Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Two

“Huh,” I said.

“Huh,” Awen agreed.

“Hmm?” Caprica asked.

“Are you all really just going to stand there and stare?” Amaryllis asked. She fluttered a wing towards the shop. “There’s nothing stopping you from going in.”

“Yeah, but it’s weird  isn’t it?” Calamity asked.

The shop in question was right next to the Arrow Smiths. It was a smaller shop, with two big windows sandwiching a doorway. The shop’s name was above that, written on a simple, discrete plaque.  Substitute Stubble, Prosthetics and Artificial Replacements.

Through the windows we could make out mannequins. Some had wooden or metallic arms and legs, fitted for both dwarf and elf, but most of the mannequins were just wooden heads on little stands. And all of them had fake beards.

“Well, I wanna check it out,” I said before I boldly stepped up and into the shop. A bell jingled above the doorway, and I was hit with a weird mix of smells, oils and shampoos. It reminded me a little of the barber shops I’d sometimes visited when my dad needed a haircut back on Earth.

The shop was divided into two sections. A small area to one side sold prosthetics of various makes and models, and a few signs promised year-long guarantees, free adjustments, and a free can of oil with every purchase of a magitech arm-clamp or buzzsaw hand.

The rest of the shop was all about the fake beards. There were long ones, short ones, beards split into thirds and partial fake beards as well as beard extensions, goatees, mutton chops, and beards that were shaped in all sorts of fanciful ways.

“Hello sir,” someone said from the front. An older dwarf stepped out from behind a counter. He had an apron that fell to his knees and a pointy-sharp beard with beads around the moustache. Also, one of his legs clacked and was very obviously artificial. “How can I help you?”

“Ah, I was just looking,” I said.

“Oh, no need to be shy,” he said as he adjusted a pair of spectacles. “I see that hairless chin of yours and the envy in your eyes. You, good sir, are in want of a magnificent beard!”

“Uh. I guess?” I said. They were pretty magnificent.

“Fantastic. Now, I’m curious, and if the memory pains you too much, then feel free to tell me to shut my old gullet up, but how did you lose your beard?” He squinted at my face, and I had the impression he was really inspecting my cheeks and chin.

“Ah, well, I never had one to begin with,” I said.

“Hmm,” he said. Then he shook his head. “Shame.”

“Well, I was a human girl, and we don’t usually have beards. Uh. Now I’m a bun girl, and I haven’t seen one of those with a beard either.”

He blinked. “Oh. You’re a woman. My apologies, miss, for misgendering ya. It’s hard to tell, you see.”

“It’s fine,” I said with a little wave. “Um, are any of these beards... girl beards?”

“Hmm? Why, yes, obviously,” he said. “Why, nearly half of them. The ladies have beard-related accidents just as often as the men do, of course.”

“Right, of course,” I said. “What’s the most common beard-related accident?” I asked while my friends filed into the shop.

“Oh, getting caught in gears is common enough. Burns happen too. Usually that’ll just clip a bit off the end though. A shame, but nothing too unusual. Something for your friends to rib you about, but it happens to the best of us. Now, these prosthetics are for more serious injuries to the beard. The poor souls who go through something harrowing and awful and who come out of it bereft of their whiskers and facial hair.” He frowned and shook his head. “I do what I can to help, having been there once myself.” Then he stroked his own magnificent beard.

“Wow, that’s really kind of you,” I said. “Is this the only, ah, prosthetic beard shop around?”

“Hmm? Only the finest! There are a few others, but none as spectacular or with such a fine quality of faux-beards as you’ll find here. Now... are these your companions, miss?”

“Ah, yup!” I said. “They’re here to help me shop for a beard... uh, unless you guys want a beard of your own?”

Awen giggled and shook her head. Amaryllis looked unimpressed, and Caprica confused at the very idea. Calamity though, stepped up. “Hey, can you make moustaches?”

“A moustache? Of course, miss.”

“Ah, no, I’m a... nevermind,” Calamity said with a sigh. “Yeah, a nice moustache would do.”

“You can’t grow your own?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Not really. But I always wanted one. Maybe one that matches my ears?” He wiggled his cat ears and the old dwarf squinted up at them.

“Hmm, might have something that fits. The miss first though!” He turned his attention back onto me. “Now, what kind of beard are you looking for? One for special  occasions? A worker’s beard?”

“Ah, I don’t know much about beard culture, what do you think would be best?” I asked.

“Well, something to bring out your femininity, of course. Maybe something simple and traditional. Just a few braids and maybe a bead or two. Nothing less than a foot though. Now, a proper beard reaches down to the belly button, of course, but on taller folk that sometimes looks a mite strange. Maybe... hmm.”

He mumbled to himself as he limped between the stands and shelves of beards, then he returned with a few samples.

Grinning, I followed him over to a seat at the back with a large mirror before it. The dwarf had me try on a couple of beards real quick, but he whipped them away almost as soon as they were on. Finally, after a dozen, he held one against my face and nodded. “Not a bad option, don’t you think?”

The beard was just long enough to reach my upper chest, with a pointy middle and a few simple braids along the sides. The moustache was properly thick, with something for me to grab and curl on the edges. It was also the same shade of brown as my hair.

“We can get some beads to match your eyes. You’ll have every beau from here to Sissifin complimenting your whiskers.”

“I’ll take it!” I said.

The beard was held in place by a set of discreet discrete straps that ran around and over my head and which were thin enough to be hidden by my hair. In the end, the beard looked perfectly natural and hung on without any painful tugging.

Broccoli’s Beard

New Skill Acquired: Tinkering Proficiency

Rank: D

Oh! A skill! I didn’t know that Mad Millinery could proc on wearing a beard of all things. Beards weren’t hats, were they? Though I supposed they were technically headwear? I needed to see if sunglasses would give me a skill too, though something told me it wouldn’t work that way, exactly. “Hey, I got a Tinkering Proficiency skill from the beard,” I said.

“Oho, you have a gear-based skill? That’s uncommon enough. And yes, obviously beards make you a better tinkerer.”

Now Awen was looking at my beard with an indecipherable expression on.

“Did you want one?” I asked her.

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it’s okay,” she said.

Once I was bearded up, I stood aside while the old dwarf helped Calamity find a suitable moustache. He ended up with a big bushy thing that sat like a hairy caterpillar on his upper lip. It looked a bit silly, but also gave Calamity the air of someone used to working out in the wild.

We paid for the dwarf’s services and the facial hair, then headed out to explore the rest of the shops.

“It’s going to be tricky, eating with this thing,” I said as I stroked my beard. Of course, I was starting to think about food. We were shopping, and grabbing something unhealthy and strange to eat was part of the shopping experience.

But, since there wasn’t a palace to sit down and eat at just yet, we continued to windowshop for a bit. I tried not to tug at my beard while we walked around, which was surprisingly hard.

We ended up in another clothes store where we perused all of the things they had, but for the most part they were either way too big or way too small for any of us. I did end up buying a few knit socks that looked very comfy.

I had a weakness for fluffy socks.

Then we ran into a little novelty store. They had cameras, and a setup that allowed them to develop photos in an hour. There were all sorts of photos pinned to the walls of dour looking dwarves and serious elves, all in that sort of shades of brown and black.

We filed in, and an excited elf explained photography for us. Or rather, for my friends. I was familiar with the idea already, even if the way he described it made it seem novel and new.

In the end, we all settled into a spot at the back of the shop, squeezing in tightly so that all of us could fit into the frame. Then we ignored the nice elf’s advice and smiled big and bright as the camera went off.

He took a few pictures, just in case, and we paid up before heading off. It would take a little while for the pictures to develop, a little while we could spend eating!

 We found a coffee shop a little ways off, but there was a huge line leading up to it, so we continued until we found a shop being run by an Ostri of all things. They were selling Ostri specialities from the Ostri desert, which Awen was pretty excited for.

“Their food tastes great,” she said. “Just, ah, the names are strange.”

The shop’s name was interesting too. Come Here to Eat Ostri Food.  It... well, it certainly told anyone passing by what to expect. We ended up sitting at a round table, with some chairs stolen from nearby.

I had cactus leaves with hurty weed sauce , which was surprisingly spicey, but also flavourful, and the others had a mix of things, from spicey bird cooked over fire  to flatbread with meat and burning sauce.

Once we were appropriately stuffed, it took some serious effort and willpower to get up and waddle out of the restaurant. I also discovered that eating with a beard was probably a challenge for people who didn’t have Cleaning magic. The fine hairs caught on every non-solid food and I ended up with half my meal tucked away in my moustache instead of in my tummy.

I sniffed out a bakery on our way back to the photoshop, and as it turned out, there was a teeny tiny bit of room in me to squeeze in some cake along with a hot citrusy tea-like drink.

By the time we returned to the photoshop, all five of us were groaning with effort and our bellies were practically distended from all the food we’d stuffed ourselves with, but it was worth it!

We each got a copy of our new team photo, and I carefully slid mine away. It would, I suspected, make for a nice memory in the distant future. A way to look back and show our respective kids how much fun we’d had and who our friends were.

I was looking forward to that future, but moreso, I was looking forward to the now where we were still having all that fun.

“Oh, look, they sell flowers over there,” Caprica said. “Do you think I could get something for Gabrielle?”

“Let’s go see!”

***

Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Three

I noticed Awen fixated on her copy of our team photo as we walked along. She was staring at the image, her expression something I couldn’t quite read while her thumb ran up and down the edge, careful not to rub against any of the smiling faces on the photograph.

“Are you okay?” I asked, voice pitched low so that I wouldn’t disturb the others.

Caprica, Amaryllis and Calamity were in the middle of a spirited argument about whether or not eating rodents was okay. Calamity and--surprisingly--Caprica both seemed to agree that the occasional mouse was a fine snack while Amaryllis disagreed quite sternly.

Awen looked up, then her expression changed, becoming a shy little smile. “Yeah,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I only had to move my arms up a tiny bit for her to walk right into a hug. “You looked... I don’t know.”

Awen booped her head against my shoulder, and soon we had to break apart the hug because walking-hugs were an advanced-level hug tactic and it wasn’t easy to keep up. “It’s okay. I was just... this is a really nice painting.”

“Photograph,” I corrected softly. “And yeah, it is! We’re all real smiley. Did you see the expression on the elf’s face when we didn’t just stand there all gloomy?”

“My cheeks hurt from holding the smile,” Awen admitted.

“Ah, but it was worth it, yeah?”

She bobbed her head in a nod. “Yes. A lot of things have been worth it lately.” She looked at the photo one last time, then carefully tucked it into the envelope it came in and placed it in her bag. When she looked back my way, there wasn’t any shyness in her smile. “Thanks, Broccoli.”

“Huh?”

“Awa, guys, I don’t think we’ll find any mice to eat here, um, so maybe it doesn’t matter?” Awen said as she walked around me and towards our other friends, putting an end to their argument as she did so.

Not to be left out, I skipped over to my friends and grabbed the nearest two--which happened to be Amaryllis and Calamity--from behind for a quick hug. “Yeah! If we find any mice then we’ll see what they taste like, okay? Unless they’re cute talking mice. Those we’ll make friends with.”

“Emergency ration friends?” Calamity asked. He licked his lips.

“No,” I said chastisingly . “Friends don’t eat friends.”

“Says you,” he shot back. “Bunnies are part of a cat’s diet, you know. Roasted on an open flame, maybe with some spices. Tasty!”

“We just ate, why are we talking about food again?” Caprica asked.

“Because explorers think with their stomachs,” Awen said. “At least, my uncle used to say that a lot of his adventures happened because of his lower brain, so that’s what I think he meant.” She nodded.

Amaryllis smacked herself in the face with a wing. “World, why,” she muttered.

“What?” I asked her.

“Never you mind,” she said. “Look, clothes.”

I turned, following her pointing talon to a store across the hall from us. It was actually quite large, one of the bigger stores we’d crossed, and the interior was filled with mannequins and racks upon racks of clothes. The sign at the front named the place Every Body Needs Clothes  and it seemed as if they specialised in clothes for every body type and species. “Oh, let’s go!”

“Yes, you and Awen and Caprica and Calamity... wait, all of you except for me need clothes,” Amaryllis said. “Why am I surrounded by people who only have one outfit?”

“I have at least two,” I said.

“I have a large wardrobe,” Caprica said.

“Not on the Beaver  you don’t,” Amaryllis said. “And Broccoli, one set of adventuring clothes and one nice dress for special events doesn’t count as a full wardrobe.”

I shrugged. “You don’t need to convince me! Come on, I wanna play dress-up with unlimited funds!”

“Unlimited-- Broccoli, don’t waste all of our money on pretty clothes. No more than a dozen gold each. Ten, even!” Amaryllis said as she ran after me.

Her budget turned out to be really generous though. Most clothes here were only a few coppers, with the much nicer things priced in silver. The Stormtower economy seemed to be booming if all of its stuff was priced so cheap. Or something like that, I wasn’t an economist. In fact, at the moment I was the opposite, a consumer.

“Who do we shop for first?” I asked.

“Calamity needs it most,” Caprica said. “He looks like a ruffian.”

“But I want to look like a ruffian,” Calamity said.

“In that case, you’ve succeeded in a spectacular way,” she said.

I clapped my hands. “Ruffian chic!”

“That’s not a thing, Broccoli,” Amaryllis said.

“It could be,” Awen suggested.

We ended up scrounging for all sorts of things across the store, with more and more clothes piling up onto Calamity’s outstretched arms until we could barely see the tips of his ears over the pile.

Then we shoved Calamity into some changing booths and giggled while he cursed and stumbled around inside. He came out with various outfits, all of which we nixed, denied, or agreed with him that they just didn’t suit him. Formal didn’t work on Calamity. Putting him in a nice suit left him looking like someone playing dress up in their dad’s clothes, and he didn’t look comfortable.

In the end though, he found something that he liked.

“You can’t wear a vest and  a sleeveless leather jacket,” Caprica said.

“Why not?” Amaryllis asked. “It leaves his wings... arms, free.”

“Yeah, check out my guns!” Calamity brought his arms up and flexed. He did have rather bulgy muscles on his upper arms. Probably from using a bow so much, that had to require a lot of upper body strength.

The rest of the outfit was fairly simple, but clean. A button up shirt, a little blue tie around the neck with a black vest over his shirt. And atop all of that, a beige leather coat, without sleeves.

He topped that with a white cowboy hat--with ear holes--and a pair of white pants made of a tough, jeans-like material.

If it wasn’t for my Cleaning I might have suggested that he forgo using so much white, but that was fine.

“I think it suits you,” I said.

“I’m liking it,” he replied as he adjusted his hat.

So that was that. Somehow, without needing to communicate it, all of our attention turned towards Caprica who blinked and momentarily had the kind of expression I’d expect from a bunny that tripped out of a bush and into a wolfpack. “What?” she asked.

In the end she was pushed into the changing room with a small mountain of clothes. It was only a small mountain because there weren’t that many things sized for a sylph, otherwise we might have been there all day.

In the end, we pushed Caprica a little bit out of her comfort zone. That being things with stiff shoulders, and a lot of military-cuts. We were looking for something casual, not something that could pass as a commander’s outfit.

Still, Caprica had her tastes, and she settled on a simple outfit. Pants--”You don’t wear skirts when you intend to fly  anywhere,”--that were on the tighter side, some simple slip-on shoes, and a nice blouse under a button-up cardigan. With the sleeves rolled up she could pass for an off-duty librarian instead of an off-duty princess-commander.

It was cute!

“Who’s next?” I asked.

“Awa,” Awen said, and so she was picked to be next. We did the same thing, pulling her across the store and showing her all sorts of outfits. It was easy to shop for Awen. If something was too much, her face would go red, and if she liked it she would give a little nod.

In the end, we pushed her into the changing room with only a few items. She stepped out of it wearing a blue dress and a nice leather jacket. The only problem was...

“Wow,” Amaryllis said. “That’s... a very short skirt and a lot of leg.”

“Ah,” Awen said. She tugged the hem down, which didn’t do much.

“If you want, we can go back to that picture place. Send Rose something to remember you by,” Amaryllis teased.

Awen spun and ran back into the changing room and only came out ten minutes later, her blush significantly less incandescent. She had a nice, rather modest dress on, though she’d kept the jacket. It had pockets, after all.

“Okay! Amaryllis next!” I said.

“Why not you next?” she asked.

“Because you were too slow,” I replied before grabbing her by the talon and pulling her back into the store. Amaryllis, as it turned out, had a very particular idea of what ‘casual’ meant, and I ended up having to jog after her as she flitted around the store and tossed clothes back for me to catch.

I didn’t know that one of my best friends was such an avid shopper, but here we were, with a small mountain of clothes for Amaryllis to pick through and discard. She ended up only going into the changing room with one or two items.

When she stepped out she was wearing a white... shirt-thing. It wasn’t an item of clothing I’d ever seen on earth before. It had short sleeves on the inside, but a long, shawl-like piece of cloth came out from around the collar and swept down over the wings.

She was also wearing a tracksuit.

There was no mistaking it. Her pants--white, the same as her strange shirt--had stripes on the side and were tucked into a pair of large talon-accommodating shoes.

She looked surprisingly modern, actually. “Well?” she asked.

I nodded and gave her a thumb’s up. I was going to tell her she looked cute, but she probably wouldn’t appreciate that. “You’re very attractive.”

“Moron,” she said before pouting off.

“My turn!” I cheered.

My friends seemed to make a point of dragging me all over and pointing at all sorts of things, but the joke was on them. I loved spending time with them, even if it meant playing the part of the doll.

“Broccoli, I want to show you something,” Amaryllis said. Next to her, Caprica was nodding seriously. Then unfolded a pair of pants. “These, my dear Broccoli, are pants.”

“Uh,” I said.

“They’ve very practical,” Caprica went on. “See, they’re like two skirts, but together.”

“I know what pants are?” I tried.

Amaryllis huffed a sort of... ‘I don’t believe you’ huff. “We’ll see about that.”

I was shoved into the changing room with a lot of outfits, and then I spent the next while trying things on and stepping out to see what worked and what didn’t. Of course, my friends made me take my beard off after the first outfit, but I vowed to put it back on after! Some of the stuff was... not as modest as I was used to, and after stepping out with a shirt that exposed my tummy and rather tight shorts, I found that Awen was having a hard time breathing. She was also covering Calamity’s face with her arm. Had they been tussling?

Amaryllis pushed me back into the changing room, and I looked over everything until I found something I thought would be comfy. A nice teal sweater with some vertical lines, a clean button-up shirt, and some pants with flared legs. They reminded me a little of my mom’s bell-bottoms.

“Oh, that works,” Amaryllis said as I stepped out.

Caprica nodded. “Very comfortable.

I grinned. “Then I’ll take it!” I said.

I insisted that we take some time to put everything away while also using a bit of Cleaning magic, just because it seemed like the  nice thing to do. It paid off in the end when the cashier gave us a little discount. They seemed rather relieved about it too!

And so, with more comfy clothes on, we headed out... probably to find even more food to eat.

***