Mirabelle's Boots - Chapter 16 (Patreon)

‘What are you so afraid of?’

“Hi, I’m Mirabelle,” echoes the voice, blunting itself on the wooden walls of the interior of the tree trunk, the words being swallowed by the many heaps of soft, colorful fabrics.

Mirabelle stands there, leaned over, her palms pressed against the walls as she stares down at the ground, as if it had an answer for her prior thought.

The ground, of course, does not answer. It would be very strange if it had.

So instead, Mirabelle lifts her gaze, turning her head to look at the polished scrap of metal on her wall that she uses as a mirror to look at herself. Her mind is perfectly quiet, having found a way to just fall into silence sometime during the night, but the vision in the looking glass betrays a pair of shaking legs and a shuddering body — all moving in full contradiction to her head’s deafening quietness.

She’s not hungry, she’s not tired; obviously, she’s calm, and yet her body ignores that observation and shakes by itself.

“Hi… I’m… I’m…”

Mirabelle snaps herself out of it as best she can, standing up straight and simply shaking herself out like a wet animal before jumping up to the hole in the tree and looking at the human city just beyond her house.

It is daytime once more, and the world is abuzz. The park is full of life and energy, with hundreds of people moving through or around it as they go about their days, making talk of all manner of things.

“This way! This way!” calls an excited child, pulling on her laughing father’s hand as she drags him through the park to go to the ducks.

“— I’m telling you,” says a woman, walking together with a group of three others, all of them wearing the same outfits as they head to work. “That man is no good for you, Charti,” she reprimands, the others falling into a gaggle as if they were excited geese squabbling about some bread crumb.

“Nu uh!” calls another voice, some boy at the entrance to the park, who seems to be playing games with his sister that he intends on winning, so much so that he is fully and loudly denying the reality of her having already won them.

“Hi, I’m Mirabelle,” says someone’s voice somewhere in the mix, never breaking through to the others.

The cruel fairy hangs there, hiding behind the foliage as she watches the world go by.

What is she supposed to do now?

Her entire plan, her entire strategy, hinged on becoming good enough at her craft so that she could provide value so that she could earn a piece of life — like everyone here seems to have done. However, the shoe-maker is gone. He’s left for the sleeping place before she ever even got to meet him, and now she’s stuck.

She isn’t ready to work at the level he was working at. She can’t provide those sorts of products, and so in turn, receive those smiles that he got. Her work isn’t good enough. She’s not good enough.

*Quack* quacks a duck in the water, receiving bread for merely this from the small girl from before. Mirabelle curses it for its radiant beauty, the likes of which someone like her is unable to compete with. Ugly things like her have to work and struggle for their food.

The fairy lowers herself back down, retreating into the darkness.

What is she so afraid of?

The fairy looks back behind herself, staring at the two dresses she has, neither of which are stowed away neatly. The burlap sack and the yellow dress are both just sort of thrown into a heap on the floor.

Mirabelle walks past them, looking at the mirror and at herself, staring at the face that looks back her way.

She leans in, her hands touching it, squishing it, feeling the bones and the muscle beneath the soft skin as she tries to rearrange her features to look more like somebody who isn’t her.

Obviously, this doesn’t work.

After a time, she finishes and stands there before the same exact person who was there a moment ago.

— She doesn’t look any happier. She doesn’t feel any happier. What the hell is his problem?

Mirabelle, of course, has now wandered in her thoughts and is thinking of Grace and his ridiculous hair.

The fairy lifts her hands, running them through her hair, mimicking the movements she always sees him make ten or eleven times a day. But her hair doesn’t work like his hair does, having a different texture, weight, and oil to it and it falls into a disheveled mess immediately rather than always looking put together like his hair does no matter how often he touches it.

She tilts her head to the side, running her fingers through it that way and then the other way to just try and figure something out, and she isn’t even sure what it is that she’s doing, in all honesty. Until eventually, she somehow finds all of it in her hands at once and holds it behind her head where it’s just… out of the way.

It isn’t in her face or over her ears; it isn’t straying with a strand this way and that way, it’s just out of her way.

Mirabelle blinks, tilting her head to look at it, before looking around and grabbing a small piece of old fabric from the dress cut-out that she ties it together with, creating a nice bundle on the back of her head.

 It looks nice, doesn’t it?

She blinks, unsure.

But some horrible realization comes to her as she looks at her reflection, the ugly, wretched, twisted thing that it is. Mirabelle feels a churning in her gut as she looks past the monstrosity that she is towards the smile on her face.

She squishes her cheeks again, trying to shape it away, but it remains.

“I’ve been cursed…” mutters the fairy silently to herself, remembering the man’s words on the night they met, as filthy and disgusting as they were.

‘If you can smile, then you’ll be okay’.

Mirabelle sighs, lowering her head, deciding that she doesn’t actually have a choice now. The fairy grabs her yellow dress, puts it on, and looks at herself in the mirror again, somehow still smiling as she flies into the air.

“Hi, I’m Mirabelle,” she mutters to her reflection, who returns the greeting with a small curtsy and an unearned smirk that has no place being there.

_____________________________________

A full life.

Mirabelle floats down into the shoemaker’s workshop through the chimney, looking around the room for a time, listening for any steps inside the house. However, there are none. The home is only full of silence, packed from one wall to the next with the mementos of a full life that had been lived by a man who has gone to another place. Outside of the home is another story, however. The news of this having been a place she was regularly at, as read on the notes all over the city, seems to have garnered a lot of interest, and there is a crowd outside on the road — all of them looking for a fairy. Several city guards are outside the door, if only for the sake of ordinance, to keep people from breaking in due to their wild curiosity.

They, of course, have nobody stationed up on the chimney.

The fairy flies slowly into the room, looking at the empty chairs, remembering the bad things she had felt here not only a few nights ago. The shoemaker has been removed and taken to some other location.

— She didn’t have the courage to introduce herself to anyone. Mirabelle flew out of her tree, buzzed over the park, and, desperate to get anywhere at all in her panic, flew to the only other place she knew was safe.

Her wings buzz quietly through the air as she flies to the portrait of the man’s wife, looking up at it for a time to study it. She hopes that he’s with her now. Her eyes wander the wall until they eventually land on the board of orders, which will never get fulfilled now. The shoemaker is gone, and she’s not good enough to make anything of the quality these people would have expected for what they paid him.

She rubs her arm, looking back at the portrait.

She owes the shoemaker a debt, though. As a fairy, she’s obligated to pay all of her debts, lest the mother moon frown on her further.

The beastly fairy looks up towards the portrait, before nodding her head at the image of the long, sleeping woman. “I’m Mirabelle,” says the fairy, finally introducing herself to the shoemaker’s wife. “…I’ll do my best to pay you both back,” she explains, grabbing the fringes of her yellow dress, ripping an order off of the wall, and flying into the workshop in the back.

She’s going to finish all of their orders. She’s going to practice boot-making for so long until she’s good enough to finish the man’s obligations. There are enough tools and materials here for now that she can still use. Somehow, she’s going to manage.

On the workbench is her homework from last night, the boot she has been working on this entire time. It’s marked out and covered meticulously in red thread and notes with drawings on them.

It looks like she made a lot of mistakes around the sole, in particular.

Mirabelle examines the problem. Her threading is too loose, apparently, so the sole separates too easily. This is a problem, however. As a fairy, she has very small and weak arms, so it's very difficult for her to pull threads as tightly as a grown human would do with ease, even if she puts all of her strength into it.

She looks at the note, trying to decipher what it is telling her to do. There’s a bottle; it looks just like… ah!

Mirabelle turns her head, seeing the bottle of glue.

Of course! If she can’t thread the soles, she can glue them. From her studies, she’s read that glued soles are inferior, as they can’t be replaced well and they degrade strongly with time and weather. But for normal, non-luxurious shoes and boots, glued soles are actually very common, as they save money and time.

She smiles, flying up to the bottle.

She’ll just take the threads out and then glue the sole on instead!

This solves everything!

____________________________

This has made everything worse.

Mirabelle looks down at herself. She’s covered in globs of sticky glue, shaking off her arms, streaks of it running over her nice dress and hardening, making it rigid like a suit of armor.

Wobbling over the table, the stiff fairy looks at her work, at the mended and reconstructed, human-sized boot. The sole is now perfectly attached.

- (Normal)[Leather Boot]{Size: (Large)} -

A normal, large sized leather boot. There is nothing remarkable about it in any fashion, positive or negative.

- Components -

• (Normal)[{Glued} Leather Sole]
• (Normal)[Leather Midsole]
• (Normal)[Leather Insole]
• (Normal)[Fabric Strap]

+2 DEF

Weight: 1.2kg

Durability: 30/30

Value: 50 Obols

“…Huh…?” asks Mirabelle, her eyes widening.

‘Normal’?

She reads the menu again, looking at the quality status of the item, which is marked as a ‘normal’ item.

— Wings buzz behind her.

It isn’t ‘low’ quality. It isn’t ‘poor’ quality. It isn’t bad or stupid or wrong or dumb or ugly, it’s just… just…

“…Normal…” mutters the cruel fairy quietly.

Shoemaking Level: 03

NEW - [Fundamental Shoemaking Recipes]{Passive}

• You gain the ability to magically craft specific types of low-level boot components, using standard ingredients such as leathers and fabrics.

Normal.

She wants that.

She wants more of that. She wants everything that life has to offer in relation to the word ‘normal’.

And so, Mirabelle the cruel fairy, cursed by the heavenly stars that shine above the world in the eternal sea of darkness, sets to work for hours in the pursuit of this very goal as she makes a matching boot for the first.

____________________________

It is late at night.

Mirabelle, on her way back home, looks down at the man who is laying on the bench in the park. “So this is just what life is going to be now, huh?” asks Mirabelle. Grace, having been resting peacefully in the night, opens an eye, looking up at her as she flies over him. “You’re just going to bug me every night forever?” Mirabelle lowers herself down, sitting on the back rest of the bench as best she can given that she’s all gummed up from the dried glue. Her body crackles as she moves.

“I like your hair,” says Grace. “Did you uh… did you get into a mess?”

“I was working,” explains Mirabelle, touching her hair inadvertantly, but getting stuck because of the glue in it. She fumbles with her hand, trying to pull it free.

Grace nods, pointing a finger at her. He pulls in a leg and crosses the other one over it, pointing up at her with a finger. “Righteous. I’m happy for you,” explains the man. “Mirabelle.”

She looks around the area and then down at him, her curiosity getting to her. “Hey… Grace,” she says, receiving his attention, perhaps because she finally said his name. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’ll even let you ask me two things,” replies Grace, winking at her and making some odd clicking noise at the same time. She rolls her eyes. It’s not something a fairy would usually do. But it’s something she has seen the women of this city do to him a thousand times over, so it seems appropriate. “Why are you out here?” she asks.

He shrugs. “It’s just where I sleep, Marbles,” replies Grace, smiling as he looks up at the night sky. “Where else would I be?”

“Marbles…? Oh,” replies Mirabelle. “I guess we’re the same, then,” she says, looking up at the sky. “I kind of landed here too.”

He nods. “Yes and no,” replies Grace. “I’m usually not as sticky as you are outside of Fridays,” he replies.

Mirabelle looks his way. “Wait. What happens on Fridays?” asks the fairy, looking down at the man laying there on the bench.

“You know… never mind,” remarks Grace, waving her off.

“…Huh…” says Mirabelle, deciding to leave it. “Okay, and two… I…” Mirabelle the cruel fairy shrugs, still pulling on her hairs, which are still in a bundle, but now because of the glue that ties them to her shoulder. “Why are you nice to me?” she asks, her words carrying off into the dark park. He’s a human.

He’s one of them.

But just like everyone else in this city, he is, at the same time, not one of them. He is from a clan and brood born generations and generations later than those who had once harmed her and her family in that old life.

The man’s leg, crossed over his other, moves lightly to the bobbing of his boot as he taps his foot against the air. Mirabelle looks at it, finding herself studying its make and mark inadvertently, simply out of secondary nature, as the man seems to be thinking about something, or maybe not. It’s hard to say. His softly smiling expression that stares past her to the sky up above them never changes as he lays there with his hands behind his head.

“Life’s hard sometimes, isn’t it?” asks Grace finally, and he answers her question with one of his own. “When that’s a question that you have to ask,” he states, closing his eyes and shaking his head. He folds his hands over his stomach, one elbow hanging off the bench and the other squished against the backrest. Grace yawns, not bothering to cover his mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you, Mirabelle?” he manages to fight out.

“Stop saying my name!” snaps the fairy sharply, crossing her arms, her wings buzzing. “…It’s weird now that you told me it was some kind of trick,” she mumbles, looking off to the side.

“It’s not a trick,” replies Grace. “It’s a curse.” Mirabelle blinks, her eyes opening wide. A curse?! Her gaze shoots back towards him. Is he some kind of witch? Some kind of sorcerer? Her wings begin to buzz.

— However, the sleepy expression on his face betrays no such malevolence. “It’s true,” starts Grace. “When you say someone’s name, they like you more,” explains the man. “Mirabelle.” She lets out a sharp exhalation at this latest annoyance. “But it’s also the opposite.”

The wind moves through the park, shaking the leaves above their heads and the strands of hair on her head, which aren’t stuck in place. “…Huh?”

“— It also makes us like that person more too,” says Grace. “So when I talk to anyone, I always make sure to say their name often.”

It’s quiet for a while.

“That’s dumb,” argues Mirabelle, trying to rise to her feet as the man rolls over, turning his back to her to go to sleep. “If that really works and everyone likes you, then why are you sleeping outside on a bench?” she asks, perhaps somewhat coldly. She only catches her own words after she’s said them. In human culture, this is an impolite thing to ask someone.

“Oh, not everyone likes me,” says Grace, lifting his left hand into the air and pointing to the sky. Mirabelle follows his finger, assuming he’s pointing at something, but he isn’t. He’s just holding his arm upright for some reason. “I’m very unlikable, it turns out.”

“I’m sorry,” starts Mirabelle. “I didn’t want to -”

“— But that’s why I do it. To help even things out a little.” His arm flops down over him, and he lays there. Mirabelle watches him for a while, wondering if there is more to come, but there isn’t. The man is either asleep or at least pretending to be asleep, so she decides that it’s time to leave him alone either way.

Humans are… strange.

Mirabelle looks down at herself. She needs to wash the glue off too still before she goes to bed herself.

The cruel fairy rises into the air to leave the unlikable human to the night. She spares a glance to the jacket he’s laying on, seeing a wooden comb nestled firmly in its pocket, and then towards his boots which are certainly well-walked, and then flies back toward her tree.