Twisted Destiny

While Roderick goes to the back of his shop to go and get something, Lise pokes me in my side. “Hey Ami, why did you ask for three rings?” 

Hilda smiles smugly. “I think I know the answer but I’ll let you do the explaining.” 

“Well…” I turn towards my sister. “There’s one for me, and then two for Sam.” 

I can almost see the cogs in my sister’s brain start turning. “Two for Sam….” 

“Yes, I can take my ring with me back to my body back on Earth, but for Sam it’s not that simple, especially because she’s a bit bigger over here too. So I figured I’d just get two for her so that she can have one for both of her bodies.” I then look at Hilda. “Was that what you were thinking?” 

She nods with a smile. “Pretty much, yes.” 

“Well, ain’t you a smart little kitten.” My sister laughs and rubs her hand over the top of my head. 

“Hehe.” 

“Sorry, ran out of parchment.” Roderick comes back with some new parchment and deposits it inside of his counter, taking off the topmost piece so he can start writing again. 

“Do you know how big those rings need to be?” 

“Hmmm, well, there’s one for me…” And now I somehow had to think of how big Sam’s rings would need to be. But before I can answer, Hilda puts her hand on my shoulder. 

“Could I have your quill? I’ll draw the sizes for you.” 

“Oh, sure.” Roderick hands the quill over to Hilda and she immediately starts by drawing three rings on the piece of parchment. “I’m not an artist but I think this should do fine for you to judge the sizes from?” 

Roderick looks at Hilda’s drawing and gives us a nod. “Yes, that should work.” 

“How do you know how big the rings need to be?” I ask, slightly confused at the rings do look like they’d fit. 

She points at herself and smiles. “I am somewhat of a rogue. Judging jewelry, is kind of my thing.” Hilda then gives me a wink.

“You aren’t a criminal, right?” Roderick asks. 

“No, no, definitely not.” Hilda shakes her head. 

“We are more like anti-criminals to be exact.” Lise ads. “But it’s useful to have someone who knows how to scout when we are out and about.” 

Roderick looks at the three of us. “I suppose you three don’t really look like criminals.” 

-Even though we are pretty recognizable it seems like Roderick really has no clue who we are, not that I mind, it’s nice to have a casual conversation without immediately getting worshipped.- 

 

“Anyway.” Roderick continues. “Now that I know the sizes, what style would you like? I can’t really show you any examples though.” 

“Hmmm… not too thick, uh, could I borrow your quill as well?” 

“Yes, definitely.” This time Roderick hands over the quill to me and as opposed to Hilda I am supposed to be an artist so I start drawing a ring. It’s a bit hard to do without a pencil but I do manage to draw a pretty good representation of how narrow I want the ring to be. Keeping in mind that I don’t want it too narrow so that Roderick can still engrave the runes on the inside. 

“Do you think this will work?” 

“It’s rather narrow but I don’t think it should be much of an issue.” Roderick scratches his stubbly chin. “And you want the outside to be plain?”

“Well, we don’t really need something fancy…” 

Roderick raises his finger and holds his hand open, probably showing to me that he wants his quill back, so I swiftly hand it over. “What if we add this...” He starts drawing and after a minute he shows the ring I drew back to me, now the outside has a couple of lines that cross over it, I assume also engraved. It gives it a very Nordic feeling. “It’s a symbolic representation of a chain.” He explains. 

“Oh! I really like that!” I nod happily. I will probably need to explain its meaning to Sam as well but I’m sure she will like it a lot too.

“Yeah, that’s a very nice touch.” My sister agrees. 

“Alright.” Roderick nods happily. “Then I’m pretty sure I have everything I need to get to work, except for the payment of course.” 

“Good point, what do we owe you.” 

“It’s customary to give a quarter of the pay now and the rest of it when you come to collect your order.” He scratches his chin again. “Considering that I’m not too familiar with rings and because I somewhat like the three of you… what about five golden Dwargon per ring. So fifteen in total.” 

“That’s a deal.” Hilda agrees and takes out a pouch. “Then I’ll give you four now and we will pay the remaining eleven when we come and collect it.” 

“Works for me.” He nods and takes the pieces of gold that Hilda had placed down. “I think I’ll be ready with them in a week.” 

“Okay. We might come and collect it a bit later because we are a bit busy.” 

“That’s no problem. I’ll keep them locked away safely.” 

“Thank you.” I smile at him. 

“No, thank you for your business.” He smiles back at me. 

 

We wave Roderick goodbye and make our way back outside. I guess we’ve made Nikki and Sam wait long enough. 

“Are you ready to head back?” Hilda asks me. 

“Yes, I am. I’m very happy with what we just did, but I’d prefer it if you kept it quiet from Sam. I kinda want it to be a surprise.” 

“Sure thing, Sis. You can count on us.” Lise points at herself with a confident smile. 

“Indeed but what’s going to be our excuse then? For staying away that long.” 

“Well, we still got the vases. We can say that Brianna wanted to give us a bit of a tour of her store room and then Ami couldn’t pick which vase she wanted.” 

I giggle. “That sounds good enough for me.” 

“Alright.” Hilda laughs. “Then we are ready to head back.  

My sister lays her hand on my shoulder, Hilda doing the same from the other side as I start concentrating back on the beach. A gust of wind and the feeling of sand under my feet proves that the teleportation had transpired correctly. 

When I open my eyes I can see a perfect circle in the sand around us that has been totally flattened. 

“Oh, that must be because of that wind, right.” My sister crouches down to touch the sand. “Looks like the top layer just blew off, the sand isn’t compacted at all.” 

“Hmm, maybe we should use Ami as a leaf blower.” Hilda scratches her cheek. 

“I think that’d be very inefficient.” I chuckle and look around the camp. I can’t immediately see Sam or Nikki. 

“I think Nikki would way rather just incinerate the leaves.” Lise laughs. “Speaking of which.” She then coughs to open up her throat after which she calls out to Nikki, really really loud. 

“Ouch! Couldn’t you give us a warning first?” Hilda looks befuzled. 

“Right, sorry. But it is even louder if you’d be standing in front of me.” 

“It works like a cone then?” I ask. 

“Ye, pretty much.” She nods. 

 

“Did you really have to scream that loudly?” Nikki replies from the direction of the sea. “We were just over here.” 

“Sorry, there was a tent in my way!” 

“You can also move your legs, you know?” Nikki’s head pops around the tent. She gives Hilda and me a small wave once she sees us. “That being said, what took you so long?” 

“Brianna really wanted to show us around her shop. Sorry for that.” I reply. “She also gave me a couple of vases.” 

“Ah… that’s nice of her.” 

“She was thankful about not having to travel all the way back.” I smile. 

“What have you been up to? Did anything special happen while we were gone?” Hilda asks. 

“That ship that we saw earlier has come closer, they actually just launched a rowboat and they are heading this way.” Nikki replies. “That’s why we were at the shoreline.” 

Now that she says it, Nikki is wearing her regular clothes again together with her staff instead of her swimwear from earlier. 

“Expecting trouble?” Hilda puts her hand on one of her knives. 

“Not really, I’m pretty sure it’s actually Taylor’s ship. I just didn’t want her to make fun of my swimming clothes.” 

My sister starts laughing. “That’s actually something Taylor would do, yes.” 

Hilda starts walking behind the tent. I follow her while my sister and Nikki follow behind me. Sam’s standing, pretty much at the shoreline, looking in our direction and waving us over. She also has her usual gear on. 

From where we are walking I can see the rowboat approaching. It’s already pretty close to shore. At the front of the rowboat stands a familiar privateer with a big grin on her face. 

“Now look who we have here!” She shouts at us. “If it ain’t mah favorite bunch of adventurers.” Her jacket waving fabulously in the wind. 

-Gosh… I still think Taylor  looks really really handsome…-