Today’s the day!

Yup, the day Adelia finally gets to help out the tailor shop. I’m honestly pretty excited since this is going to be the first time we’ve really been into a town in this universe! Well, I guess you could call the trip to the library going into town, but we really didn’t do much and it wasn’t even that big, so I’m not counting it!

We almost died multiple times in the past few days, which includes the time we went to the plaza on our way to the library. Yesterday was pretty minor, and nothing really happened much. I guess life’s giving us a break day? But still, I’m praying that nothing happens to us this time. I’ll have to keep my guard up. From my past experiences, I’m the only person who can help her.

Anyways, while we’re there, I hope that we’ll be able to find out more about this world and how to go back. I miss doing the things I love and hanging out with family and friends. 

I really, really hope I can go back home soon.

Don’t get me wrong, this place is cool and I like seeing Adelia happy, but I can’t be a spirit forever. That’s horrifying. No offense to the spirits who… well, have to stay as a spirit for the rest of their lives.

Adelia’s maids are helping her get changed so I’m waiting for her in the drawing room, which is practically on the other side of Adelia’s room. It’s sure taking an awfully long time. I stopped trying to count a while ago, but it’s probably been about an hour and a half. I can’t be too sure. I mean, yesterday’s dressing out was a lot faster, but that’s because Adelia told them that she would stay inside. Is this usually the norm for outings? Man, I wish I could read a book or something. If only I could move stuff. My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the bedroom door opening.

Adelia comes in wearing a simple, but honestly, pretty cute dress. It looks lightweight and easy for the autumn air to seep through. I guess her maids do have some fashion sense after all, not to mention the dresses all look high quality! Now I have the urge to sneak into her wardrobe and look at all the clothes and designs she has. Maybe one day I might be able to wear them too.

“Ready to go?” Adelia asks me. I shoo away my thoughts.

“I should be asking you that question. I’ve been ready for the past hour, unless you still have some other accessory you need to put on?” I reply, trying to voice my impatience in a playful way.

“Oh god, don’t remind me. They take an insane amount of time to get me dressed. Why can’t I just throw on any dress and tie my hair up and go? How do the nobles do this every morning?” She dramatically slumps her shoulders as she sighs. “Anyways, why don’t we get going? I’ve convinced the maids that I don’t need an escort somehow, since our last ones were pretty useless. I mean, there’ll still be guards, but they won’t follow us around. Still, we can actually explore the plaza on our own this time. I’ve convinced them that we don’t need a maid following us around either!”

“Woah, nice!” I say clapping. Adelia nods, proud of herself.

“I know. It’s a pretty far walk though, so they told me that I needed to ride a carriage.” She cups her pretty powdered face with her hands with a pleasant expression. “That’s honestly not that bad though, it’s so pretty and fancy. It might even be comfortable if the roads are well paved. The guards who are coming with us will be guarding the carriage and the maid with us will be sent on an errand to get some of the spring merch before the festival begins.” 

She blinks twice before saying, “Hey, it’s kind of fun to order people around.” 

“I get it. You’re a rich girl now.” I roll my eyes, then immediately switch my mood. “Let’s get going! This is the day we can actually start being productive!” I say with excitement, rushing out the door. 

“Right! Let’s go!” Adelia says with the same amount of excitement as me, and we both run out of the room.

We’re going to make the most out of this chance!

After a short ride in the carriage, we finally arrived at our destination.

Actually, forget the short ride. That was the longest trip in a vehicle I’ve ever taken. The capital city was further away than I thought it would be, not to mention it wasn’t comfortable at all?! The roads were fine until we passed the two towns, and then it started getting bumpy and bumpier. Not to mention the horses were really slow. I think we might have been going like only ten miles per hour. Continuously.

I guess I underestimated it because the walk to our territory’s town wasn’t that long. I’m glad Adelia’s maids looked out for her this time. 

At some point, I got so bored that I decided to ride on the roof for a while, but I nearly got hit by a tree after 5 minutes. (We have a bad history with trees don’t we?) Of course, I didn’t want to have branches smacking into my face whether I could feel pain or not, so I went back inside. When I peeked in, Adelia was still sitting there, leaning back on the chair with the same smile on her face as before we left. She was looking through the window as if these trees were the most interesting thing she ever saw. 

How was she not hunched over in boredom or totally obliterated by the bumps on the road? Nobles really are a different species. Or maybe it’s just Adelia, I’m not sure. We haven’t really seen a lot of nobles around here. Her property is mostly full of forests and land, you see.

Wow, another show of wealth.

The carriage creaks before the clacks of the horses’ hooves slow to a stop. Adelia gets out of the carriage and I do the same, watching my step as I gracefully land on the cobblestone road. I’m blinded by the sun. My eyes take time adjusting to the new lighting. As soon as my vision clears, I slowly lower my hand and let out a gasp. The streets are filled with many colorfully lit up shops and stalls of all kinds are being set up. Different people from different cultures organized their stocks of their region’s goods. Golden accessories in one space, fine dishes and toys for kids in another. Oh, and there were lots and lots of flowers. Flower wreaths and string lights, except they were also made out of flowers, decorated the lanterns. But the best part was all the people here. Everywhere I looked, both the adults and children were smiling, excited from the festive mood. It’s a lot more lively than the area the library was in!

“It’s really busy.” Is the only thing I can say to Adelia while I still admire the view, who looks just as surprised as I am at the view of the town.

“It really is.” She replies, then snaps out of her trance of wonder and shakes her head. “Maybe we should’ve gotten an escort to lead us to the place. We might get lost.”

“It’ll probably be fine. We just need to find a shop named… Clover’s Cuts? Or something?” I tilt my head and look around, trying to find a green-colored signboard. Well, I just assumed it was green based on the name of the shop. It also just sounds pretty green in general, does that make sense? 

My eyes snap onto a cute little board that catches my eyes and I pause for a second to read the name before I blink in amazement. 

“Oh! It’s right there!” I point to my right, down one of the streets. It’s a nice little shop. The wooden oak sign is painted with thick golden lettering (well, I had a good guess), and the shop windows show off many different fabrics, ribbons, and dresses they have.

“Yup, that’s the one. We should get going. Best not to keep them waiting.”

“Right,” I reply as we take a short walk towards our destination. As we get closer, we start to hear muffled yelling coming from inside the shop. Adelia gives me a glance of concern, and I return it. We rush into the shop to see what’s causing the commotion.

As soon as we walk in, we're almost hit by a flying pin cushion. I’m lucky I dodged before it- Wait a minute. I’m a spirit so it would’ve gone right through me, or at least…I think it would’ve? Well anyways, it’s an absolute disaster! Two girls fly across from one side of the room to another, carrying multi-colored fabric. The receptionist yells at some of the people in the other rooms, all the while dealing with multiple piles of paperwork stacked as tall as a mountain. A person in the back with glasses on suddenly stops stitching, punches the table, and gets back to working again. It's dreadfully chaotic.

“This is messier than my room on a bad day,” I whisper to myself. Adelia must’ve heard because she turned away from me, trying to hold in her laughter. 

The girl who was yelling the most seemed to finally notice us. She skillfully dodged the workers running around and skipped toward Adelia.

“Oh, welcome! You must be Lady Adeline. Thank you so much for coming to help! It’s just, we might have a bit of a problem right now, so…” She grits her teeth and turns around, motioning towards the situation. Adelia nods, frowning. The girl shakes her head, “I’ll be able to guide you through the process as soon as everyone calms down, which I don’t think will be anytime soon.”

Adelia puts her hand on her chin. She does that a lot when she's trying to think up solutions, or when she tries to dumb down the answers for me so I can actually process them even if I knew what she meant the first time. I'm assuming it's the first option for this situation. 

“Well first of all, why don’t we try getting everyone’s attention?” Adelia half shouts, trying to at least be louder than her surroundings.

“Right! I’ll try, at least!” The girl says, both unconfident and confident of her abilities at the same time. She claps her hands and spins on her heels.

“EVERYONE LISTEN UP!” She screams at the top of her lungs. We quickly cover our ears with our hands. I think I felt my eardrums explode, I swear.

Everyone turns to look at her. It’s as if a switch just shuts off. Everything’s completely silent. It’s honestly impressive, almost scary. Maybe she’s the boss of this place.

“Lady Adeline’s here, so why don’t we clean up and try to guide her through all of this.” The girl says sweetly. I look at Adelia. She looks pretty uncomfortable from all this attention, and I don’t blame her. She’s never really been the center of attention since, well, she’s a spirit, and being a noble helping out in a small shop must be a pretty big deal. I hope this doesn’t cause too many problems in our buildup to, you know, getting a reputation and finding a way back.

“Ah… Yes. Thank you for having me.” Adelia awkwardly says. The tension in her voice is obvious. 

The manager girl, er, I think she’s the manager? Eh, whatever. Everyone’s listening to her. The manager girl starts guiding Adelia towards the different stations and all the machinery while the workers attempt to organize the mess. I fly to the ceiling to get a look at things, and honestly, this shop is pretty cute! The wallpaper is a vibrant periwinkle and the tables are a pretty shade of black marble. Near the entrance beside the double-doors, are hanging potted plants, its vines nearly reaching the floor. This era has better manufacturing than I thought. I mean, I kind of already knew that the Dark Ages were during the Carasian Era, but I didn’t think it’d have this big of a development from then. It was pretty amazing how so much changed within 200 years.

“Alright, so first thing’s first…” I overhear Adelia say. They’re probably gonna start working for real now, so I fly back towards her to get a good listen to the conversation, and to see if I can help of course! 

“We need to choose fabrics, right?” She looks over to the cabinets filled with different colored cloth. 

The girl nods and waves her arms towards the person at the counter and the two girls still running around. “We're working on the ones that already have fabrics and designs chosen, but some people wanted the premade seasonal dresses. Since they didn’t like any of the designs and we create a special season-based dress every few months, they trusted us to create a new design for the festival. But we underestimated how many people would order the premade ones this year. It seems the number of riches are growing." 

She smiles sheepishly. "We have some basic ideas, but as a noble, you must be a master at knowing the latest fashion trends, so we'd like you to choose some. If you can, we'd appreciate it if you chose the material as well, although I personally am advocating for cotton textiles." 

Adelia takes a long stare at the fabrics before turning back and saying. "Could you lay out some of the best options? That way it can be easier to decide.”

“Right! Let me go and get some of our most popular flower pattern samples.” The girl says. She rushes to the back of the shop and comes out holding 7 different pieces of cloth. 

“I chose some ones I thought would fit too,” She explains as she lays them out on the table closest to us. I head over to get a good look at them, and Adelia does the same.

“Alright, let me see…” Adelia puts her hand on her chin. I wonder which one she’ll pick! I mean they all look really pretty, and pretty comfy too. That pink one would look great for the sleeves. I wonder how they-

Wait a minute, Adelia’s giving me a side-eye. Is she glaring at me? What for? I didn't even do anything this time-

Wait.

Does she want me to pick out the fabric?! I mean I do have really good fashion sense, but this kinda feels like a pretty big deal. These are dresses for nobles, right? They’re gonna be worn by super fancy people, and I’m pretty much a commoner or less. It's a lot of pressure- 

Welp, she glaring at me even harder now. Seems like she's really, really panicking.

I let out a long, depressive sigh to let her know that I’m annoyed with her, and fly next to all the fabrics. Well, to be fair, Adelia probably has no idea what any of those materials are or how they feel or anything. If I left it to her, she probably would've chosen wool or something since it’d be the softest. 

Honestly, at least I’ll be able to help out somehow since I can’t do any physical work, so this isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.

Anyways, fabric picking. It’s for a festival, so we have to be considerate of what people do during festivals right?

I gain a flashback of what Adelia told me a couple days ago about Adeline’s memories of the festival. First of all, people probably move around a lot, so it has to be a nice light fabric that isn’t too heavy, obviously. I'm following Adelia's rule of listing everything, even if it might be common sense. Second, it’s probably going to be really busy, so we don’t want the dress to be too long. People might start stepping on it, but I'm pretty sure that the tailors will take care of that part, I just need to make it easier for them to quickly cut and shape.

Oh, and Adelia mentioned that there were fireworks. Everyone would probably be sitting on the grass to watch those things right? Like on a picnic blanket or something. Well, that’s how it is back in the present, well, er, future. I should make sure it doesn't stain easily. Oh, make the bottom piece green colored sewed onto a white apron with flower stitches on it? That'd be cute- Wait, I'm getting distracted!

I lay my eyes upon the fourth piece of fabric. It’s a beautiful simplistic flower pattern. Not too fancy, but it sure isn’t basic. If they could add patterned stitches in, it'd be really cute. It looks pretty lightweight, but it's also thick, and if the grass stains it, it looks like it'd be able to wash off easily. Everything about it is pretty much perfect!

I look back at Adelia and motion for her to come over and take a look. She takes one glance and immediately understands everything I was just thinking about.

“This one is perfect!” She points down to the fabric material. “It’s lightweight and good for moving around during festivals. Plus, the texture is really nice and the pattern is lovely.” She smiles. “I’m sure the nobles will adore a dress made out of this fabric. Light and flowy dresses are the trend these days, especially since people are advocating for safer and non-body deforming clothes for women.”

The manager girl looks down at the fabric and nods to herself. “Yes, you’re absolutely right! This will be a great fabric for them to wear at the festival. You have incredible judgment, Lady Adeline!” She beams. Adelia smiles, obviously loving excessive flattering. Okay, first off, this wasn’t rocket science. Second off, now she’s stealing all the credit for my choices?! 

I cross my arms and let out a “Hmph!” of anger. This is total injustice! Adelia gives me an innocent smile and I scowl as a reply.

“In addition, It would be best if the dresses weren’t very long. It would be dreadful to wear clothing equivalent to a ballgown to a lively festival. I’m sure it would be hard to make it decent, but as long as it doesn’t go above the knees, I think it would be alright. It would also prevent others from stepping on it in the busy street. Please also make it easy for the women to drape an extra coat over themselves, in case it gets cold.” She adds. Okay, now that is just plain scary. How does she just read my mind like that?

“Yes, alright. Thank you for the advice!” The girl says, trying to contain her excitement. Seems she just had an idea. She starts muttering to herself, making adjustments out loud. "Maybe if we also changed the fabric for Baron Virna's dress, it won't drag so heavily anymore. And since this should be more based on comfort, I shouldn’t use crinolines. Bustles aren’t an option either, but I should contact my customers about that. Maybe if we substituted it? Oh, and we should make use of the pale yellow fabric for the rest of it since we're running out of reds… We could use the floral pattern Lady Adelia chose for the main bodice and potentially the sleeves. It'd look too overwhelming to be the whole dress… No, but if we added the jackets… maybe the color of the buttons… We should get all of that fabric in multiple colors and patterns too."

Before Adelia and I could awkwardly stand there behind her any longer, the girl clapped her hands twice and yelled, her voice ringing as clear as a bell, “Everyone, gather your needles and threads! The Spring Collection dresses aren’t going to make themselves, so let’s get started!”