, perhaps. Maybe that’s why they did it to her, the stars. It was just a big joke being played on her by the gods. Of course she could never hurt so many living things, and of course she could never kill so many things. That’s not like her at all. She’s a good fairy.
Mirabelle stares up towards the sky, towards the many stars that all loom there so heavily, hanging with a weight that feels like it will make the night itself fall down onto her. They’re all looking and watching.
But she doesn’t know what it is that they want to see. She doesn’t know what it is that she herself wants to see.
She still wants them — the humans, the orcs, the elves and all of the rest, to pay for what they did. For what they took from her. But at the same time, because of that, she’s become… like them. She’s become muddy and dirty.
The wind blows, pushing through the cat-tails. It’s cold. The fairy shivers, and then, not knowing what else to do, she scoops up some water and carefully washes herself off, making sure not to get any of the black goo inside of the pond.
The water on her skin is even colder than the lonesome wind.
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Shivering, her teeth chattering, Mirabelle hides inside a small, hollowed out space in the trunk of the big tree in the middle of the pond, pulling another leaf that she had plucked inside to cover herself with.
It’s not much warmer with the leaf than without it. But at least it’s something.
She’s clean now, but having had nothing to dry off with, she’s cold. Having nothing to wear, she’s cold. Having nobody to surround herself with, she’s cold.
Mirabelle leans against the inside of the tree, staring out through the gap in the wood, wondering; what’s the point? Why has she been brought back?
Her wish was to hurt them, to make them pay. It was the most powerful thing that she had ever felt. But she doesn’t want to do that anymore. Honestly, the desire came and went like a gust of wind. She doesn’t really understand what it was — that feeling, that happening.
It hurt a lot. It still hurts in ways that she doesn’t know how to understand or how to process. So instead, she stares through the gap, into the soft moonlight of the mother-moon as she thinks about the faces of her family, of her brother and wonders…
- What is she supposed to do with her new life now?
Revenge isn’t as sweet as it was with her hot head. The people who had done her wrong are likely long since dead, and these others, these plausible descendants of theirs… can the sins of their forefathers really be inherited by them? Is that not a cruel thing to assume about the innocent?
She looks around, rubbing the inner wall of the hollow space inside the tree. There are markings in here, markings from other fairies. But they’re old, very old. The wood has regrown over most of them, leaving only tiny scratches of indecipherable phrases. The last traces of her family, of her people, vanished over the course of generations as nature continues to grow and heal without them.
It was like they were never there.
- Something cracks.
Mirabelle jumps to her feet, the leaves falling off of her body as she holds her hands at her sides, ready for a fight. Her paranoid eyes scan the darkness. But there is nothing to see.
Quietly, she flies up to the hole in the tree and looks outside.
Down there, on the other side of the pond, is a man. He looks to be on the cusp of becoming an elder and is wearing some loose fabric with a few metal plates strapped to it here and there. He has a well-trimmed, short beard.
- Something cracks.
He breaks off a piece of an old stick that was on the ground with his hands and then flicks it off, watching as it splashes into the water and then just floats there for a while. After a few seconds of watching, he does it again.
This goes on until he runs out of stick to throw, and then he just stands there, staring at the broken pieces of wood floating apart from each other atop the water. Mirabelle does the same, wondering what it is that he sees.
She just sees sticks.
The man sighs and shakes his head, walking away into the night, and Mirabelle watches him suspiciously until she is sure that he’s gone, before she returns to her nest and hides until daybreak.
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“Bread rolls!” calls a baker, standing behind a cart. “Get your warm rolls! Only five Obols each!” he cries.
People are running through the streets. It’s early in the morning, and the sun shines brightly with fervent energy from high up in the sky, bestowing the grace of summer on the city and its people. Mirabelle hides on top of a roof and stares down towards the crowded street, down at the many people who are buzzing around this way and that way. The air is filled with their lively chatter and summer energy.
“Hey!” calls a woman, wearing a pointed wizard’s hat as she pulls someone along behind her who looks both bored and tired. “Let’s go to the dungeon today!”
Her companion groans. “We go to the dungeon every day…” they sigh.
“Isn’t it the best?!” asks the caster excitedly, tearing them after herself.
A man stands to the right of the street, talking to another man who is very large and muscular. “Can you fix this?” he asks. “Goblins got me good.” He holds up a piece of armor that the smith examines for a while before nodding.
Mirabelle turns to look around. Everywhere she looks, people are just living their lives. They’re buying, they’re trading, they’re going to and from their homes, their businesses, their occupations, and to ‘the dungeon’. That last one seems to be a common theme amongst the more… colorfully dressed people.
Her stomach growls.
Mirabelle sighs, laying flat against the roof as the scent of the bread rises her way. She’s really hungry. But she doesn’t have any money, obviously. Her family never used money, they just gave each other whatever they needed. But she knows that human-people like to use money as something like a delayed trade.
You give someone money, they give you a thing. Then they trade that money to someone else for a different thing.
It’s a weird system. She doesn’t understand why they don’t just skip the money and trade each other their things directly, but… it seems to be working for them. It does leave her in an obvious predicament, though. That being said, she doesn’t have any money.
The fairy sighs, feeling the warmth of the sun on her skin. At least it's a small consolation. The sister-sun has always been a good sister to her. Mother-moon is cold and distant, but the sister-sun is always there for her when she needs her.
Its warmth does little for her hunger, though. Mirabelle eyes the bread-rolls. They smell so good, and there are so many of them… Maybe she could just… take one? Not even one; they’re far too big for herself. But maybe just the corner of one? Just a nibble. It could keep her going for a whole day and the man wouldn’t even notice it’s missing. He has so many, after all.
The merchant turns to his right as someone approaches, buying something from that corner.
Mirabelle gulps and then checks that the sky is hawk-free, before she swoops down behind some carts, darting over to the crates next to the baker’s stall. Tip-toeing around the box, she waits for her chance. The vendor finishes up his sale and then moves on to a new person who has arrived. He turns his head.
NOW!
Mirabelle shoots down towards the counter, staying only a finger’s width above the top of the crates as she reaches the side of it. She grabs hold of a bread-roll and then rips out a chunk of its fluffy, soft body, her arms digging into its flesh like the talons of a bird of prey.
Mirabelle, the thieving fairy, shoots into the air, landing on the roof from which she had come, her bounty in her hands. Quickly ducking down, she carefully observes the world below herself for any disturbance, for any outcry or paranoid look, for any shouts of being wronged or harmed, for signs of alarm.
But there is nothing. The day proceeds exactly as it has been. Nobody seems to have noticed her.
Mirabelle leans back against a sunny, warm part of a rooftop and then bites into the chunk of bread that she has to hold with both of her arms against her chest, as she looks down and watches the world move beneath herself from her safe vantage point.
- {Warm} (Normal Quality) [Whole Grain Soft-Bread] -
A piece of fluff from a roll of Soft-bread. It’s fluffy, and given its filling of seeds, grains, and nuts, it's very nutritious. IF CONSUMED: +25 STAMINA
{Warm}: Raises LOV +1 for 15 minutes
Weight: 1.6g Value: 001 Obols
(MIRABELLE) has consumed: {Warm} (Normal Quality) [Whole Grain Soft-Bread] ! (MIRABELLE) +25 STAMINA +1 LOV {15 minutes}