After having a fill of night sky gazing and filling our bellies, the time to actually work out the logistics of Aurora staying with me came. The first thing on the agenda was, of course, a bath. "I know it's not a very nice thing to say, Aurora, but you kinda stink. That's a problem."
She looked at me, then at herself and then back at me. "Right, time for a bath." She tilted her head in confusion. "Oh, right, you don't know what that is, do you? No worries, just follow me." I stood up and started walking towards the bathing room. Aurora followed after.
We entered a room decked out with marble. There was a rudimentary toilet, a wash basin and a bath. This inn had a sewage system which was pretty rare in this world, but no plumbing, meaning that in order to take a bath, you had to call upon a servant to manually carry the hot water, bucket by bucket, to your room and fill the bath for you.
At this point, it was already far past midnight. While I am far from a considerate guest that values the time and effort of the staff - someone that would just wait for the next day for hot water, I still decided to let the poor humans sleep, reasoning that either way it would be quicker to fill it up myself.
I approached the bath, Aurora followed, interested. I extended my hands above the bath and conjured a 'Water slicer', trying to make it as weak as possible. Let's hope this works, If I fuck up and destroy the damn thing, the settlement will be huge. The attack landed in the tub with a loud bang. Fortunately, apart from soaking everything in the vicinity, the damage was minimal.
Aurora stared in amazement at this 'grand feat'. The water level wasn't high enough, so I repeated the procedure a few more times. After the water level was sufficient, I created a few, scaled down, 'Fireballs' and released them into the bath until the temperature was comfortable.
"This is a bath, it's a place for you to wash off all the dirt and grime accumulated through the day. You want to try?" She nodded. "Good! I'll leave you to it. I'll be…" Before I was able to finish or leave the room, Aurora took off her clothes. Her body was covered with scars and burn marks. It was evident that the scars were left by different tools over long years, by their shapes and sizes. Some seemed old, while some wounds were still healing.
My attention soon drifted to the brand on the back of her left shoulder. It looked like a crest of a noble household. Aurora turned to me as if to question what was wrong, exposing even more scars. I came back to my senses. "While I do appreciate the view, you shouldn't get naked in front of a random man so casually. He might get the wrong idea…" She looked confused. "Never mind, just get into the bath…" I turned to leave, but was quickly stopped, turned around to see her clasping my hand as if afraid of being alone. "... Fine, I'll stay." This put a smile on her face. "Just… Get in already…"
She approached the bath with curiosity and fright, touched the water with a finger and immediately withdrew it. Then again, and again, a few more times. Her face lit up and she looked at me. "Go on, get in." She placed one of her legs inside, then the next and just stood in the bath like some flamingo, looking at me. "You are making this far more difficult than it has to be. Just sit down in the water." She obeyed and slowly lowered herself in.
Her face immediately lit up. "Well, how is it? Not too hot or cold?" She shook her head. "Good to know." Aurora relaxed. It looked like years of stress were being washed away. I introduced some soap into the beast man soup that I was brewing, making a mountain of bubbles. All that's left is some salt and pepper.
Aurora seemed to really enjoy the bath. After a while, she began examining her wrinkly fingers with great curiosity and showing them to me, as if asking for the reason why.
"It's normal, When you soak in water, your nervous system sends a message to your blood vessels to shrink. Your body responds by sending blood away from the area, and the loss of blood volume makes your vessels thinner. The skin folds in over them, and this causes wrinkles."
She looked totally confused. "Don't worry about it, I myself understand barely half of these words. A friend of mine was a total chatterbox, filling my head with useless info. In fact he is the reason that I knew about 'Aurora' - the goddess of the dawn."
"Oh? You want to meet him? Sorry, that's not possible at the moment. Yes, you could say that he's far away, right now he's in a place that even I with all of my power are unable to travel to." She lowered her head in sadness. "Huh… Don't worry, eventually you will meet him, but it won't happen for a long, long time. I'm sure of it because everyone will go to the place he is in eventually. No one is exempt from this journey, not you and not me either."
She looked at me with questioning eyes. "Of course I wish to meet him, but before that, I still have to do one thing that I promised him to do. In fact I'm kinda doing his job that the bastard pushed on to me. That is the reason that I'm in this city in the first place. What can I say, I'm a sucker."
"Yes, you're technically right, he's the reason that the two of us met, so when you finally meet him, you can thank him for it. His name? It's Alex, Alex Jones. Yes, I totally agree, he has the name of a total idiot."
"Well, it's getting late, time for you to get out of the bath." She looked at me with pleading eyes, asking to stay for a bit longer. "No. Get out." She kept looking at me like a lost puppy. "... If you get out now, I'll let you take a bath tomorrow as well." This seemed to do the trick, she shot up like a missile. I threw her a new towel. "Towel yourself off, I'm not helping." I turned around.
After a while, I asked. "You done?" After receiving confirmation, I activated my dimensional ring and produced a set of simple women's clothing and handed them to her. "It's nothing special, but it should fit you. Yes, you can wear it, it's for you. Besides, it's not like I can wear them myself."
"Why do I have them? Well, they belonged to someone very near and dear to me and I just couldn't find it in me to throw them out. Now hurry up and get dressed." After a while, I turned to see how she was doing and seeing someone in Diana's clothing shook something in me, Bringing bad memories that I was holding back By poisoning myself with the 'Three step death' back to the surface.
The love, the sorrow, the rage, the longing, the guilt, it all flooded back to me like a tsunami. I staggered a bit before regaining my composure. Aurora looked at me with worry etched all over her face. "It's fine, you did nothing wrong, in fact it has nothing to do with you to begin with." I retrieved a small glass bottle with a skull on it from the dimensional ring, lifted my mask slightly and downed everything inside. This much should do the trick.
Immediately the poison took effect. My head became light, my body - heavy, my mind hazy. Oh, the sweet relief of poison, you came once again to save this poor soul from suffering. I staggered, clutching at the wall for support. Aurora immediately rushed to me to give me support. "I'm fine, don't worry. Just… get me to bed…" She obliged, supporting my weight and leading me to rest.
She laid me on the bed and immediately slumped on to the ground next to me. I could see the great effort it took her, she was panting from exhaustion. I couldn't even imagine the amount of strength it took her frail, malnourished body to carry my deceptively heavy form this distance. "You're a good kid, don't end up like the others…" Were my last words before sleep took me into its domain.
I awoke the next morning with a splitting headache. Although, calling it morning would be generous. It was already past two pm. I turned to see Aurora with her lower body still on the floor and her upper body on mine as if protecting me from something. Her steady breathing informed me that she was sleeping. I patted her head.
One of her ears moved, then she lifted her head, still in a daze. She saw me and immediately perked up, jumped on me and gave me a big hug. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. Were you looking out for me for the whole night? You really are a good kid…" I sat up. "Are you hungry? Let's go for breakfast."
We went to the first floor of the inn, to the eating area and were greeted by one of the innkeepers. "Welcome sir!" She looked at Aurora and added. "Slaves can get their rations at the building in the back, should I get someone to lead her there?" Aurora looked warry, clutching my coat and hiding behind me.
"No need, this one is a free woman, she's gonna eat with me at the table. Is there a problem?"
The innkeeper looked uncomfortable, then said with a professional smile. "Having a beast person at the table might make the other customers unhappy, so, even if she's free it would still be better for her to…" Her thought trailed off when she saw the gold coins dropping to the ground from my dimensional ring.
"Is there a problem?"
"N-no, sir! Certainly not!"
"Good. A table for two."
"Y-yes!"
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