[Maruem]

Maruem stretched his tired limbs for the last time as he rose in the bed of the inn he had stayed in the past few days. Just yesterday, he had held a meeting that had turned his world upside down at the tavern known as Caeser's Flaggon.

The night before he had sat in the rustic wooden building eating dinner after starting the first of his work on his new home, just inspecting the building and seeing where the wood was damaged and in need of repairs, and now he sat wondered aloud why they had misspelled 'Flagon' but upon asking received a laugh and and a wink from the bar maid, and a simple reply of "It just adds to the charm, don't you think?"

The long curls of her soft auburn hair glided around her thick curls of ram like horns, and her dress billowed in a wide and entrancing ring around her as she twirled away dancing to the music of a small group of bards playing for coin in the most well lit corner of the bar. They had with them a variety of instruments and judging by the Alp Horn one was playing, albeit masterfully and surprisingly quietly, they probably were not natives of Gaia, at least not all of them.

Maruem thought about what the bar maiden had said before sauntering off with the music and the rest of his dinner. Perhaps the misspelling did add some charm to the warm tavern. At the very least he could find no practical reason to say he disagreed, and he was scarcely a grammar hound so such a minor typo was not a bother at all.

"Oi there, you sir." A gruff voice came from behind. Maruem turned to find himself facing a shorter portly gentleman of around 65 years. He had wiry patches of translucent beard on his face and a mouth with fewer than half its teeth still present. Before Maruem could open his mouth to speak his drink was forced out of his grip and replaced with a thick hand of short calloused fingers, the brass mug clattering against the floor as it spilled the few drops left in its belly.

"Name's Boris, 'is a pleasure." The man somehow growled the words at Maruem sociably.

"Greetings Bori-"

"Enough pleasantries buddy, let’s get to it. You know something, Boris wants to know that something." Boris interrupted and got straight to the point he wished to bring up.

"And what would that-" Interrupted again, Maruem smiled and leaned his chin on his right palm, listening to the man named Boris and taking no offense to his brashness.

"Well ya see, it's jus' that Boris here done heard a rumor that a certain noble Baronling was in town earlier, and a certain respectable looking one of them there folks..." He indicated to the gentleman with the alphorn. "...Ya'know, one of you's eccentric immortal types, well... ya done met with him. Nice ol' Boris just wants to know if uh, if anything important was discussed. Boris has heard rumors of course, but few people know what's really gone down and Boris aims to be among the first."

"Well Mr. Boris..." Maruem paused momentarily in case he was interrupted again, but surprisingly no interruption came. "It was a simple meeting really. The Baronling you described was the Right Honorable something-or-other Baron of Tivoli and he came here in search of us immortals, though he expected us to look much more imposing and grand than many of us really a-" Maruem was caught off guard by the sound of loud snoring as the man before him stared back, his eyes entirely unfocused and disinterested in the conversation.

"Mr. Boris?"

The Man snapped back to life at the sound of his name and looked around confused.
"Huh, wassit, whos 'er! Oh... oh, It's jus' you interrupting Boris' nap, not very kind ya know. Boris gets bored easy with details so sometimes he drifts off."

"Well Boris, It was nothing too major. The Baron offered to help me find work and I offered to help him find workers. I bought a guildhall on the north-east side of town to fulfill that bargain. A simple deal. Tit for Tat as they say."

"Ti..." Boris blushed. "Hey, that's right vulgar right there! Boris likes them there kinds of jokes. You’ll fit in here perfectly! Tell ya what. The less scared of you they are, the better it’ll be in the long run, so Boris is gonna punch you in the jaw, walk away before the royal guard comes, and then tell his friends that the more put together immortal is a joke, even though yur really not." He said with a face contortion that was probably Boris's best attempt at a wink.

"Wait. Boris is gonna w-"

WHAM!

Maruem did not feel the impact of the sturdy fist colliding with his face, Instead, he shook his head to try to regain his composure only to find his jaw grind painfully and unnaturally. Even with the pain reduction this body and this world were blessing him with, it hurt, a lot. Maruem rubbed his hand cleaner with a slightly worn linen napkin he'd been given with his meal and put his thumbs in his mouth.

It was at that moment that the door slammed open as a Royal guard drifted in, it's feet a few centimeters off the ground and its legs unmoving as it came closer, drifting right on up to his table and looking down at him. Its poleax was lowered at its side, but drawn none the less. Maruem rolled his eyes at the position he'd been put in and locked eyes with the mystery being before him as he pressed his thumbs against his bottom two molars and forced his jaw down without flinching. It slid back into place with minimal pain. "Good" he thought. "No fracture".

He wiped his thumbs on the same cloth before looking up at the being again. "I appreciate you coming so quickly, but I am fine friend, thank you for dropping in. You truly make this city a better place." He wiped the last of the spit from his right thumb and placed the napkin at his side. As he stood the being turned its body, following him. "Don't worry, I'll find my way home alright on my own. You just take care of yourself." He smiled at the taciturn giant and made his way out of the tavern.

"That was... weird to say the least. I can’t say that I agree with your methods but it’s true that there’s a lot of uncertainty about us ‘immortals’ in the public eye. I suppose I need to thank you Boris, if for nothing else than for making an interesting day all the more interesting." He thought aloud as he had made his way back to his room.

Word Count: 1152 (claimed at 1138)
Notes: Boris = 29547c

[Maruem]

It was weird to be reflecting on it all now. Thinking about the punch made him instinctually rub his jaw as he sat on the side of the bed. Suddenly his eyes widened as he realized what today was. It was not as early as he had been waking up for the past few days, probably around 7:30 am at the moment, but it was early enough. He rushed down the stairs only to rush back up them to put on his pants and grab his lance, not a good idea to leave either of those behind. He came up to the front counter and paid for the last night of using the room along with a tip for the service team taking care of his belongings and keeping the old place looking so nice, before he headed out into the greater city of Romalia. It was time to visit his new guild hall, his new home!

Fortunately it did not take too long to reach the hall from his inn. The moving men were already there bringing in the old reclaimed furnishing of the guild hall. Maruem rushed through the north-eastern gate of the city and was greeted by a fat guard in the gateway to whom he politely introduced himself as the new owner of the hall, much to the shock of the fat guard. The guard had small ears and a scrunched up face, like all his facial features have been squeezed a little too close around his nose. His bushy mustache quivered as he spoke and his crew cut hair seemed to be kept in good care along with his clean shaven jawline. Maruem could not stay to chat for long though he may have wanted to, but he had a job to do and he had better do it right the first time, after all, he did not have much in the way of expendable income to cover for mistakes. He excused himself from the guards company as the Romalian defender tried to process how a stranger from a far off world managed to buy a big house like that in a week.

Maruem made his way over to the foreman he had hired the previous evening and thanked him for the quick work on the house. He could not afford to have the workers install all of the furniture and other fixtures that had been put in storage when the building was abandoned, but at the very least, a lot of sturdy old furniture could be returned to its old home. It seemed though, that the foreman was grateful for the work regardless fo what capacity it was in. He had offered to have his men renovate the space, but Maruem had the carpentry skills to do much of it himself and he needed to save as much as he could for other expenses. Even still, it was good to know that the workers of Romalia were no slackers, and that the housing market was slow enough that they were open to any job opportunities. Understanding the state of the city would help guide his decisions going forward.

As the last of the linen sheet covered furniture was carried through the front doors of the building, Maruem slipped past a few of the workers and into his home. He walked through the foyer and the common room and began by climbing upstairs to the second floor and into the waterwheel maintenance shed where he strained for some time, but managed to unlock the mechanism and, after a few moments, began to see the shafts creak into life and start turning rather smoothly for how long they had been disused. The waterwheel back in action and providing atmospheric noises, he stepped out of the small room and made his way back downstairs and then out back into the courtyard. From there, he walked out to the backyard where he was able to find the carpentry workshop. He had work ahead of him and plenty of it. Fortunately, he had used some of his hard earned gold to buy lumber recently, and he had the resources he needed to get to work on this house to make sure it was in tip top shape for when members eventually did join.

Maruem grabbed some boards and tools from the carpentry workshop and walked over to the library. Some of the shelves were either damaged or knocked over, and Maruem took his time touching things up, first lifting the heavy aged oaken shelves back up off of the floor, and then getting to replacing what was damaged. He began by lifting the broken shelves out of the bookshelf body and inspecting the damage, there were some minor superficial scrapes here and there but nothing that could not be covered up by rubbing some walnut into the wood and even if it was still somewhat visible, the books that would eventually fill it would surely help to cover the remaining damage.

First things first, getting a new shelf in there. The carpentry workshop had been one of the few things left completely untouched in the house. The rest had clearly had some squatters come through at various points over the years, with graffiti on the wainscoting and some damage throughout the house. Someone even carved a hole into a wall of one of the bathrooms, though why they would do it in there was anyone's guess. All Maruem knew is that it did not feel particularly glorious to have to deal with all this damage, but still, there was hope, and the damage meant that the home had been much more affordable.

Maruem grabbed a replacement shelf from the stack of boards he had with him and placed it into the bookshelf body with ease. It fit like a custom ordered glove, not that he had much experience with such finery. The next shelf down did not break fully but was somehow lodged tightly in place in the bookshelf. Maruem reached behind him and pulled out a saw to begin cutting through the wood where it had splintered. Slowly the humming grind of the saw's teeth burrowed their way through the wood until it moved a bit more freely. He did not cut it all the way to the back for fear of scratching the main body of the shelf, but it was enough to free the board up a little more. Perhaps Maruem could have just stomped it to dislodge the board, but that would only serve to endanger the rest of the shelf, even if it had saved some time.

Besides the very rational reasoning to have gone with the safe approach, Maruem just liked the small of the wood shavings, they reminded him of his years as a lumberjack, and it was a somewhat nostalgic smell even if the work had been tough and exhausting. He could easily recall the days where a sweat drenched Mroczysław would come home to shower and find that the water coming off of him was saturated with shavings and wood dust. Maruem smiled at the memory as he tugged one board upwards and the other downward. The board tried to hold its ground for a short while but eventually conceded that it had lost, and without so much as a groan, it splintered apart as Maruem's forearms bulged. The wood came apart at the cut and Maruem pulled two halves of shelf out of the body once again.

Another shelf began to go in, but it seems not to be able to fit as well as it should have, and Maruem slowly sawed a thin sliver off one of the sides, rubbed it down with a few ascending grits of coarse to fine sanding paper, and slid his finished work into its new home. It fit surprisingly well for a measureless cut, but Maruem had always had good luck with guess work like that. He went through the rest of the library like that, One shelf at a time, occasionally lifting a fallen shelf or some other furniture he'd missed on the first rough go. He would go back to the carpentry workshop to get more replacement beards every now and again as he began to run out, as well as taking the broken boards back with him when he went to avoid cluttering up his workspace.

Surprisingly, most of the floor was unscathed, but there was a section of flooring that he was rather unhappy with. It was a beautiful hardwood floor that really brought the whole of the library together, but there was a problem area. One of the bookshelves that had fallen had unfortunately done so at an angle, its corner slamming hard into the floor and making a great big dent across several boards. He had the boards to replace it, but it was a shame the damage had happened to begin with. Remarkably, when he propped the bookshelf up, Maruem found that it was almost entirely unscathed from the fall, and he was able to get right to work on fixing the flooring.

He began by identifying every board that needed to come out and be replaced. Taking a small nub of chalk which he’d found in the workshop, he crossed an 'X' onto all the damaged boards and when he was done, he had a roughly rectangular area of 7 or 8 boards with prominent damage. The actual removal would be a lot less subtle or precise than his previous work, though it still required some care so as to avoid damaging the relatively pristine boards neighboring the damaged ones.

He began the actual removal by taking a hatchet and lightly striking the boards at their joints with adjacent damaged boards. He had to be cautious of specifically using light force. Anything too rough would damage the old but robust adhesive of the surrounding undamaged boards. However, he still needed to be firm enough to actually make room for the process to work. It was a difficult balance strike, but by the end of it he felt that it seemed to have gone without collateral damage. When the seams where more or less doubled in size, he identified the middle most of the damaged boards and stuck it upon the middle, first parallel to the length of the board, and then perpendicular. This allowed him to crack the board up into rough quarters, though the rougher tool meant it splintered and cracked in a few places, so that by the time he finished, he ended up with more than just four nice pieces from the board.

He brushed the loosest of the splinters out of the way and then grabbed one of the bigger chisels available to him, placing it between two of the chopped segments of board. He pried up and repeated over and over, removing the bits of board one after the next. Some were indeed still tightly glued on while with others the glue had failed either from the initial fall of the bookshelf or the axe assault. Either way, he was glad he had kept the chopping away from the very edge. with the help of a cylindrical wooden mallet, he clubbed the chisel under the parts that were more strongly glued on until they came free.

Once the central board was splintered and beaten out of its hole, the rest were much easier to remove. Being able to pry the chisel under the board in its entirety made the process surprisingly smooth, and one snap after another, the boards came out of their place in the floor. The ones at the edge posed a bit more of a challenge as they risked disturbing the unscathed boards, but it proved to be a lot easier to take them out than expected. With some gentler but more persistent persuasion from the mallet and chisel, they came out just like the others.

After taking a moment to try and scrape some of the old adhesive from the foundation underneath, he left the project for a short while to grab a broom and some form of dust pan to aid in cleaning out the dust, splinters, old adhesive, and any other debris in the large hole he’d chopped into his floor. There were spare boards for the flooring in the carpentry shed, which was a blessing. It was always easier to replace flooring with boards from the same batch, and at least aesthetically, the replacement boards matched perfectly. Some were too long for the board void they were replacing, but some quick sawing and a brush of sanding helped them fit snugly. with just the lightest dab of stain he touched up any edges that had been sanded and would be visible from above, especially the slightly beveled edges at the seams.

There were rumors back home that the ancient romans had developed what some jokingly called "Caeser's Super Glue" back in ancient times, which remained intact over 2000 years later. Maruem knew not of such a glue, but the only thing that vaguely resembled glue on his property was a pot with a brush cemented inside, impossible to remove from the stone of glue in its bowels. Prompted by the lack of proper equipment, he took a short break and found a neighbor on the inside of the wall willing to part with their own glue for a bit of coin. With roman glue acquired Maruem returned and applied a healthy dollop after dry fitting the boards one final time to ensure they all fit perfectly. There was scarcely room between the boards for an atom to leak, much less glue.

Satisfied with the dry fitting and with the glue now in the hole, Maruem grabbed a scrap bit of wood to paint the stone flooring with glue, applying an eave coat that was never too thick so as to make sure the boards were all able to lie level. Like a puzzle he wove the boards together and made sure to tab the edges together tightly with the mallet, and some leather in between it and the boards so as not to damage them. He worked from the outer perimeter in until he placed the last board into the first hole he had carved out, replacing that void closest to the center. Satisfied with his work, He swept the area clean once more and looked forward to the next part of the house that needed a hammer, chisel, or glue.

Word Count: 2419
Total Word Count: 2419 + 1138 = 3557

[Maruem]

Before moving on to the next part of the house, Maruem needed to leave the library in a better state than he had found it. He grabbed any loose tools he had placed around the large room and stowed them away in a large, worn, leather tool belt he had resting on the ear of a nice dark wood chair. The floor was pretty clean on the micro scale, the floor swept and the detail work done up decently, but on the larger scale it was still something of a mess.

He started by adjusting all the shelves he had lifted up and repaired. They may be in a much better state than they were, but that did not mean they just magically fell back into their proper place just by him lifting them. HE took his time moving them carefully against the wall and into rows to make for a homely and more neatly organized library, albeit very devoid of books. Slowly but surely it was beginning to take shape.

Next, he rolled up the massive rugs and moved them one by one to the second floor, and then up a shorter set of stairs up to the roof top balcony area. One after another, he draped them over the railing of the rooftop, and after a few minutes searching some smaller closets in the house, he found a carpet beater with a classical interwoven pattern. He returned to the dirty rugs with said carpet beater and a clean rag tied over his face as a mask.

He beat them mercilessly, the cloud of dust and debris making a nasty cloud over the courtyard, before slowly drifting off in the wind over the Aniene river and off beyond the forest on the other side. The sun was beaming down and there was scarcely a cloud in sight as Maruem beat the rugs to a much lighter and cleaner state. He took a break after a long while as a moment to lean back, wipe the grimy sweat from his brow, and, once the dust had properly been blown away a bit more, take a deep breath, before diving back into the work to make sure every rug was in a pristine state. If he was going to lug all of these up here, he was going to do it properly the first time.

With the rugs beaten and collectively probably at least ten kilograms lighter, he took them back down and laid them out one by one neatly in their former places, or at least loosely so. With a few he decided to switch their positions, but for the most part he had liked the way they were, and just needed to straighter their seating on the newly organized and cleaned floor. With the rugs on the ground he took a step back and admired his work. He stowed the carpet beater in a small side cabinet in the corner of the library, and returned the extraneous supplies to the carpentry shed before returning, tying the belt around his waist, and moving on to the next part of the house. That hole in the bathroom was not going to patch itself.

Upon closer inspection, he found that the hole was bigger than he had previously thought, and that made patching it all the more difficult. He tried with the scraps of wood he had on his person, but all of them were far from perfect for the role. What was a man to do with a hole in the wall of his bathroom when it was too big for his wood? He looked at it from the other side, and it sat a bit below eye level when he sat on the closed toilet seat, which was honestly pretty convenient. He put a finger in the hole and felt around the rim. It was not a rough hole as he'd previously suspected, but had been smoothed and the edges rounded, and that meant anything he tried to put in would not catch on the rim much. This was a problem. He would have to widen the hole and rough it up for any plug he had to fit and stay in for any meaningful length of time.

He sat on the shut toilet and thought for a moment, thinking about what the best bet for a plug would even be. As he considered answers his eyes danced over the wood in the bathroom. It was well kept, the boards were smooth and light in color and it was easy on the eyes without an overbearing sense of "I'm living in a rustic cabin". The knots were sparring enough that Maruem began to get distracted and wonder if they had carefully selected wood with few knots for their walls or if they were just lucky. And them it hit him. Knots. The answer was right there. He looked back at the hole and sure enough, it had originated from a knot as well, the wood grain warping around the hole proved as much. He knew how to fill the hole without it being obvious and with a material that should fit a round hole well without needing much to shape it.

He measured the diameter of the hole roughly and made his way to the carpentry workshop. There were many logs to choose from in there, though most were too thick for his purposes. Eventually he settled for one which he felt would probably fit at some point, and pulled it out of the saw dust and out into the sun. Once it was in direct daylight for the first time in decades, he smacked it a few times with his palm to knock the remaining sawdust from its surface and avoid tracking a mess into his home. Dropping the log to the ground, he went back in to find a rough file, digging around for a bit before he found one with a slight curve in its surface which would help with evenly removing the bevel from the rim.

He slipped the file into his belt and went out to hoist the log up onto his shoulder. He lugged it up to the bathroom and lowered it carefully to the ground to avoid scratching the floors at all. Next he knelt down and got to work filing the rounded edge fo the hole down to a more flat profile that would provide more contact with the log once it was inserted, guaranteeing a more stable and seamless fit. He slipped the file back into his belt and pushed the log into the hole slowly, the log making its way through the hole and into the bathroom on the other side until finally, it reached a wide enough point and caught on the rim and moved no further without some forceful persuasion.

After marking down roughly where it fit on the outside of the log, he stepped into the bathroom and with the nub of chalk from before and marked the point where he needed to cut to avoid having a random branch blocking the loo. Returning to the outside, he pulled the log out and sawed off the tip, as well as the back portion, a few centimeters off from where he had marked his line, giving himself some leeway for when he hammered it into place. He wiped the excess chalk from the wall where it had touched when he marked the log and then generously lathered the inside of the rim of the hole with romalian glue, as well and taking some on his fingertip and rubbing it around the outer rim of the log puck which would serve as his wall plug.

Palming the log bit, he smacked it into the hole and, pulling the mallet from his belt, he beat it in until it would go no further and a tiny lip of glue had been pressed around the perimeter of the plug. The plug was not yet lying lever with the board, it jutted out a bit on both sides, but with some careful filing and sanding, and the patience to bring his vision into reality, Maruem polished off both sides of the plug and all that was left was a large knot that fit almost perfectly with the grain of the board it filled.

Word Count: 1391
Total Work Count: 1391 + 3557 = 4948

[Maruem]

Maruem brushing his hands against each other, the course saw dust from his filing swept off and falling to the ground, where he noticed that a pile of saw dust had collected at the base of the wainscoting. His finger tips were dark from the dust that had stuck to the remnant of glue, and aside from that he was covered in a thin film of dust and wood shavings, glued on by friction, sweat, and in some places actual glue. All that was to say quite plainly that Maruem was, in that moment, a mess.

As he walked out the doorway, he felt an itch on the underside of his nose and rubbed his right pointer finger under his schnoz to alleviate the itch. A bit of dust from his finger tickled his nostrils and he gave a loud sneeze, a cloud of dust bursting off of his clothes and hair along with the sudden force of exhalation. Yep. it was most definitely time for a bath, but one quick thing took priority. He went through the house and one by one, opened up almost all of the windows, the currents of cool air and sunlight breathing through the house and offering a freshness to the stagnant air that had settled in for long years. It additionally aided in driving the dust out slowly, and within a short while the house was like a new place.

Now, it was time for that bath. He found one of the boxes that had been dropped off downstairs, and careful not to dirty the rest of the contents, he pulled out an old but clean towel, not nearly as fluffy as the ones he was used to, but clearly very absorbent and quite pleasant to the touch. He shot the box quietly and made his way through one of the back doors into the courtyard, from where he walked on and turned a corner to the left with the Aniene in view. The banks of the river were grassy all the way down to the water line, and there were trees all around of varying heights, so plenty of places to hang his clothes, though it was also a bit too shady to properly dry them in any reasonable time span.

First things first, Maruem hanged up his towel on a branch, the gentle fabric softly swaying in the breeze. He then took off his shirt, pants, boots, and socks, and knelt at the bank of the river. One by one, he rubbed the articles of clothing down in the water, save for his boots. The grime and dust visibly drifted off of them in the crystal clear water. The clothes cleaned up quite nicely in the cool water, and before long, he'd made his way though almost all of the articles of clothing he owned. He hanged them up on a separate branch to drip dry while he prepared to bathe.

Or not so much prepared as dove right in, for as soon as he had finished hanging the last bit of clothing, he walked over to a higher point of the bank where the water beneath seemed deep enough, and swan dove right in, his finger tips barely grazing the silt and muck at the bottom as he curved his body to prevent hitting the bottom. The water was wonderful, so crisp and cool against his sun warmed skin. He treaded water with his legs as he stretched his shoulders and then rubbed a hand through his mess of hair, sliding it all back. Years of swimming had made water feel almost like home to him, and he did not hesitate to remind himself what it felt like to swim fast and strong through the water. His strokes were powerful and efficient, each one pushing him a respectable distance forward.

A group of merchants passed overhead on the bridge and one of them shouted what Maruem assumed was a greeting. He backstroked back into view and waved at them as they passed by, though their expressions did not seem the friendliest. "Oh well" he thought to himself with a smile, "Not everyone have be so free spirited I suppose. Can't let grumpy old dudes get in the way of a gorgeous day." And so he swam peacefully for the better part of an hour. The water was calm and deep, soothingly washing over his tan skin as he went back and forth down the river.

The waterwheel spun happily at the side of the house, and while it sounded quite nice, after a while he began to notice that it was not a perfect sound. At least one of the fins of the waterwheel was off in some way. He swam closer and watched the wheel complete two revolutions, carefully studying the fins. It did not take long to see the issue. One of the fins was covered in water life, thick algae of some kind, and another close by it was crooked, not cracked or anything, just out of it's socket on one side. Mareum grabbed a branch and climbed up out of the river, dripping all over the grass.

He picked up a stick from the ground and grabbed the while as it began to rise up, hitching a ride alongside the algae. As he ascended he held on wit hone are, and with the other he scraped the gunk from the fin's surface, the loosened greenery splashing into the river below. At the top, he stepped of of the wheel and onto a hidden platform behind the greenhouse. He tried to push the loose fin back into it's socket as it passed, but it was to rigid, not cooperating with such gentle persuasion. He ran out of time as it passed by and had to wait patiently for it to return as the wheel slowly revolved a second time. Eventually it came back up, and Maruem Dove for it before it reached the peak. With both hands, he gripped it's edge as he plummeted off the platform, and his weight was such that the board easily slammed back into place, locking in tight. The wheel groaned with displeasure from the sudden force impeding it's rotation, but soon recovered to full speed and lifted him back up toward the top. Near the peak, Maruem stood up on the fins, and as soon as he hit the apex of the wheel, he dove down into the river again, gracefully returning to his swimming down below.

He swam leisurely for a long time, but at a certain point he knew he could not stay in the water forever, and so he found a shallow area where he could stand and scrubbed his skin down with his hands and a handful of sand as an easy to wash off abrasive. He started with his head and, without any sand, washed through his hair with his fingers dancing over his scalp, massaging his skin and removing the deeper dusk that had not been washed away with all the swimming. He moved on to his arms and with a handful of sand got to rubbing up and down both arms, then his chest and stomach, and as much of his back as he could reach. Washing the sand away shortly after he finished abasing a region. He moved on to his legs and performed the same process, a few loose leg hairs leaving along with the same when he washed away the sand. He did not have soap in hand, but he would not have wanted to pollute the river with it anyway, and after touching up any areas he missed and making sure as much of the sand was off as possible, he felt clean enough as was.

He climbed out and, careful that there were no passerby's on the road, he removed his water logged loincloth and wrung it of water, tightly twisting to fabric until his muscles bulged and his skin glistened, stretched by the steel flexing beneath it. His soaked hair stuck to his back and he raised it up in his fist and squeezed water out of it as one would do with a sponge, though he was careful not to damage his long locks of hair in the process. He slid his hands down his arms, then chest, then back, and then his legs, pushing the water from his slightly reddened skin, aiding the towel by removing water so it had less work to do in drying him. He took the towel from its branch and starting with his hair, began to dry himself off from head to toe.

Sufficiently dry, he wrapped the towel tightly around his waist and took his clothes from the branches from which they hung, and draped them all over his forearm. He made his way up the small slope of hill to his courtyard and through the library he climbed up to the roof top. All the dust had long since blown away, and he draped his clothes and the towel over the railing to dry in the wind and direct sunlight. All his clothing danced in the wind save for his loincloth, which he grabbed and began returning to it's proper place.

He started by tying the strings at the end of the two triangular sections in front of his waist, and then pulled the hanging tail of the fabric forward between his legs, and up through the knit he had tied, draping it over the front of the tied portion. His loincloth tied and ready for action, he stepped away from his clothes and made his way down stairs to grab a broom, this house was a mess, and while the library had been swept, the rest needed much more work, all of the cleaning to be started with the saw dust he had left in and outside of the bathroom.

Word Count: 1652
Total Word Count: 1652 + 4948 = 6600