Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty-Four - Ribbon Me This

“So, you like hats, right?” Booksie asked.

I nodded. I did like hats.

At the moment, we were in the shopping district of Port Royal. I didn’t recognize the place until we passed the shop where Amaryllis had bought my usual blue outfit. We’d ended up going back into that shop, and at the moment we were waiting while the owner fussed over Amaryllis who was having her armoured jacket looked over. It was clean, of course, but clean wasn’t perfectly maintained.

The lining was coming loose, and the tailor was seeing to that.

“Okay, so hats are nice and all,” Booksie said. “But we buns have a racial disadvantage when it comes to headwear.”

“Because of our ears?” I asked. I wiggled mine a bit.

Booksie nodded, her own ears wiggling even more.

I was definitely envious of Booksie's unconscious ear posture. Even when she was clearly focused on other things, they always stayed nice and straight. If she wanted to listen closer to something, she could smoothly turn them without needing to think about them, like she'd ... well, like she'd been born with them.

Mine were both very unruly. My left ear kept folding in half in the middle, and no matter how often I perked it back up, it would just flop back down.

I was very tempted to find this world’s equivalent of a popsicle stick and glue it into my ear so that it would stay up.

“Plenty of millineries will poke some holes in hats for you, but if you’re buying second-hand, you’re almost entirely out of luck,” Booksie said. “I had to cut holes into my only hat, and they’re uneven, and they kind of cut into the base of my ears. It’s very annoying. Have you had that happen? Your ear falling asleep?”

“Our ears can fall asleep?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. It’s like when you sleep on your arm and you wake up to find it all tingly,” Booksie said. “But it’s your ear. It’s awful.”

“My helmet has a few holes cut into the right place, and my captain’s hat is too narrow for that to be a problem,” I said.

Booksie nodded. “It’s not that big of a deal, I think. But I’m going to show you a cheat.”

“A cheat?” I asked.

She nodded again. “To make you look cute without hurting your ears.”

“But I don’t wanna look cute,” I said. I was not pouting. I was definitely not pouting!

Booksie blinked, then looked me up and down. “Are... are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it feels like you’re trying really hard to be as cute as possible. Just look at your nose.”

I touched my nose. “What’s wrong with my nose?” I asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with your nose,” Booksie said. “It’s cute.”

I stepped over to the side and looked into one of the mirrors hanging off the shop’s walls. I looked... like me. Maybe I’d lost a bit of weight over the last few months, what with all of the running around and such, but I hadn’t changed that much. My skin was very clear though, without a button of blemish, which was probably my Cleaning magic at work.

I checked out my nose. It was small, sitting in the middle of my face, as it should. I twitched it left then right. Yup. Normal nose. Entirely uncute. “Awen! Tell me my nose isn’t cute!” I said.

Awen looked between me and Booksie, then I saw her eyes dip a little to stare at my nose. “It’s... small?”

I gasped, covering my nose with both hands. “My nose isn’t small! It’s perfectly average!”

“It’s small because you keep sticking it into things that aren’t any of your business,” Amaryllis snapped from across the room. She immediately turned back and continued to converse with the tailor, as if she hadn’t just struck me a devastating blow.

“Anyway,” I said as I turned back to Booksie. “What was that trick you were talking about?”

“You don’t need to keep covering your nose, you know,” Booksie said.

I grumbled, but let my hands drop.

“So, hats are complicated for buns... but you know what isn’t?” Booksie whipped out a long length of cloth from a rack, fluttering it about before she pinched both ends of it and held it taut. “Ribbons!”

“Oh!” I said. “Ribbons are nice, yeah!”

There was a trick to tying ribbons to ears, I found out. A top secret bun trick, passed down from generations of buns who wanted to accessorise without cutting holes into their hats.

We walked out of the shop a few minutes later a few coins lighter. The shopkeep sold us the ribbons for very little, since they were basically no more than strips of cloth. I had six tied to the base of my ears, their tails trailing down around my head. No two were the same colour.

I shook my head to test the ribbons' durability. They fluttered in the air, creating a whirl of colours around my head.

“See? Isn't it great?” Booksie beamed, her ears adorned with elegant ribbons that complemented her black hair and ears.

Amaryllis walked out behind us, her jacket looking as good as new. “And here I thought you wanted to avoid looking adorable, Broccoli. Booksie, you've done well.”

“Adorable? I'm a noble airship captain, you know!” I protested, but my ears twitched traitorously, giving away my genuine pleasure at the compliment.

Booksie chuckled. “Even noble airship captains can have a sense of style. Besides, these ribbons have multiple uses, you know?”

“Oh really? Like what?”

“Well, for one, you can use them to mark pages in your book. They can also serve as impromptu binding material or even makeshift bandages in a pinch.”

“You're quite the pragmatic one,” Amaryllis noted, looking impressed.

“Alright, let’s see what else we can discover,” Booksie said as she skipped ahead. She was beaming, and it was just plain nice to see her smiling so much. I knew that she was excited for the wedding, but there was a lot of stress and anxiety that came with that. “There’s a bootmaker down the street. Do you need boots?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I liked my shoes. “But Awen might need some?”

Awen shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind looking. The soles on mine are getting a little thin, I think. I have to wear thick socks, or else I’ll get blisters.”

We checked out the bootmaker, but didn't end up buying anything, then stopped by a place that sold frozen treats, then giggled our way over to a street show where someone was playing something that looked like a guitar while tapping their feet to the beat and singing an almost dirty song about dragons that had us all flushing.

“Should we find something better to eat than snacks?” I asked.

“We should consider actual food at some point, yes,” Amaryllis said dryly. “And we need to look into making sure the crew is fed too. We can’t spend all day with Booksie and forget our responsibilities.”

I pouted, but she was right. “Oh! But Booksie can come with us. We can show her the Beaver and she can eat with the crew.”

“I suppose,” Amaryllis said. “We should stop by the Sylphfree embassy on the way back.”

“The embassy?” Booksie repeated.

“Our friend, Caprica, said she’d head over there today. Calamity went with her, to keep her company. I don’t know if she’s planning on eating at the embassy or not, but she might be gone already. Do you know where it is?”

“I do,” Booksie said. “I pass by it every time I go to the topmost levels of the city. It’s a nice walk. We’ll build up our appetite on the way there, I think.”

Getting to the embassy was a bit of a journey. We had to circle around the markets, then ascend a sharply inclined road, following switchbacks that clung to the face of the mountain Port Royal jutted out of.

Eventually, we reached the part of the city with the nicest homes and all of the most important buildings. The embassies were placed a little ways away from each other, almost as if the locals didn’t want them within arrow-firing range.

At least, that’s how it looked for the sylph and harpy embassies. The harpy embassy was a squat tower carved out of local stone with balconies all around and parapets that guards could hide behind. The syph embassy some ways down was an opulent building, though it was a lot smaller, leaving space for a statue garden out front and a tall fence all around.

It only took a glance to realise that something was up at the sylph embassy.

The wrought-iron fence was shut at the front, and there were a lot of guards patrolling around the building. They weren’t guards lazily making their rounds. These guards were on high alert, attention scanning across the street and eyes darting all over. I saw hands with white knuckles gripping spears and could almost feel the electric buzz of unreleased magic even though I was still some ways away.

“Fantastic,” Amaryllis muttered. “We let Caprica out of our sight for an hour or two and this happens.”

"What happened?" I asked, turning toward Amaryllis.

She gave me a weird look for a second, then realized I was asking her a question. "How would I know?" she answered.

"But ... you said 'this happens' with so much confidence!"

Amaryllis huffed, rolling her eyes. "Broc, I meant this," she gestured to the sylph embassy, where the guards were eyeing us with open suspicion. "This, as in, the extremely high alert posture we can see right in front of us. Those guards look like someone just told them that they’re about to be invaded within the hour. I bet if you set off a firecracker they’d fling a dozen spells at you before the echo has time to retort.”

“That was oddly specific,” Awen muttered.

I hummed, then glanced across the street from the embassy. An old grenoil gentleman was sitting on a bench, one leg crossed over his thigh, his eyes regarding the embassy with interest. “One sec,” I said before I walked over to him. I felt my friends keeping up behind me. “Hello, sir!”

The grenoil blinked. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Hi! My name’s Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch,” I said.

“Ah, ze name is Félix,” he croaked amiably.

“Do you happen to know what's going on with the Sylph embassy?” I asked, gesturing towards the compound.

“Ah, oui, zere 'as been quite ze commotion,” Félix said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Ze embassy, it 'as been on lockdown since zis morning. I 'eard zat someone 'as been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped? Who?” I asked, my heart sinking.

Félix looked around conspiratorially before leaning in closer. “I 'eard it is someone very important. A noblewoman, I believe. I ‘aven’t ‘eard gossip zis good in a long while!”

“Oh no, that’s concerning,” I said, a pit forming in my tummy. “Thanks for letting me know, Monsieur Félix.”

He nodded, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Ah, ze young people always bringing excitement.”

I rejoined my friends, who were looking both concerned and impatient. “So?” Amaryllis pressed.

“Looks like there’s been a kidnapping,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Someone important, likely a noblewoman.”

Amaryllis and Awen exchanged looks. “I really hope it’s not Caprica,” Awen said, her voice tinged with worry.

“It’s definitely Caprica,” Amaryllis said, dashing any hope Awen and I might have had.

“Do you think I can help?” Booksie asked. “Cholondee has her mobsters, and I could convince Rhawrexdee to help. He’s hard to ignore when he wants something.”

“That would just cause a bigger diplomatic issue,” Amaryllis said. “The sylph don’t like dragons for... historical and dietary reasons. Broccoli, go bother the gate guard into telling you everything he knows.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said.

“Just wiggle your cute little nose at him,” she said.

I covered my nose again. “You heard that? No, I mean, my nose isn’t cute! Or little! It’s a perfectly average-sized nose!”

***