Lew Zealand
Helper
Part 1
Farmer Bobbi awakens to a wife watching her closely. Not next to her in bed, instead perched on the edge of a chair drawn to the bedside, watching intently with huge violet eyes and faintly upturned mouth corners. Bleary-eyed, Bobbi asks, "did I eat another roach in the middle of the night? I swear the least graceful ones end up on our ceilings."
Emily smiled in precisely the absently happy manner that drew Bobbi to her in the first place, responding, "No you silly and I've never seen a roach in this house so I don't know what you're on about." She reaches over with a delicate finger to close Bobbi's mouth which remained slightly ajar perhaps due to a shortage of oxygen to her brain. Bobbi often insisted this explained her behavior but Emily knew better that her wife was simply absent-minded and forgetful and still adjusting to farm life after 3 seasons of hard work.
"No," Emily continued, "you were moving about in your dream making some noises and I was trying to figure out what you were experiencing." Emily's eyes were somehow even bigger and full of obvious question marks, to which Bobbi would ordinary try to trip up in some way. But it was wayyy too early and Bobbi already used up her early morning brain allotment with the roach comment. As Emily shifted to adjust her housework shirt, low, slanting rays of morning sun pierced through her hair directly blasting Bobbi's eyes out through the back of her head, bleaching away any memory of the morning's dreams, replaced with the bright seam of an afterimage sliced across her retinas, perforated with the crepuscular ghost of Emily's short, wavy, chaos hair.
For a fleeting second of deja vu this stood in for the dream: warm bed, beautiful wife close by, farmhouse, morning sun. All dreams, wrapped up in one. But the sun quickly dissolved that, too.
Wincing, Bobbi finally replied with an absent, "No, it's all gone." But Bobbi's brain isn't all mush. "Replaced with visions of you of course, my pulcherrima," she finishes smoothly, easing to a smile. Bobbi read that one in a book somewhere, it meant "the most beautiful" or at least she thought it did. It could also mean "your skin has the texture and color of cold porridge." She made sure Emily knew of the second possible translation as often as she could get away with.
"Oh, my mistake," Emily deflates slightly, her smile still persistent and now adding an extra cheeky curl on one side. "I'll need to be more... subtle next time," she finishes, now fussing with her shirt buttons in a quite a not subtle way to get Bobbi's attention. "Yes yes, there will always be a next time, right?" Emily says as she stands and walks slowly away from the bed containing a very distracted and flustered wife.
Bobbi's attention was very easily gotten with Emily around.
__________
Later at breakfast Emily tosses a letter she'd fetched earlier from the mailbox like a frisbee at Bobbi. "Looks like you have a pen pal with a little too much flourish," Emily criticizes as Bobbi bats the lethal missile from the air. Purple filigreed envelope containing purple stationery with a request.
"Whaaat??" Bobbi splutters while reading. "I gotta rummage around the Mines and find some Void ass-thing so he can try... summoning demons or something?" Bobbi leans on the table, poking the letter in Emily's direction, "with his luck he'll summon his mother-in-law."
"Does he have a mother-in-law?," Emily asks absently, tossing the rest of the mail in the bin.
"Hm." Bobbi thinking face descends, with the furrowed brow of studied seriousness. "He certainly deserves to end up with one or two but welllll... that requires picking up some sort of spouse in order to get one."
Bobbi has been edging closer to Emily while she wasn't paying attention. Bobbi's random trains of thought are for entertainment but also distraction to keep Emily off guard for close approaches. This one does not disappoint. Bobbi hoists up Emily from her chair with a grunt followed by, "yes, picking up a <grunt> spouse does seem to be the right <huff> way to do <ufff> it." Emily protests at being even taller than usual but plays along as Bobbi can't hold her for long. Tall makes heavy even when you're shapely. Bobbi barely makes it to the couch with her damsel before flopping Emily down and then flopping herself down next to, but also liberally on top of, because it's important to maintain close ties with your family.
"That heavy breathing means you think I'm fat, is that right?," Emily asks innocently with somehow a more impish smile than usual.
Bobbi is now too tired to engage having expended more effort than she'd budgeted for the week. "Yes. Chonky. I need wife bigger than me to make me feel better about being butterball. A head taller not enuff, I need extra--," in a fit of inspiration and energy, Bobbi poises her fingers and grabs Emily's waist searching for tickly spots or at least some extra padding and finding almost enough. Emily is in good shape. She is not fat. She is in very good shape.
This is a tactical error.
Bobbi is used to making those, it's all part of the game. However that doesn't make it any less of an error.
Using all her orangutan arm length (at least from Bobbi's stubby T. rex arm perspective), Emily seizes quite the amount of Bobbi midsection (of which there is quite enough to go around, even for seconds) and squeezes and tickles, releasing peals and shrieks of laughter by one Farmer who will always be on the losing end of these indoor games. As usual it ends with a sweaty Bobbi face down on the floor, Emily sitting on top of her holding both of Bobbi's arms behind her with one hand. The other hand poised menacingly at any and every tickly soft place of which Bobbi has quite the selection. Emily's smile is one of self-satisfaction as some of this subduing was long ago practiced on an only slightly evil sister on occasions when parents weren't around. The wife-shaped version of this is considerably more fun.
"Will you do the dishes?" "Yes, dear."
"Will you sweep the house?" "Yes, dear."
"Will you dust the cobwebs?" "Yes, dear."
"You are a very comfortable floor chair." "Yes, dear." Emily bounces up and down a bit on the Bobbi-shaped floor chair. "Mmmm very good, I'm keeping this one!"
"Will you always love me?" "Yes, dear."
"Oh good, because I will always love you." Emily releases Bobbi's hands, rolls her over, and kisses her on the nose. It's a sweaty kiss but as usual Emily seems barely to be perspiring while Bobbi is rather a mess with loose sweaty hair stuck everywhere, still breathing somewhat heavily from her futile efforts.
"I love you too." A pause before Bobbi continues, "You realize I only let you win because I don't want to crush you if end up on top."
Emily's smile widens a bit, "I notice you're losing weight working on our farm," She looks out the front windows over the snow-covered fields. "I see every pound you drop my lovely." She side-eyes Bobbi wryly, "you won't be able to use that excuse for long."
As they get up, Emily asks, "Are you going to get that thing for the Wizard?"
"Heehee I think I already have one!" Bobbi giggles, "but he doesn't need to know that."
"I just need to think a bit how I'm going to work this..."
__________
Bobbi had been doing Mine runs to keep busy during the Winter, mostly because she very well knew she was dropping weight and getting in better shape and didn't want to lose any momentum. She knew herself and any slide back into sloth would be horrible to recover from and anyway Emily was her motivation. Bobbi needed to look good for the Spring Dancey thing she got mega-rejected from the first year. She hopes Emily will go with her the upcoming year though she's too afraid to ask whether that would break any tradition or whatever. Maybe if she looks good enough it might make a difference. Maybe she can ask Lewis or something for a special dispensation so she can dance with Emily, like wearing the guy's outfit or something.
Musing through these thoughts Bobbi finds herself in front of the Wizard's rickety tower before she knows it. Again momentum wins (it's important to know yourself) and though she hadn't planned her story, she steps inside to deliver the ass-thing.
The stench is everything she remembered from her first encounter with the charlatan of the Valley. Eau de squirrel tonsil. Notes of hedgehog bile duct. The faint whiff of boiled slug elbows. The cauldron bubbles and steams, occasionally popping in a way that suggests overinflated rat intestines. It's all Bobbi can do to keep her breakfast down.
"Damn if I want to lose weight, what I really need is an internship here," Bobbi muses.
Apparently that wasn't an internal monologue as Rasmodius releases, "Who disturbs me at this early hour?"
Bobbi absently looks at a missing watch on her wrist and guessing it was around 1pm by her rumbly tumbly, announces, "it is I, the intrepid explorer of the Mines, having fought dragons and wraiths and slightly bendy earthworms to deliver you this--" Bobbi can't remember the name of the thing. "aaaaaasssssss....." she trails off. She never learned it's name. This isn't going well already.
"A very powerful and arcane ingredient, the Void Essence?" Rasmodius asks loudly and clearly, and slightly slowly as if speaking to a child.
Bobbi does not miss that inflection. "Oh yeah, I got one of those too. Here ya go, mister!" Bobbi hands over the black and purple cog which seems to pulse with warmth as she releases it. "I also got this slime blob, ya want it?" Bobbi procures some slime from her backpack but the Wizard recoils from her slimy hand.
"No I have quite enough of that," he says dismissively. "I procure adequate quantities from the local woods."
"So why do you need me to get that thingy then?" Bobbi gestures to the Essence now faintly glowing within Rasmodius' grasp.
"Ehm. Well. You see..." He straightens even a bit more and lets his eyes wander to the top of his ramshackle tower. "I am quite... enamored with high ceilings and as you have now experienced, the Mines contain rather cramped accommodations." Bobbi swears she picks up the slightest of smiles from under his purple beard. "My back isn't up to all the stooping and really there's some celarophobia in there somewhere. Someone of your stature is perhaps a better fit for those types of... endeavors. Rather, I hear there are whole races very well adapted in that way to living underground. Perhaps you will encounter them one day." The smile is unmistakable by now. "You can... compare notes."
Bobbi is having a touch of trouble following but it finally clicks though as she draws a head of steam and opens her hollering hole, Rasmodius cuts her off with, "but I must compensate you for your very appreciated efforts. What do you say, 1,000g for this unusual treasure?"
1,000g is enough to plug the cakehole even the loudest of farmers and Bobbi accepts the offer with little fanfare. But Rasmodius isn't done. Maybe he feels guilty for insulting a small animal that provided a service or maybe he's more human than Bobbi anticipates but he follows with, "If you want, check out the cellar in the back and see if there's anything in there that interests you." He leans over to glare a bit and follows with, "Do not touch the books in the back, you can look at the titles if you must, assuming they are legible to your method of reading." He looks quizzically at Bobbi. "You do... read, don't you?" He shakes his head as if clearing it and waves his hand irritably, "mmmh no matter, just keep those slimy hands to yourself."
Oh yeah my slimy hands, well that joke didn't go over too well did it? Bobbi thinks. She cleans them on some cloth in her pack and mentally apologizes to Emily. Ugh, more washing to do...
Bobbi passes by floor to ceiling bookcases stuffed with ancient-looking tomes and maybe a few copies of the Zuzu Guide to Spotting Local Monkey Species but finds the ladder down to the basement. It occurs to Bobbi this could be a one-way trap into a basement cell but she told Emily where she was going and the Tuesday Ladies Circle would like nothing less than to storm this den of stinky potions and show Razzie how to make useful potions that actually taste good. Also rescue her. Probably, depends on how the potions turn out.
It is a letdown. Arcane rune circle embedded in the corner, will be avoiding THAT. Barrels. Freaky looking altar-thing with an anachronistically functional cashdrawer. Shrub.
WTH cash drawer? Labeled "500g" with 5 slots for 100g pieces. Evil looking carved face above but there's a line separating it down the middle, almost as if it opens up like shutters.
I just got 1000g ,I can drop like 500g to see what this does. Wait, ask him? Nah, I wont believe what he says anyway and he probably forgot what's down here anyways, Mr. Cellar-phobia.
Bobbi drops 500g in the slots and pushes the drawer in. As mostly expected, the evil face splits opens to reveal...
A vanity.
WHAT?
Wait. A vanity with sliders and choices and colors and more choices and and hair and and.......
wait waitwaitwait!
Bobbi chooses something crazy with BIG pink hair and colors the eyes violet like Emily's and hey I can choose no glasses or even facial hair?!? Peering closely into the mirror, the sliders change her reflection in the vanity but she can feel her real face not changing. But does that mean... What does that mean?
There's a big red button at the bottom right. Not labeled of course. That's how very enticing and mysterious red buttons work. Um, I already paid so I should get the thing. I know what the thing is, right? I should hit the button, right?
Farmer Bobbi awakens to a wife watching her closely. Not next to her in bed, instead perched on the edge of a chair drawn to the bedside, watching intently with huge violet eyes and faintly upturned mouth corners. Bleary-eyed, Bobbi asks, "did I eat another roach in the middle of the night? I swear the least graceful ones end up on our ceilings."
Emily smiled in precisely the absently happy manner that drew Bobbi to her in the first place, responding, "No you silly and I've never seen a roach in this house so I don't know what you're on about." She reaches over with a delicate finger to close Bobbi's mouth which remained slightly ajar perhaps due to a shortage of oxygen to her brain. Bobbi often insisted this explained her behavior but Emily knew better that her wife was simply absent-minded and forgetful and still adjusting to farm life after 3 seasons of hard work.
"No," Emily continued, "you were moving about in your dream making some noises and I was trying to figure out what you were experiencing." Emily's eyes were somehow even bigger and full of obvious question marks, to which Bobbi would ordinary try to trip up in some way. But it was wayyy too early and Bobbi already used up her early morning brain allotment with the roach comment. As Emily shifted to adjust her housework shirt, low, slanting rays of morning sun pierced through her hair directly blasting Bobbi's eyes out through the back of her head, bleaching away any memory of the morning's dreams, replaced with the bright seam of an afterimage sliced across her retinas, perforated with the crepuscular ghost of Emily's short, wavy, chaos hair.
For a fleeting second of deja vu this stood in for the dream: warm bed, beautiful wife close by, farmhouse, morning sun. All dreams, wrapped up in one. But the sun quickly dissolved that, too.
Wincing, Bobbi finally replied with an absent, "No, it's all gone." But Bobbi's brain isn't all mush. "Replaced with visions of you of course, my pulcherrima," she finishes smoothly, easing to a smile. Bobbi read that one in a book somewhere, it meant "the most beautiful" or at least she thought it did. It could also mean "your skin has the texture and color of cold porridge." She made sure Emily knew of the second possible translation as often as she could get away with.
"Oh, my mistake," Emily deflates slightly, her smile still persistent and now adding an extra cheeky curl on one side. "I'll need to be more... subtle next time," she finishes, now fussing with her shirt buttons in a quite a not subtle way to get Bobbi's attention. "Yes yes, there will always be a next time, right?" Emily says as she stands and walks slowly away from the bed containing a very distracted and flustered wife.
Bobbi's attention was very easily gotten with Emily around.
__________
Later at breakfast Emily tosses a letter she'd fetched earlier from the mailbox like a frisbee at Bobbi. "Looks like you have a pen pal with a little too much flourish," Emily criticizes as Bobbi bats the lethal missile from the air. Purple filigreed envelope containing purple stationery with a request.
"Whaaat??" Bobbi splutters while reading. "I gotta rummage around the Mines and find some Void ass-thing so he can try... summoning demons or something?" Bobbi leans on the table, poking the letter in Emily's direction, "with his luck he'll summon his mother-in-law."
"Does he have a mother-in-law?," Emily asks absently, tossing the rest of the mail in the bin.
"Hm." Bobbi thinking face descends, with the furrowed brow of studied seriousness. "He certainly deserves to end up with one or two but welllll... that requires picking up some sort of spouse in order to get one."
Bobbi has been edging closer to Emily while she wasn't paying attention. Bobbi's random trains of thought are for entertainment but also distraction to keep Emily off guard for close approaches. This one does not disappoint. Bobbi hoists up Emily from her chair with a grunt followed by, "yes, picking up a <grunt> spouse does seem to be the right <huff> way to do <ufff> it." Emily protests at being even taller than usual but plays along as Bobbi can't hold her for long. Tall makes heavy even when you're shapely. Bobbi barely makes it to the couch with her damsel before flopping Emily down and then flopping herself down next to, but also liberally on top of, because it's important to maintain close ties with your family.
"That heavy breathing means you think I'm fat, is that right?," Emily asks innocently with somehow a more impish smile than usual.
Bobbi is now too tired to engage having expended more effort than she'd budgeted for the week. "Yes. Chonky. I need wife bigger than me to make me feel better about being butterball. A head taller not enuff, I need extra--," in a fit of inspiration and energy, Bobbi poises her fingers and grabs Emily's waist searching for tickly spots or at least some extra padding and finding almost enough. Emily is in good shape. She is not fat. She is in very good shape.
This is a tactical error.
Bobbi is used to making those, it's all part of the game. However that doesn't make it any less of an error.
Using all her orangutan arm length (at least from Bobbi's stubby T. rex arm perspective), Emily seizes quite the amount of Bobbi midsection (of which there is quite enough to go around, even for seconds) and squeezes and tickles, releasing peals and shrieks of laughter by one Farmer who will always be on the losing end of these indoor games. As usual it ends with a sweaty Bobbi face down on the floor, Emily sitting on top of her holding both of Bobbi's arms behind her with one hand. The other hand poised menacingly at any and every tickly soft place of which Bobbi has quite the selection. Emily's smile is one of self-satisfaction as some of this subduing was long ago practiced on an only slightly evil sister on occasions when parents weren't around. The wife-shaped version of this is considerably more fun.
"Will you do the dishes?" "Yes, dear."
"Will you sweep the house?" "Yes, dear."
"Will you dust the cobwebs?" "Yes, dear."
"You are a very comfortable floor chair." "Yes, dear." Emily bounces up and down a bit on the Bobbi-shaped floor chair. "Mmmm very good, I'm keeping this one!"
"Will you always love me?" "Yes, dear."
"Oh good, because I will always love you." Emily releases Bobbi's hands, rolls her over, and kisses her on the nose. It's a sweaty kiss but as usual Emily seems barely to be perspiring while Bobbi is rather a mess with loose sweaty hair stuck everywhere, still breathing somewhat heavily from her futile efforts.
"I love you too." A pause before Bobbi continues, "You realize I only let you win because I don't want to crush you if end up on top."
Emily's smile widens a bit, "I notice you're losing weight working on our farm," She looks out the front windows over the snow-covered fields. "I see every pound you drop my lovely." She side-eyes Bobbi wryly, "you won't be able to use that excuse for long."
As they get up, Emily asks, "Are you going to get that thing for the Wizard?"
"Heehee I think I already have one!" Bobbi giggles, "but he doesn't need to know that."
"I just need to think a bit how I'm going to work this..."
__________
Bobbi had been doing Mine runs to keep busy during the Winter, mostly because she very well knew she was dropping weight and getting in better shape and didn't want to lose any momentum. She knew herself and any slide back into sloth would be horrible to recover from and anyway Emily was her motivation. Bobbi needed to look good for the Spring Dancey thing she got mega-rejected from the first year. She hopes Emily will go with her the upcoming year though she's too afraid to ask whether that would break any tradition or whatever. Maybe if she looks good enough it might make a difference. Maybe she can ask Lewis or something for a special dispensation so she can dance with Emily, like wearing the guy's outfit or something.
Musing through these thoughts Bobbi finds herself in front of the Wizard's rickety tower before she knows it. Again momentum wins (it's important to know yourself) and though she hadn't planned her story, she steps inside to deliver the ass-thing.
The stench is everything she remembered from her first encounter with the charlatan of the Valley. Eau de squirrel tonsil. Notes of hedgehog bile duct. The faint whiff of boiled slug elbows. The cauldron bubbles and steams, occasionally popping in a way that suggests overinflated rat intestines. It's all Bobbi can do to keep her breakfast down.
"Damn if I want to lose weight, what I really need is an internship here," Bobbi muses.
Apparently that wasn't an internal monologue as Rasmodius releases, "Who disturbs me at this early hour?"
Bobbi absently looks at a missing watch on her wrist and guessing it was around 1pm by her rumbly tumbly, announces, "it is I, the intrepid explorer of the Mines, having fought dragons and wraiths and slightly bendy earthworms to deliver you this--" Bobbi can't remember the name of the thing. "aaaaaasssssss....." she trails off. She never learned it's name. This isn't going well already.
"A very powerful and arcane ingredient, the Void Essence?" Rasmodius asks loudly and clearly, and slightly slowly as if speaking to a child.
Bobbi does not miss that inflection. "Oh yeah, I got one of those too. Here ya go, mister!" Bobbi hands over the black and purple cog which seems to pulse with warmth as she releases it. "I also got this slime blob, ya want it?" Bobbi procures some slime from her backpack but the Wizard recoils from her slimy hand.
"No I have quite enough of that," he says dismissively. "I procure adequate quantities from the local woods."
"So why do you need me to get that thingy then?" Bobbi gestures to the Essence now faintly glowing within Rasmodius' grasp.
"Ehm. Well. You see..." He straightens even a bit more and lets his eyes wander to the top of his ramshackle tower. "I am quite... enamored with high ceilings and as you have now experienced, the Mines contain rather cramped accommodations." Bobbi swears she picks up the slightest of smiles from under his purple beard. "My back isn't up to all the stooping and really there's some celarophobia in there somewhere. Someone of your stature is perhaps a better fit for those types of... endeavors. Rather, I hear there are whole races very well adapted in that way to living underground. Perhaps you will encounter them one day." The smile is unmistakable by now. "You can... compare notes."
Bobbi is having a touch of trouble following but it finally clicks though as she draws a head of steam and opens her hollering hole, Rasmodius cuts her off with, "but I must compensate you for your very appreciated efforts. What do you say, 1,000g for this unusual treasure?"
1,000g is enough to plug the cakehole even the loudest of farmers and Bobbi accepts the offer with little fanfare. But Rasmodius isn't done. Maybe he feels guilty for insulting a small animal that provided a service or maybe he's more human than Bobbi anticipates but he follows with, "If you want, check out the cellar in the back and see if there's anything in there that interests you." He leans over to glare a bit and follows with, "Do not touch the books in the back, you can look at the titles if you must, assuming they are legible to your method of reading." He looks quizzically at Bobbi. "You do... read, don't you?" He shakes his head as if clearing it and waves his hand irritably, "mmmh no matter, just keep those slimy hands to yourself."
Oh yeah my slimy hands, well that joke didn't go over too well did it? Bobbi thinks. She cleans them on some cloth in her pack and mentally apologizes to Emily. Ugh, more washing to do...
Bobbi passes by floor to ceiling bookcases stuffed with ancient-looking tomes and maybe a few copies of the Zuzu Guide to Spotting Local Monkey Species but finds the ladder down to the basement. It occurs to Bobbi this could be a one-way trap into a basement cell but she told Emily where she was going and the Tuesday Ladies Circle would like nothing less than to storm this den of stinky potions and show Razzie how to make useful potions that actually taste good. Also rescue her. Probably, depends on how the potions turn out.
It is a letdown. Arcane rune circle embedded in the corner, will be avoiding THAT. Barrels. Freaky looking altar-thing with an anachronistically functional cashdrawer. Shrub.
WTH cash drawer? Labeled "500g" with 5 slots for 100g pieces. Evil looking carved face above but there's a line separating it down the middle, almost as if it opens up like shutters.
I just got 1000g ,I can drop like 500g to see what this does. Wait, ask him? Nah, I wont believe what he says anyway and he probably forgot what's down here anyways, Mr. Cellar-phobia.
Bobbi drops 500g in the slots and pushes the drawer in. As mostly expected, the evil face splits opens to reveal...
A vanity.
WHAT?
Wait. A vanity with sliders and choices and colors and more choices and and hair and and.......
wait waitwaitwait!
Bobbi chooses something crazy with BIG pink hair and colors the eyes violet like Emily's and hey I can choose no glasses or even facial hair?!? Peering closely into the mirror, the sliders change her reflection in the vanity but she can feel her real face not changing. But does that mean... What does that mean?
There's a big red button at the bottom right. Not labeled of course. That's how very enticing and mysterious red buttons work. Um, I already paid so I should get the thing. I know what the thing is, right? I should hit the button, right?
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🫠 Made my day once again 