Lucia, Apolline, and Petra are three of the protagonists of The Alchemist of Middlesbrooke. Celeste is an Alchemist of Middlesbrooke, but is not the Alchemist of Middlesbrooke.
Incidentally:
Elisa is the little girl Lucia, Apolline, and Petra have become the go-to babysitters of.
I’m not entirely decided on how old Elisa is supposed to be, beyond “toddler” and “can talk, but not well.”
Celeste looks up as the bell above the door to the Alchemy shop rings. Lucia, Apolline, and Petra enter the shop. Apolline is carrying Elise, the little girl the three have been babysitting lately.
“Ugh,” Lucia says, sitting Elisa down on the counter in front of Celeste.
“Alest!” Elisa says happily.
“Hello, Elisa,” Celeste says. “How are you today?”
“Good!” the little girl says.
She frowns and points to Lucia.
“Not good,” she declares.
“Ugh,” says Lucia.
“Heeing oceans?” Elisa asks Celeste. “Peese?”
“Lucia needs some healing potions?” Celeste says.
“Yeah,” Elisa says.
“Well, that or a nice, stiff drink,” Lucia mutters.
Celeste reaches for the shelves behind the counter and brings down some healing potions for Lucia.
“You’re in pretty rough shape,” Celeste notes. “What happened?”
“Stupid idiots is what happened,” the Wilderling woman mutters, reaching for one of the potions.
“Merse hairies,” Elisa explains.
“You fought mercenaries?”
“Yeah,” the girl says with a nod. “Merse hairiess!”
“We had a slight misunderstanding with some mercenaries,” Apolline explains. “As it turns out, there’s am outstanding bounty for a lioness Wilderling bandit. We were out for a walk, crossed paths with a group of mercenaries. And, well, they were quite convinced that Lucia was their woman.”
“I’m a lynx!” Lucia says indignantly. “Not a lion. We look nothing alike!”
“Inx!” Elisa repeats happily.
“Oh my,” Celeste says. “How did you manage to get out of that?”
“Ucia beed a inx!”
“Lucia was in her lynx form?”
“Yeah,” Lucia says, reaching for another healing potion. “I figured if they didn’t know what a lynx looks like, I might as well give them a lesson they wouldn’t forget. And, well, they’ll at least know what a lynx’s claws look like…”
Elisa points towards Petra.
“An’ Peta squished merse hairies. Peta strong.”
“I see. Yes, Petra is very strong, isn’t she? I bet she could have beaten the mercenaries all by herself.”
“An’ then, An’ then,” Elisa continues eagerly.
“And then what happened?” Celeste asks.
“Splosin!” Elisa continues happily.
“And then Apolline used Explosion Magic?”
“Yeah!” Elisa says. “Pollie did Splosin agic!”
“That must have been very scary,” Celeste notes.
Elisa shakes her head.
“Merse hairies,” the girl says, raising one hand. Then she raises the other. “Splosin.”
She mightily claps her little hands together.
“Boom!”
She stares gravely up at Celeste.
“Big Splosion. So cool!”
Elisa turns to Apolline.
“Pollie!” she says. “Teach me Splosin agic?”
“Maybe when you’re older, Elisa,” the Aurorean Sorceress says.
“Her mom is going to kill us,” Lucia mutters.
“Alest!” Elisa says, turning back to Celeste and tugging on her sleeve.
“Yes, Elise?” Celeste says.
“Snack, peese?” the girl asks.
“Are you hungry, Elise? Would you like a snack?”
Elise nods. “Yeah! Snack, peese!”
“Well,” Celeste says. “I did just bake some cookies. Would you like a cookie, Elise?”
“Raisings?” Elise asks cautiously.
“No. Not raisins,” Celeste assures the girl. “They’re chocolate chip.”
“Chocit chip!” Elise repeats happily. “Cookies, peese?”
Lucia sheepishly inches towards the counter.
“Me too, please?” she asks.
Now, cats apparently aren’t supposed to eat chocolate. On the one hand, I’m not sure if there’s enough physiological difference between domestic cats and lynxes for that matter. On the other hand, Lucia isn’t a cat, she’s a Wilderling, so it’s not like she’s bound by the limitations of real cats…
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