Jade had never seen so many people since the Cuddly Grubling, but this was about a hundred times that! People everywhere, doing things, preparing for some kind of festival-
"Ow!" she cries out. Holding her hair to her scalp, she looks back to see her hair getting stepped on and nearly tripping a poor man holding rolls and rolls of posters. She pushes through the crowd, gathering up her hair, and meets Dave doing the same, trying to mount it onto Karkat, Karkat refusing. Jade intercedes before they start fighting, but she's going to keep an eye on them. She knows it's asking for a lot to keep them from either killing each other or worse, but she needs Dave to take her back home and she can't let Karkat take him away. She takes her hair back.
"I told you that we need to cut this," Dave mutters a bit too loudly.
Jade squints. She forgot to tell him why last night, so she softens her expression and decides now is as good as any. "Well, I can't, because then it'll lose its powers." She was always told that even little trims made it ineffective, so mother always brought home expensive oils from the Far East, or so she said, and slathered them in. It worked. She bent her head down to show him the back of her head, fingering the short tufts that always stuck up no matter what she did to them. "People broke in to try to cut it, and they succeeded once, so mother took me away." She looks back up, smiling. "So keep sharp objects away, got it?" She summoned up her big girl voice, and that worked, too. Dave put his shoulders up in defeat.
"What about styling?" he asks, pointing behind her.
She turns and sees three little girls sitting on a stone fountain, playing with each others' hair. They each have long hair and are dressed the same. They also each have a basket of fresh flowers blossoms, everything from daisies to mini roses to buttercups. Jade practically drooled when she saw the variety.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'?"
Karkat neighs in agreement, helping Dave carry her hair and clopping over to the three girls. She thought she saw them give each other dirty looks, but they looked normal when she peered closer. She waves it off. For now.
The way he stares at her. It's like she has some dire secret to protect. The Jade human has grown on him. She is innocent. Much like Roxy when she first met Karkat. He remembers being obnoxious to her because it was easy, and then one day she was obnoxious right back and when he tried to retaliate, she threatened him with a whip. In any case, it doesn't feel right being obnoxious to someone he'll never meet again, so he volunteers his efforts as a steed, however temporary, and tosses some of her hair over his saddle gently with his teeth, and trots over to the three girls by the fountain.
It wasn't until he gets closer when he realizes the girls are wearing uniforms. Silly, yellow things that represented the local Good-Deed Girls troop. Their whole premise was annoying at best. The three girls hear Dave call out to them and their faces light up. The one with two long braids nearly tramples her friends to get to Jade's hair. One wearing paper cat ears trips, but lands on her hands and gets right back up, just to trip again when she gets to Jade. The last one wearing a flower crown and glasses with very long and fluffy hair accidentally bumps into the girl with the braids, spilling loose flowers everywhere.
"Aradia, it's so long!" the girl with cat ears exclaims. Karkat rolls his eyes. Really? He didn't notice.
"Okay girls," braids girl orders, clapping her hands, "let's get ta work!" She then proceeds to rub her hands together ominously. "I hope ya like braids!"
"One braid!" cat-ears suggests.
"We should use the flowers," the other one says.
"Pipe down, you two, I'm thinkin'," the first girls says. "Oh yeah, I'm Meenah, cat-ears girl is Meulin, and flower girl over there is Aradia," she says, pointing to herself and the other two.
"It's nice to meet you!" Jade says cheerfully, smiling. She puts her hair down in front of them and they inspect it. Dave does the same.
"Good, great, now let's do this," Dave says. Finally, someone with some sense of time. Karkat glances around, making sure they're not drawing attention to themselves. He sees some guards two vendor stalls down, so he gives Dave a short nudge and gestures in that direction. Dave gets the idea. "Be right back, Jade. I'm going to get us some snacks."
"Okay!" She completely trusts him with this. Karkat shakes his head, sighing.
They move out of sight from the guards just in time. "So you have gold or what?" Dave asks.
Karkat huffs in return. Roxy had a stash in the saddle, but there's no way he's giving that away.
"Fine, I'll just look around."
Karkat hits him in the gut.
"Ow, fu-hmmm!" He groans, trying to find his voice. "For an odd job, you dumb horse! It'll take a while for them to fix her hair up, so why wait! God, what are your shoes made of, steel?!"
As a matter of fact, they are. Karkat shows off one of them to Dave, giving the human his best sneer. Speaking of shoes, he needs to replace them soon, they're getting uncomfortable.
"I did not need to know that." Dave straightens himself up slowly. "Come on, someone has to have something I can do around here. I also need protection, so could you?" He gestures to another entrance to the festival. "Please?" He actually looks like an honest person under those sunglasses.
Karkat rolls his eyes and starts to lead the way, before he turns away completely, he snickers.
"Are you laughing?"
Karkat snickers again. All this for a girl.
Dave can't believe this. Karkat is mocking him for looking for a job. Well, if he wants a two-bit criminal to redeem himself and look for money the real way, he's going to have to do some odd jobs! Stupid horse. What, did he expect Dave to beg and steal forever? Hah! He usually doesn't let his anger get to him, so time to play it cool.
So far, Karkat seems to be keeping up with his promise. He's hung up decorations, set up tables, and even hammered the sign to the library back in place. For all of the small odd-jobs he found in the past hour, the library was the only one that didn't pay him, but they told him he could come back anytime and get free reading lessons. Dave didn't have the heart to tell them he could already read and write good.
He returns to Jade with nearly a pound of gold in a pouch attached to his belt. Not a bad haul, if he could say so himself. He almost couldn't find her because her hair wasn't everywhere. He searched the area around the fountain with his eyes before going out into the open. Karkat gave the go-ahead and he did manage to find a girl with a very thick braid sitting away from them, her hair adorned with flowers of all kinds. The three mini hairstylists point at him, giving away his position, and she turns.
Dave stops walking. He can't stop his face from turning red, though. Fortunately, she was too busy twirling to notice.
"Didn't they do such a good job?" she asks.
"So many flowers," is all Dave can manage. Karkat hits him again, this time softly enough to just get his attention. The horses waggles his eyebrows and Dave shoves him back.
"Dave, where did you get all that gold?" Jade says, wide-eyed.
"I earned it. Odd jobs and such." He plants his hands on his hips.
Jade puts her hands behind her back. "Dave, are you trying to redeem yourself?" she teases.
"You going to mock me, too?"
"Not at all!" she counters. She's good. "I like people who do good deeds."
dave: try to keep your cool
Dave fails to keep his cool. He grabs her shoulders and leads her in the direction of the library. He pulls out three gold coins and hands them to the girl with the cat ears, Meulin, he believes. "Thanks." He doesn't wait for a reply. Karkat follows closely.
"Dave where are we going?"
"To the library."
"What's a library?"
"It's a place where they lend books."
"What kinds of books?"
"All kinds."
"Like cookbooks?"
"Yep."
"And sewing books?"
"Uh… yeah."
"And plant books?"
These genres all seem familiar. "Jade, how many books do you actually own?"
"Three," she answers shortly. "I used to have a fourth about clouds, but I lost it. How many books do they have at the library?"
"About a thousand times that."
She halts, making Dave bump into her and Karkat nearly into them both. She turns to him, mouth agape and eyes wide again, her massive braid swinging along. "Really?! No way!"
"Yes way," he says, nodding. "They offered me lessons, but I said I'd bring a friend, so..." He turns her around promptly, but she walks ahead on her own.
"Let's go!" She turns left at the adjacent street, almost into a group of drunken guards. Dave pulls her back into the alley, hiding her behind him.
"Turn right," he whispers, not facing her. The guards didn't seem to notice and all stumble away. He turns to see her smiling, like that was the most fun she'd had in years.
"That was a close one!" she says in a hushed tone.
Her naivete makes him chuckle under his breath. "Don't do it again. Look both ways before you cross the street."
Jade just nods affirmatively and enthusiastically. She looks up at the sun and says, "It's noon, so should we eat first?"
Dave's stomach growls in response. "Yeah."
Jade could hardly decide what to eat first. There was the nice pork vendor who gave her a free sample, there was the chicken lady who also gave out samples, and then there were the two kids selling baked potatoes. Dave went with Karkat to a stall that sold apples and festival decorations, but something caught Jade's eye that made her wander.
The mural in the main square is mosaic, and very beautiful. It shows what looks like a story about a flower and a family. The family had a yellow-haired mother and a dark-haired father, and a baby that had dark hair, but the outline consisted of gold-plated pieces. The mother had purple eyes, the father blue, and the baby green. She stares at the baby, squinting and tilting her head to the side. How can someone have black and gold hair?
"Excuse me," a small voice says from behind. Jade snaps out of her trance and sees a little girl, maybe five, put a flower in front of the family in the mural. "It's for the lost princess." Lost princess? She looks back up and notices that both adults in the mosaic have crowns, also gold, but some pieces are also colored. On the baby's head is also a crown, but silver instead of gold, with green pieces in it. She suddenly realizes that the tiara that Dave stole belonged to the royal family.
"Jade!" Dave calls. She draws her mouth to the side, annoyed. She goes back to him and sees that he's holding a plate of the chicken and some apple slices. She crosses her arms. "What?"
"Did you steal the tiara from the castle?" she asks pointedly.
"Uh..." He swallows whatever food was in his mouth. "How did you guess?"
She gestures behind her with her thumb.
"Oh."
"Did you?"
"Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyes."
Jade smacks her forehead, resting her head in her hand, and groans.
"It's a job."
"Who would want a tiara from another kingdom?!"
"Hey, hey, hey!" He shushes her and whispers, "Other kingdoms."
"Dave!"
"Honestly, I'm probably going to just give it back anyway."
She squints her eyes.
"Come on, just eat," he says, rolling his eyes and offering the plate.
She snatches the plate and stuffs her face. "You'f bedder giffit back." She swallows and breaks off a bit of apple and gives it to Bec, who gobbles it up immediately.
"I will!" Dave insists. He reaches into his pocket. "I also got us some souvenirs." He pulls out some light blue flags with the kingdom's goldenrod insignia on them. The insignia is in the shape of a sun, but also looks like a flower, very similar to the giant one in the mosaic mural.
"Thank you, Dave," she says, taking it carefully. Bec gurgles at it, crawling down her arm towards it slowly. "No, Bec, you have other fabric for your bed at home." She carefully folds it and tucks it into her dress.
"Library?" Dave suggests, turned away from her.
"Library." Time to read a thousand books!
The king stares into space. The queen notices. They were preparing all day for tonight, bathing, tailoring, et cetera. The lantern was ready, faces were shaved, hair perfectly sculpted…
"John, we'll find her," she says, tenderly holding his face in her hands. John sighs in return. She pats his cheeks gently.
"Rose, it's been-"
"Eighteen years, I know."
"What if she's-"
"Too far away to see?"
No response.
"She saw. We have to believe that. You've been helping them spread all over the kingdom and beyond." John brings his hands between them and flexes his fingers slightly. "There's no way she wouldn't have seen them."
"You think so, Rose?"
Rose smiles. "I know so." She sighs and brings his face up to meet her eyes. "Come on. Thousands of lanterns are in your hands now."
John takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He offers an arm and she takes it. A coordinator leads them to the balcony that faces town, where their lantern is waiting for them. The cloud-shaped blue tissue paper awaits to be lit and lifted into the air, and carried on the breeze John creates to meet up with the night sky's air currents.
Rose bows her head for a few seconds, feeling something good for the first time in what seemed like forever. Something good is going happen, she knows it. It's not something that she has felt any other year during the festival. She often felt this feeling at the orphanage she used to read at, but since the kids she read to most grew up and left, that good feeling went with them. She had hopes one of them would lead her to her daughter, but the good feeling never panned out.
She opens her eyes, untying the lantern from its mount together with John. They lift it and let it go together. They peer down to see more and more lanterns fill the air above the town and float high above the castle. She looks to John, who nods in return. He cracks his knuckles and generates some momentum before controlling nearly every lantern, sending them out in a spiral formation and let them float on the wind currents only he can see. If their daughter is watching now, she would be impressed.