Chapter Seventeen - Mango Cake
Crossover: Beneath the Dragoneye Moons by Selkie Myth

***

A strange florp occurred, and I was suddenly in a cafe.

Espresso machines gurgled, a slow-roaster ticked - all sounds that I recognized even though I hadn’t heard them in a long time. Was I on Earth?

I looked around to reorientate myself, only now noticing the girl - about my own age - standing a few feet ahead of me with a wince on her face and a white towel around her hand. She was clutching a wound, something I’d seen plenty of times.

Next to her was a girl. A girl with a rather cute pout and a not so cute amount of tentacles slipping out of her dress.

“Hey there. Are you hurt? And is that a coffee machine?”

“Oh? Yeah, that’s a coffee machine. I’m really sorry, I cut myself because I was clumsy, and then Dreamer tried to help but, ah, well, now you’re here. Are you a doctor?”

She glanced down at my clothes, steel armour, skirt, sandals, and seemed to decide that I wasn’t. Maybe she couldn’t see my class? Hers was [Artisan] but it was about as pale as a class could be.

“I’m a healer,” I said.

I glanced at the strange girl with the tentacles. This obviously wasn’t Pallos, so maybe tentacle-girls were the norm here? [Dreamer - The Eater of Gods - She Who Is Pat - The Nightmare]

The title was black.

Not just black, it was a void, letters so dark they seemed to make the idea of colours fade.

A tentacle slid out of nothing, one covered in eyes, and it prodded at the class, the title shifting to the side.

Nope. Nope nope nope. I was going to be clever and pretend that I hadn’t even looked.

“Abigail is hurt. Can you fix her?”

“Please,” the girl I presumed was Abigail said.

“Please.”

“Healing, yes. I can heal, that is something I do,” I said as I rushed closer. It wasn’t often that I was distracted from healing, but then again... whatever Dreamer was felt like a great excuse for a momentary pause.

I touched Abigail’s wrist, careful not to alarm her, and she surrendered her hand to me.

“How are you hurt? The more I know, the better I can heal you.” I asked.

“I was cleaning the bean grinder, and I sliced my thumb, it’s that...” Abigail paused and looked over to a counter where I presumed a bean grinder had been before.

“It hurt you,” the small god-eating tentacle child said.

The healing was easy. Ridiculously easy. My mana didn’t even have time to drop before it was back up to full. Abigail’s cut had been no worse than a bad papercut.

“All healed,” I said as I helped Abigail unwrap her hand from the cloth she’d used to staunch her bleeding.

“Oh, thank you,” Abigail said.

“No problem, it’s what I do. Speaking of which, where am I?”

“This is my and Dreamer’s tea shop. Would you like some tea before Dreamer sends you back? For the road, so to speak? Maybe some pastries?”

“I don’t need payment for such a small bit of healing. Uh, do you usually summon healers whenever you get cut?”

It would be a bit of a pain if they did that every time. What if I had been in the middle of an operation or something when I was yanked over? Urgh, I’d need to make a point of teaching Abigail not to yoink healers willy-nilly.

“No, I thought I was fine, but Dreamer was afraid,” Abigail said. She reached over and Dreamer moved closer so that when Abigail’s hand came down, it landed on her head.

The tentacle girl let out a content little sigh.

“So, you can send me back, right?”

“Yeah,” Dreamer said.

“Cool. In that case, I’d love some tea?”

This was unusual, but I was determined to make the best of it.

Abigail escorted me out of the kitchen and into a dining area that felt more modern than anything I’d seen in a long time. She gestured to a seat at a table and I sat down. It wasn’t too far from the corner, where a girl that could have been the tentacle-girl’s twin was sitting and reading from - to my surprise - an actual paper pamphlet.

“Here’s the menu,” Abigail said as she placed a cardstock menu on the table with a click.

“Thanks,” I said.

My eyes scanned the long list of teas, then zeroed in on the list of deserts.

They had mango cake.

They had whipped cream.

Heck yeah!

I was confused for a moment when my thumb brushed the menu and it moved. It was electronic!

I was probably a little too excited as I clicked on the various options and enjoyed the little beeps and boops the menu made. Eventually though, I tampered down my gluttony and only ordered a slice of cake and some tea.

I sat with rapidly decreasing patience while Abigail puttered away behind the counter and the girl with the pamphlets scribbled away. I had actually lost sight of Dreamer, which I would never admit to anyone with the rangers because losing sight of something like that was just embarrassing.

“So, what’re you making there?” I asked.

“Pamphlets,” the girl replied distractedly.

“That’s neat. What are they about?”

“They’re Not Today pamphlets,” she said.

Her head rose.

“Do you want one?”

Uh. “Sure?”

The paper alone might be interesting to have. A long tentacle slithered over to me and carefully placed a pamphlet over my menu with an amount of care and delicacy that something so obviously made by a child probably didn’t deserve.

The cover had Not Today written on it, in crayon. Under that was a drawing of a one-armed, one-tentacled girl. The drawing’s face had a flat line for a mouth.

I opened it up and scanned through the text.

Today is not the day where you will die.
That means that you still have things to do.
Do the things you’re meant to do.
You still have many days to live.

The next page had a counter on it, the number displayed - in the thousands - was flickering up and down like a digital clock on the fritz, but it was drawn in crayon.

“What’s this part?” I asked, a little nervous.

“How many days until it is today.”

I carefully laid the pamphlet down. “Nice, very, uh, nice.”

“Thank you. I give people pamphlets. It’s my purpose in life. Now I make pamphlets to give to people. That isn’t my purpose, but it makes me happy.”

“Well, we all need hobbies,” I said.

Fortunately, Abigail showed up with a large wedge of cake on a plate, a steaming cup of tea, and a small cardboard box. “I saw you smiling when you saw the cake, and I don’t think it’s very popular, so I put the rest in the box. As an apology for Dreamer’s... Dreamerness.”

I stared at the wedge. It was tall and fat, with the yellowy goodness of mango wedges dripping with some sort of sugary sauce jammed between layers of cake. There was icing. There were crushed almonds on top. There was an unhealthy amount of whipped cream slathered onto the whole thing.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

***