A Weapon’s Serenade

Hannover was one of the last stops on this trip. It was early in the morning and the girls had made their way to the Tiergarten, a large nature park, a sanctuary for many kinds of wildlife and a chance for anyone to watch the local fauna in peace. Kuria was actively hiding the group from the senses of nearby animals. As leaving the paths was forbidden, it gave them the best chance to catch a glimpse of the many wild animals. This was a change of pace after yesterday’s hectic hours of train travel, a modern art museum and a tour around the city centre. Later today, the girls would leave for their second to last stop, but they had a few hours until then. A few hours they wanted to spend in a quieter place.

The girls had found a bench from which they watched the deer grazing on the other side of the path. With Kuria hiding them, they could talk quietly without disturbing the wildlife.

Anne rested her head on Melody’s shoulder. “What a life.”

“Hm?”

“Watching animals with my girlfriends. Birds singing, deer grazing, there’s a squirrel running around the trees too… This is all I could ever want from life. Peace and quiet.”

“We could come here more often.”

“We should. We should also find a place like this in Hell.”

“Definitely. Maybe we can get a bench we can teleport to wherever we want to enjoy nature.”

Anne smiled. “Maybe one that we can turn into a lounger. Just snuggle and watch animals, you know.”

“That would be perfect.”

“Just like you. Both of you. Love you.”

“I love you too, perfect little Anne.”

“I love you, my Angelheart.”

Anne made a little happy noise.

Watching animals just go about their lives was relaxing, but the girls needed to move on eventually. Not far from Hannover was Hamelin, a small city known for its local legend: the Pied Piper. This was where Anne wanted to go to get Isha her souvenir. It also just so happened to be on the way to the town where Jolene had her food cart.

“How do you even know about this place?”

“Oma used to live here. Well, she technically still does but since Opa died she is travelling around the world half the time, she is pretty much only home for important events.”

“Why only travel now though?”

“Opa fought cancer for a long time. Both of them always wanted to travel and Opa insisted that Oma goes all the places they wanted to go together and take at least one picture there, then put all the photos into an album. He always joked that he would come back as a ghost when she isn’t watching and look at all the photos. In the end, my dad was supposed to inherit the album and have a nice thing to remember my grandparents with. So yea, Oma has been filling that album for a few years now.”

“That is really sweet and I am so sorry about your grandpa.”

“He lived a good life and I know that he is in a good place. And hey, just a few trillion years before this universe fades and we can access the underworld, right?”

Melody shook her head and chuckled. “Just a few trillion years, maybe more, who knows. That’s really not a long time.”

Anne shrugged. “Compared to eternity? It really isn’t.”

“Fair enough. Where are we even heading?”

“The tourist information building, there is a souvenir shop in there. Not far from that is the little shopping district where we can find some nice food and, most importantly, an antiquarian bookshop. Not a big one but my favourite one.”

“Alright, you convinced me. That sounds like a great time.”

“It will be awesome. I always spent so much time there when we visited. These days Oma tends to come to us, so I don’t get to come here.”

“Why did you never ask Kuria about it? You have a girlfriend who can cheat.”

“I know… but it’s just not the same when you cheat.”

“I guess so.”

The souvenir was not quite what Melody nor Kuria had expected. It was a small basket filled with plush rats. The two had waited until Anne led on towards the bookshop to ask.

“Why a basket of rats?”

Anne smiled. “Because they are cute, it’s something unique, something you wouldn’t think about gifting as the one important souvenir, something Isha couldn’t enjoy before, and it’s something with a story.”

“The ratcatcher, of course.”

Kuria raised an eyebrow. “Some sort of local myth?”

Anne nodded. “Pretty much, yea. Legend goes that during the medieval times, the city had a rat problem. They hired a rat catcher, the pied piper, who played his flute to lure the rats into the river Weser, where they would drown. Problem solved. But the mayor claimed to not have the money to pay the piper. When the mayor tried to pay him fifty guilders instead of the one thousand that were agreed upon and even tried to frame him for the rat infestation in the first place, the piper stormed out of town, vowing revenge. On a holy day, when all the adults were in church, the piper returned and played his flute again. This time, he didn’t lure rats away but the children. Some versions of the story tell of the children never returning, some tell of them going to a ‘beautiful land’ and others see the town repay the piper in gold to return the kids.”

“Do we know if any of this really happened?”

“We could ask the demons. All I know is that most versions agree on a year: twelve eighty-four. And that a hundred and thirty children left that day.”

“Fascinating. I agree that this is a fun and meaningful souvenir then. But I suppose there is one issue with the legend.”

“And that would be…?”

“Rats can swim very well.”

Anne looked at Kuria in bewilderment. “Okay?”

“The piper couldn’t have drowned them in the Weser. Not that it matters.”

“You are impossible sometimes. You are right though, it doesn’t matter much. Especially now, centuries later.”

Melody chuckled. “I wanted to save this for when we are back home to show you at the same time as Serena, but Nadine texted me a thing again. Remember the three dudes from the black forest?”

“I do. What about them?”

“Apparently, they ran their mouths. No one believed them, of course. Buuuut a few girls jumped on that idea and posed as witches to break up with their drunk boyfriends on the hiking trails and just generally prank some of their peers. The three witches of the black forest became such a thing in just about a week that one of Nadine’s friends saw a post about them online. We might have started a local myth.”

“You did. I am innocent.” Anne grinned.

“Hey, I got a kiwi out of it. It was delicious.”

“I don’t know if ‘becoming a local myth’ is a fair price for a kiwi.”

“Hm… yea, that seems very low.”

Anne shook her head and laughed. “Does it? You have some weird standards.”

“We all do. We literally just did a half day detour on the way to an eldritch horror selling grilled sausages, just to buy a basket of plush rats for our thirty-metre-long mermaid friend. Everything we do is weird.”

“Fair enough. You got me. Now, an important question: food or books first?”

Melody took a second to ponder the options. “Food. We have a train to catch and as much as it will hurt, we can leave the books in a hurry easier than a restaurant.”

“Alright. How about a pancake restaurant?”

“A what?”

“A pancake restaurant. It’s a bit out of the way and technically past the bookshop from here, but it has delicious pancakes.”

“I think I could go for more savoury things right now.”

“Did you know that there are savoury pancakes?”

“Of course there are… alright, you get your pancake restaurant. With the bookshop is on the way, we will pass it again on the way back, right? So that’s no problem either then.”

“Yea, should all be fine.”

“One more thing.” Melody smirked. “We need a budget limitation for the bookshop.”

“I disagree.”

“We can’t just buy everything we see, my love.”

“I know, but I would like to propose a better limit. We are only allowed to buy what we can carry. Doesn’t matter that we just teleport it home right afterwards, we have to be able to carry it out of the store in one go.”

“Kuria?”

The demon nodded in agreement. “That seems the fairest. Remember the prices of used books at the last second-hand shop we went to a few years ago.”

“Yea, they vary too much, you’re right. Okay, I’m convinced. You get to buy what you can carry. And no cheating by offloading anything to someone else. You must carry what you want to buy… unless we agree on something we all want.”

“Perfect.” Anne sounded satisfied. “Pancakes, books, let’s go.”