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After the Sklarians, after the bus, they make a pitstop.
Fifteen zermits, Kara said. All the reprieve she would give both of them. One Earth hour, or one sixteenth of a Holzherr moonrise. Take care of your bodily needs. Grab some food. Scout out where the Brigands might be headed next.
Wash your hands. We can’t have you getting sick on top of everything.
Out of everything, it’s this part that trips up Ruthye.
“May I inquire on the proper usage of a faucet?”
“You’ve never … seen a faucet before?”
“On my planet, running water is a rare thing outside of major cities, and my—my father avoided cities like the plague. My father may have been a swordsmith of great renown, but we were still a poor and reclusive family. We did not have access to piping. We drew water from the well for our daily needs, and barring that we washed our clothes and our bodies in the river down the hill. So yes, I am ignorant of the proper operation of a faucet.”
Kara pauses at that. Kara hesitates in that peculiar way that Ruthye has come to pick up as one of her companion’s quirks—mouth hanging open, eyes fixed and unblinking, tongue hanging as if frozen mid-word. Then she says:
“Here. I’ll show you.”
I come from a big city, Kara mentioned as they were getting off the bus. The planet Kara hails from, this so-called ‘Earth’, seems to have many more big cities than Holzherr. What she is to make of that, Ruthye has been unsure. Back on Holzherr, visitors from the big cities would turn their noses down on her and her family whenever they came to buy swords.
Country bumpkins, they would scoff behind her and her family’s backs.
Rock farmers, they would scoff quietly but just loud enough for Ruthye to hear, as if they did not speak the same tongue and she could not understand what they were saying.
Ruthye would whisper about them with her brother, at dusk after said guests had left, when she and her brother went out to feed the pygs leftovers from dinner. They look like plucked griffins, her brother would say whilst scraping vegetable rinds from his plate, so vain, so preoccupied with cleanliness. I wonder how they would look if we threw them into the mud.
Oh, if only her brother were here. She wonders what he would say about Kara. Brash, unkind, prone to anger. Uncaring about her demeanour. Uncaring about the world. Uncaring about anything at all.
No, Kara is not clean. Anything but.
But Kara insists on washing her hands.
“Come here,” Kara says, cheek shucked between her teeth, and settles Ruthye by the rim of the sink.
Kara rolls up Ruthye's sleeves, once, twice, thrice, up to the elbow, repeat for the left arm. Do you see the knobs there? Good. The one on the right is for cold water—sometimes they’re flipped, do pay attention, and sometimes it’s just one knob, she never really liked those ones. Take the knobs, and adjust them until the temperature is what you want. Make sure not to spray your clothes. Now, hands under the water. Get your hands wet. Look for the soap, but be careful: on some planets, it may not be soap. There was one planet Kara’s been to where people had bodies of rock and used lava instead. But usually it’s just soap.
“Then get all the creases, all the nooks and crannies. Don’t forget to scrub under your nails. Count to suzhav, five-and-ten, then rinse until clean.”
“Suzhav?”
“Fifteen, in my home tongue.” Kara’s voice drops to a whisper. “Fifteen seconds. It’s a rhyme my mother taught me when I was younger.”
“Your mother.”
The merry gush of water. A faint whirring from the piping. The water begins to sluice away at the foam Ruthye has slathered over her hands. Sloshing into the sink and disappearing down the drain.
“She was strict on a lot of things.” Kara smiles a flickering smile, as if the happiness were duelling with some deeper emotion. “She—my parents, used to be strict about a lot of things.”
“Used to be?”
The smile fades entirely.
“I’ve spoken too much,” Kara whispers.
Kara tells her to rinse off the rest of the soap.