Chapter 127: Birdy

FieryKathy

We leave the store about an hour later, some more gold lighter but definitely not to write home about. My birdy friend is happily flying around my head while Sam still keeps a little bit of a distance from it. 

“Uh… are you happy with what you bought, Hilda?” Sam asks after dodging the bird while scooching over to the other side of me.  

“Happy? Ecstatic would describe my feelings a lot better. One of those clocks will look splendid in my room.” 

“Ah, you are going to put it in your room?” I ask. 

“Where else?” Hilda smiles at me. “We already have clocks in the lounges. There’s a reason why I asked for a silent running clock.” 

“So you are going for a steampunk vibe in your room then?” Sam continues. 

“Hmmm… I wouldn’t say that necessarily but I guess that would fit as well.” Hilda scratches her chin. “But I just want to make it comfy and a nice place to read up if I want to be by myself, or if y’all want to skip a play session and I’m left alone.” 

“So you want to play the game… to laze around?” 

“Yeah.” Hilda chuckles. “Why not right? If we are in-game we have a lot more time to laze around in. So if I’m feeling down from work I can take an extended lazy stay here. No obligations to do anything.” 

“I hadn’t really thought about that.” I scratch my cheek.

“Well, we’ve not had much time to laze around yet. It’s been almost constant traveling and adventuring. I’m not counting the days of recuperation of course.” 

“I guess what we could do…” Sam dodges my birdy friend once again. “W-what we could do is travel to some kind of remote tropical beach with Ami, so Ami has the spot in her mind. And then when we want to go on a holiday, just let her teleport us there. If my very beautiful girlfriend agrees.” 

I giggle. 

“That’s genuinely a brilliant idea, Sam.” Hilda gives her a nod. “We could even build us some get-away resort. I mean… I already know the basics of woodworking.”  

“That’d be great!” I add to the conversation as well. “But before we continue dreaming, shouldn’t we go buy some furniture for the house we already have?” 

“Good point, Ami, good point.” Hilda laughs just as the birdy flies past her as well. “By the way, if I might ask, what are you going to name your new pet?” 

“Hmmmm…. Birdy?” 

“That’s… a unique name.” Hilda chuckles once again. 

“I think it’s a cute name though.” I pout. 

“I’m not going to argue with that.” Sam says. “Although everything my girlfriend names is cute so I am not the most unbiased person here.” 

“Birdy it is then.” Hilda gives me a head pat. “Let’s hope your stay in our party will be long and prosperous for the mechanical-bird kind.” 

Birdy chirps when it notices Hilda is talking to it and it lands on her head for a moment before lifting back up again and flying back over to me. 

We spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the merchant district to buy all kinds of furniture, from beds to closets and bookcases. From what I can tell Hilda is going for a collection of all kinds of different styles for her room, just anything she finds aesthetically pleasing. While Sam and I try to stay around approximately the same style which kinda means just a particular kind of wood Sam and I both found appealing. We’d set our delivery date for in about a week as we’d have to go back to our world after this evening.  

“Are both of you happy with your purchases?” 

I look at Sam and she gives me a nod after which I give a nod to Hilda as well. “Yep. Happy as can be.” 

“Good, ready to go back home then?” The sun is getting pretty low already but we still have quite some time left before sunset. 

“Yep, let’s go.” Suddenly Sam picks me off my feet and starts to princess cary me. 

“Waaaaaah! Saaaam! What are you doing!?” 

“Hmm, just felt like carrying my cherished treasure back home.” She gives me a confident smile and winks. 

I blush. “O-okay then.” 

Hilda just laughs at our little act of cute wholesomeness while Birdy just keeps flying around me. It even manages to land on Sam’s head a couple of times since she’d gotten used to be around it. 

Once we get back to the mansion the three of us decide to go to the kitchen to get a couple of snacks. Hilda cuts up some potatoes in very thin slices to make some home-made potato chips with the spices we’d acquired earlier today. 

“‘Kay, girls, don’t blame me if this turns out like garbage, it’s the first time I do this.” 

“I think it’ll turn out just fine!” I look at Hilda while she prepares the spices. 

“Hmmm. Do I smell frying oil?” My sister’s voice comes from the room next-door. “Ah, I was right.” She walks in with a big smile on her face. “Nikki and I got some meat if you’d all want to eat some vol-au-vent today.” 

“Sounds good.” Hilda smiles. “How did the furniture hunting go?” 

In the meantime Nikki also joins us in the kitchen and puts some more potatoes on the counter, presumably to make them into fries. “It went… okay…” 

“That doesn’t sound very convincing?” Sam asks. 

“Well, one of us, who will not be named, was being really difficult about certain furniture items.” Nikki replies, clearly rolling her eyes at my sister. “But luckily in the end we managed to reach a consensus.” 

“What piece of furniture were you not agreeing upon?” Hilda takes her eyes off the oil for a second to look at the other two lovebirds.

“A flower pot.” Élise quickly replies, clearly not interested in starting up the discussion again. 

“A flower pot…?” 

“The color of the flowers that were drawn on the flower pot to be exact.” Nikki states. 

“Hmmm…” 

“It was a stupid discussion, let’s just go on with our lives and enjoy some good food instead.” Lise tries to blow away the discussion and luckily for her Nikki decides to do the same. “That being said… What's up with the bird?” 

“It’s Birdy, Ami’s new mechanical pet.” 

“Wow, really? Mechanical? That’s pretty radical.”

Hilda snorts. “Radical? Now that’s a word that belongs in the history books.” 

“I needed something that rhymed, okay?” My sister starts laughing as well. And with that, the comedic tune for the evening was set. 

The chips Hilda ends up making are actually pretty good. They don’t compare at all to what you would buy in a supermarket or in a nightstore but I also wouldn’t say the comparison is bad. They are just so different. 

With our snack done and safely stored in our bellies, my sister and Nikki start working on the fries and the vol-au-vent. Sam, Hilda and I keep ourselves occupied by first making a fresh salad and dressing the table, and after that’s done, chilling in the dining room to wait for the food. 

“What are you going to do tomorrow at work, Hilda?” Sam asks to kill the time a little. 

“Good question.” Hilda leans back in her chair and looks up at the ceiling. “If I recall correctly we were going to test this game where you get a little village and you can grow it and stuff like that.” 

“Uhm, that sounds like a lot of games, doesn’t it?” 

“Oh yeah, definitely, a unique game idea it definitely isn’t, but it kinda does depend on the execution whether it’ll be good or not.” 

“I guess it does.” Sam mimics Hilda and leans back in her chair too, staring at the ceiling as well. “But if you are going to test a game called ‘cuddle Ami simulator’, hire me as a temp, okay,” 

“I’ll definitely propose it to my boss.” Hilda chuckles. 

In the meantime I’m poutin’. “Why would you want a game when you can have the real thing right now?” 

“But what if I need to go and play an international basketball game, Ami? How am I supposed to survive without my cuddles?” 

“I’ll just go along with you! We can cuddle all the time!” 

“But what about your own job?” 

“I’ll just become a traveling goddess slash mangaka who follows my amazing girlfriend around on world trips.” 

“That does actually sound pretty good.” Sam looks back down and smiles at me. 

“So you are going to go for sports completely, Sam?” Hilda then asks in return. 

“Nah, not really.” Sam turns her attention back to Hilda. “I obviously want to continue playing basketball but for my main thing I’d probably want to do kinesiotherapy.” 

“Oh, I have a friend who does that, she earns a lot of money, definitely enough for several overseas holidays per year.” 

“So I can still see my gorgeous girlfriend in a bikini by some tropical pool. Gotcha.” 

“That makes two of us.” I stick out my tongue at my girlfriend while Hilda just starts chuckling. 

FieryKathy