Ever since an unfortunate implosion involving her magic, Aurelle had been much more aware of just how dirty everything was. She wouldn't call herself a clean-freak or anything, but there was definitely something a little disconcerting about just how much microbial life was kicking around where you'd least expect it.

Politely, she'd offered to help clean the Roaring Hearth for Bartholomew, and he'd offered her coins if she did a good job. And oh, did Aurelle like incentive. In another life, where food was plentiful, she'd have done it completely for free-- but coins bought food, and Aurelle liked easy food.

She took a bucket and a mop, and something called 'soap,' which to her surprise (for as long as she could sense such, of course) seemed to kill most of the bacterium thriving in the floors. She'd have liked to do the same thing for the tables and chairs, but Bartholomew told her that a little wipe down of the tables with a rag would do while the tavern was busy, and they could be washed properly at a later date.

Fair enough.

Magic flaring through her fingers, Aurelle's ears were twitching as she focused intently on her task at hand, wielding the mop to the floor as she scrubbed at the wood vigorously. It felt quite nice to clean, she found-- it wasn't quite bounty hunting with Lichen, but it's certainly do.

Especially if she got potatoes by the end of it.

It was the delicious smells that brought the piglet to the tavern. Not that she knew exactly what it was, a strange cave embedded within the cave. But, she thought, it was pretty. A different sort of pretty though, one that made her feel warm and comfortable inside. A very nice sort of pretty, not like Rei's gemstone sort of pretty, or the prettiness of Honk's white fur; those were different sorts of pretty. Even if they both elicited the same warm, fuzzy feelings.

With some trouble, she pushed the entrance to the tavern open and was immediately excited about the wave of warm, good smells that hit her. She trotted into the cave with her mouth agape and a quiet gasp of, "woah."

It was the person wetting the floor that gave her pause however, without a shred of fear, she trotted on over. "Why are you making the floor wet? Is it thirsty?" Hog asks, looking up at the strange gembound and her hairy stick that she was petting the floor with.

She hadn't seen anything like that yet, which was strange because she'd seen almost everything by now, obviously.

@Aurelle

Aurelle's ears lifted at the voice and she turned her head, though her gaze didn't meet Hog-- for reasons that are obvious to us, and perhaps less obvious for the piglet. She could sense the rounded shape of something small at her feet for about as long as her magic kept going, though. "Oh! No, no," she said, cheerful. "Floors don't get thirsty. They're not alive." At least, she was fairly certain they weren't.

"It's dirty, so I'm giving it a clean," she told the piglet. "If you eat in dirty places, you might get sick, so I'm helping mister Bartholomew keep everything tidy." She gestured vaguely to the counter where Bartholomew was, missing the actual bear-tender by some few feet.

Setting the mop back into the bucket, Aurelle angled her head back down to Hog. "Are you hungry?"

@Hog

Hog stopped still for a moment, her face furrowing into concentration as she checked, was she hungry? Eventually she deemed it, yes, that she was hungry and nodded; unawares that the mop-haver couldn't see.

"Oh! Do I need to be cleaned too? And who is Mister Bartholomew? He has a nice name. Can I tidy too? How do I clean? Do I need a hairy stick too?" Hog fired off on all cylinders at poor Aurelle who was just doing her job. She clip-clopped on the floors of the tavern as she shifted from one trotter to the other excitedly.

"I think I'm hungry. I think I'm always hungry, but I'm really good at sniffing out roots, but they're all bitter! Do you have something that isn't roots? Are you hungry too? I can get some roots! But, I don't know if I can find enough to feed you, you're very big. How did you get so big? Did you eat all your roots? I think if I keep eating them I'll grow bigger, but I haven't got bigger yet. I'm still little! And all my friends are big! Except for one, he's smaller than me but he's so clever. Are you clever? You seem clever. Your fur is pretty too. Do you eat something to keep it nice?" This pig would not shut up. She wouldn't keep still either, trotting back and forth by Aurelle's feet.

@Aurelle

Aurelle was a little bit of a babbler. She knew that. She couldn't help it: sometimes she just went off a little, wanting someone to understand or oversharing something she'd learned. But she'd never felt out-babbled before.

Maybe she was just unprepared. She was working, after all-- or maybe she was just out of practice. Lichen wasn't much of a talker at the best of times, she was mostly just quiet and let Aurelle yap at her. But, Aurelle was at a real loss for a moment just staring down at Hog (or at least, seeming to stare).

And then, slowly, she began to address every question.

"Yes, you should be taking baths," she began. "You can get really sick if you're dirty all the time-- and baths feel very nice, so it's a good idea to find a little puddle of water or a little waterfall and have a wash. Your skin will feel all nice and soft once you're dry, too."

"Mister Bartholomew is the one behind the counter. I think he had a nice name, too. He runs this place, ahh, it's called the Roaring Hearth. You can buy food here if you have coins-- or work if you don't have any coins, and you can do deliveries or fill out bounties, or clean or serve and the like. You should ask Bartholomew if you can clean first before you do it, though-- it'd be a little impolite if you didn't," Aurelle explained. "He might give you a mop if you have hands, or he might give you a rag or maybe he'll ask you to do something else, like clear rubbish that people leave behind and the like. He'll give you some coins in return for working."

She could hear Hog trotting around and she tried to move her head to track her for the sake of politeness, but even Aurelle knew she was just looking straight down the center of the room, likely at some poor gembound trying to enjoy their meal.

The elf continued, "they have lots of food here. Vegetables tend to be roots-- maybe you'd like a bit of fruit, or a bit of bread? My favourite is the bread, I think. I like eating plain bread and washing it down with a little juice, I think, but everyone has a different favourite food. Ahhh.. there's breakfast food, which is a meal you eat when you just wake up. That's meat, warm, and hot eggs, which are, ahh... like a soft, squishy sort of food. Fruit is for breakfast, too. Lunch is a smaller meal for the midday when you've been up for a little while, and that food is sandwiches which are, ahh... soft, pillowy things with some meat and cheeses and vegetables in them. Dinner is the biggest meal-- the food is roasted, sometimes, or it's in a sort of, ahh, liquid called soup or stew. It's always hot and it feels really nice in your tummy-- but you have to eat dinner before you go to sleep, because after you're done eating it you'll have to take a nap. If you have a lot of coins, you can buy a room for the night here and it has a nice, soft nest in it."

Her jaw hurt. "There's also drinks, ahh-- ales, meads... they're really bitter, though. I like juice, it's sort of sweet. Milk is nice, too, but it makes you sort of sleepy. That's like a... thicker, not-as-sweet juice. You can get a dessert, too, which are pies and cakes and sweet things, but you'll get sick if you eat a lot of sweet things, so you shouldn't have dessert too often."

"I think everyone is a different size," Aurelle continued. "Some people are very small and some are very big. If you're still growing, then maybe you'll be really big one day! I was about, ahh, this height--" she gestured to her knees "--when I first came out of my chrysalis. My friend Lichen was the same size as a rat when she was a baby, and now she's about as big as me. Taller if she goes tall-ways, too."

"I'm not sure if I'm very clever-- I think I'm just old, so I know a lot of things," the elf answered. "But I don't know everything. Ahh-- thank you! It's called hair, and I keep it clean, but I can't really see it, so I'm not sure if it looks nice or not. But I'm glad you think it is."

She was almost panting when she finally finished. Aurelle hadn't talked so much at once in her life. "You have a lot of questions," she said. "Did you just emerge recently?"

@Hog

Hog's mouth moved, as if she was attempting to ask more questions as Aurelle answered them, but thankfully no words actually came from it. She just kept wordlessly mouthing along to Aurelle's explanations to all of her questions, which only sprouted a thousand more in their place, like a never ending hydra of curiosity. What was bread? How did you know when breakfast was? What was soap? Where was the best place to bathe? Did she need someone to rub her down with the mop too? How was Aurelle so tall when she just emerged? Did she need to something special to grow? What was a Lichen? What was a rat?

It never ended.

Thankfully the last question that Aurelle returned was enough to distract her from her own thoughts. "Yeah! I did! And I'm going to become the bestest-knowest person in the whole cave!" She practically shouts in her excitement, her little trotters briefly leaving the floor with the force of her unbridled joy. "I'm doing it with my friend, because we're so little, we're going to know everything instead!"

"I'm going to learn everything! Like what a vegetable is and how to make it and what bread is! And whatever an ale is! I'm going to learn it all-- Oh! Oh! And hair too! I'm going to know it all!" Hog announces, unintentionally to the entire tavern with her loud volume.

"Are you getting coins? Is that why you're brushing the floor?" She asks, trotting over to Aurelle's bucket to stick her nose in it, giving it a little sniff. "This smells like flowers!"

Then she looks back up at Aurelle, "it is nice! I know it is! Your hair-- It looks soft and it's purple! You're all purple and pink! I've not seen someone like that before, but it's pretty, like the tunnel with the mirrors and shinies in!"

@Aurelle

If Aurelle could see, she might have stopped and gently encouraged Hog to keep asking her questions. If she never did, then how else was she going to learn, after all? As it was, though, she had no idea. For all she knew, Hog was quite happily listening along with no questions whatsoever.

For the sake of everyone else in the tavern, that was probably for the best.

"Oh! That sounds nice," Aurelle said. "It's nice to help others, I think. Well, ahh, if there's anything you want to know, I can try to answer for you, if I know." She did not know what a mistake that might be.

She nodded down at Hog's general direction. "Yes, I get some coins so I can eat once I've cleaned up for a little while," she said, then quickly added-- "don't eat the soap, it'll hurt your tummy very badly and make you sick."

An interesting thing, though, was being told what colour she was. She'd had no idea; hell, she could barely even remember what colours were like anymore. But she remembered what pink was like. It'd been the first thing she'd ever seen, after all, and the image of her shattered, pink-violet chrysalis on the cave floor was a very vivid one in her mind. "Thank you," she said. "I like pink, I think. No one's ever told me what I looked like before."

Honestly, it didn't really matter to her, either-- though she supposed it was nice to look nice. "What do you look like?"

@Hog

That seemed to spot Hog on the spot. She hummed and hawwed, really chewing over her thoughts as she peered into the soapy bucket.

"I'm little. I'm only a little hairy, but not the nice hairy like rabbits and rats. It's long and tough-looking hair." She tilted her head this way and that, giving herself a once-over in the reflection of the water. "I have big ears, one is all bendy, but the other stands all upright. And I'm orange with black spots, and I have a big pink nose!"

It wasn't the best description, but she was also a child.

Hog took a moment to trot back towards Aurelle, trying to look up at her and not really succeeding. "Do you want me to say what you look like, too? Or is that something that makes people sad?"

At least the questions had slowed for now. Instead, she sated her own curiosity by looking around herself; perhaps finding a newfound appreciation that she could do that.

@Aurelle

Aurelle listened carefully. She couldn't remember what black and orange was like, but she could remember pink, of course. A little hairy... but not short-haired. Perhaps she meant feathered...? One bent ear and one straight ear... perhaps like a dog. She could dimly remember a dog. She could also tell from Hog's little trotters that she had four legs.

Thus, an image began to develop in Aurelle's mind palace...



... yes, that seemed about right.

"Do you like your colours?" Aurelle asked. "I'm not sure what orange is like-- is it quite nice?"

To Hog's next few questions, Aurelle offered her a little shrug. She personally didn't mind, but... "I think it depends on the person," she answered. "Some might not like how they look, and saying things about their appearance might think there's something wrong with them. Some blind people might not want to know what they look like, but I don't mind, I think."

She hummed. "I like pink. It's my gemstone's colour, isn't it? Do you know what yours is?"

@Hog

There was a pause, then the sound of trotters moving back towards the bucket. No doubt as she wandered over to check her reflection in the soapy water again.

"I think pink is nice. Not many things are pink." Hog said, as if the scarcity of the colour is what made it nice. "I don't know. I haven't met many orange people. They're usually dark colours." Hog mused aloud.

Then she turned her head into the bucket. "Mine is round, like a circle, and it's.." Hog hummed as she tried to figure out how to describe the colour. It wasn't quite yellow or orange, it was something else she didn't have the words for.

"It's yellow but not shiny. It's pretty but, mmm, it looks cloudy. Like someone spilt metal in it." Hog nods to herself, tilting her head to get a better view of her pearl in the reflection. "I think that's right."

Then, she turned back to Aurelle. "Is your gemstone on your cheeks?"

@Aurelle