I wiped a bead of sweat away after I finished drawing another bucket of water from the stone well.
It took at least three to four buckets of water to fill the washbasin in the mansion’s scullery. Ordinarily, the Telleste household employed a watermaid whose job was to tend to all such wet affairs, but yesterday she had taken the day off to visit her family back in town. Due to this disruption to the regular team roster, many of the water stocks in the mansion had not been replenished overnight.
In theory, there ought to have been plenty of maids and servants who should have been capable of filling the role. Multiple new hires had been assigned yesterday to cover the regular watermaid’s absence, but the gaps in their coverage clearly attested to major coordination issues. Although the number of occupants in this mansion had nearly tripled in the past month, the workload for the senior staff didn’t feel any lighter at all. After all, the number of mouths to feed, manage, and clothe had only increased.
Small frustrations like these only began to scratch the surface of Leana’s ill mood.
I picked up a bucket in each hand, testing the weight in my palms. Satisfied, I turned away from the little stone well tucked behind the garden. I barely took a single step before suddenly out of nowhere I found myself nose-to-nose with a young woman carrying a large ceramic jar in her arms. She had just turned the corner around the bamboo grove, and we nearly collided due to the extra momentum from the containers we were carrying.
I abruptly pivoted on my left foot and awkwardly twisted my upper body to swerve out of her way.
Thankfully, we missed each other by a hair.
However, it was too early for relief, because the girl’s foot landed on a slippery wet spot on smooth paved stone. It suddenly slid forward in the absence of traction, and she went careening backwards with her eyes bulging with pure surprise. Without thinking, I immediately dropped the two wooden buckets I was carrying and lunged to catch her plummeting shoulders.
I was too far out of position to break her fall entirely. By the time I reached her, I was only able to shield her upper body and head from slamming backwards onto the ground. Her buttocks landed rudely onto the paved stone with the brunt of the force, eliciting a vocal “ow” from the young woman.
Somehow, in the process of this all, the oversized ceramic jug never slipped even an inch from her tight embrace. It rested happily on her lap without a single scratch or chip to its glossy surface.
That was some serious dedication — albeit that was hardly a compliment, since someone easily could have gotten hurt here.
“Are you okay?” I asked while kneeling down.
“Ouch! I didn’t see you coming! I-I’m so sorry! This was totally my fault! I didn’t think anyone else would be here this morning, so I wasn’t paying attention! ...Oh! I made you drop your your things! I’m sorry, I’ll fetch the water for you again right away! I didn’t mean to cause any trouble!”
“Mari, are you hurt anywhere?” I repeated, trying to interrupt the stream of incessant apologies. The maid looked frazzled, and her eyes were glued to the ground in such an daze that I wasn’t sure if she had even gotten a good look at who she was talking to.
“I’m f-fine! I’m really really sorry! I shouldn’t have—”
She stopped mid-sentence when she spotted the curl of my pointed tail. Her gaze slowly traveled up my silhouette.
“—Oh Kiel, it’s just you. I thought you were one of the new maids.”
I shook my head as the girl's tension deflated a notch and familiarity flashed through her eyes.
“Never mind that. More importantly, you almost hit your head. I guess you wanted to save the pot, but your safety isn’t worth risking for minor things like this. I'm sure Susy and the others would agree with me too.”
The young woman looked a little disheveled and conflicted. “Umu… well sure... I guess… and, uh, you wouldn’t by any chance write me up for causing a disruption, right?”
“What do you mean?" I responded, befuddled. "Why would I do that?”
“Ack, forget I said anything. These past few weeks must be getting to my head. The new maids are a little trigger-happy about ratting on every tiny thing they see. And I really don’t want to cause any drama on our last day.”
I gave a wry smile as I stood up, my grey tail flicking slightly with concern.
“Nobody here is trying to find fault with you. Come on, let’s get you up from the ground.”
I extended a hand to help pull her to her feet as my thoughts stewed silently inside me.
+ + +
This young woman’s name was Marielle Parsee.
Age nineteen. Female. Human. A village girl born and raised in the town of Edelhemn.
Incidentally speaking, she was the watermaid for the Telleste mansion, which meant that she drew water from the well to ensure nobody ever ran out. She also tended after the water boiler, washed the laundry, cleaned dishes, and emptied the chamber pots in the mansion. Many of these responsibilities she split with other members of the regular house staff, but this was the general broad scope of her duties.
In terms of seniority, she had been hired three years ago. By these means, she was technically senior staff and appropriately very skilled at her job. However, Mari always seemed to underestimate her value in the Telleste household, and she had a tendency to sell herself short. For instance, despite her nominal seniority, somehow she still managed to get elbowed around and tread over by the newcomers. Part of this was probably related to her quirky self-effacing honesty, ghost-like inconspicuousness, and general obliviousness of the petty social game that even the gossiping maids played to gain allies and “friends.” She always seemed oddly content and unreasonably cheery to work in isolation, almost to a sociopathic degree, which frankly made her a vulnerable target in the social dynamics of the larger pack.
She was simultaneously a frighteningly reliable yet slightly worrisome member of the Telleste household.
Overall — after all these years — I would say that I’ve gotten to know her fairly well.
Although newcomers often had a tendency to discount her due to her lack of presence, she was actually one of the main reasons why the mansion's operations were so seamless. In fact, her inconspicuousness was precisely an indicator of how good she was. People hardly remembered that she existed; chamber pots emptied themselves magically and the sink tap might as well be a pipe connected to the lake with an unlimited stream of hot water.
We felt her ephemeral existence more tangibly in her absence. For instance, Mari had only taken a single day off yesterday to visit her family, yet the water situation was already pushing its limits this morning. Water was the lifeblood of any mansion, and many things simply couldn’t run on schedule if it didn’t arrive on time. The cook couldn’t cook, the gardener couldn’t garden, and the laundry maid couldn’t launder. Fetching water was a great deal more complicated than the physical action itself, as the timing of ensuring that the right quantities were delivered before each member of the staff required it was a critical skill. A watermaid who was too inefficient or too slow only dragged everyone else in the mansion down with them.
As you might imagine, all the veteran staff rightfully prepared for their tails to go bottom up whenever they heard Mariella Parsee was going to take a vacation.
Incidentally speaking, I was curious why Mari was even here this morning. She was one of the few old timers who agreed to move to the capital as part of Susy’s entourage, so like all the others who were departing today, she was technically off-duty this morning. Mariella and her beastkin, Iseria, had gone to town yesterday to visit their family.
I ended up broaching the topic as I cranked up another bucket of water from the well.
“Oh, I just felt uneasy.” She confessed with slight embarrassment.
“Uneasy?”
“Well, last night I couldn’t stop thinking about the chamberpot inside the closet on the fourth floor. Nobody lives on the fourth floor, but Master Caron likes to wander those hallways, especially when he’s in a sour mood. Occasionally, he’ll use the bathroom there, so it’s important to remember to check the chamberpot there in case he does. I remember forgetting about it all the time when I was new, so I wanted to be sure the new chambermaids didn't make the same mistake as me.”
“So you left your parent’s cottage early?”
Mariella nodded with a shrug. “We left town around half an hour before dawn. I still got to say goodbye to Ma, Pa, and the sibs, so it’s not like I really missed anything by leaving early.”
”Did you end up needing to change the chamberpot on the fourth floor?”
The black-haired girl’s cheeks flushed with a slight reddish tinge. “No, it was empty and unused.”
“Oh, so you were worried for nothing? You came quite a long way to check on a toilet.” I joked lightly.
“Jeez, you don’t understand! Lately, there’s been a lot on my mind! All of this thing-stuff happening!” Mari waved her arms wildly without the slightest bit of eloquence. “Someone like me — I’m this country bumpkin village girl who cleans smelly toilet bowls filled with pee and poopshit — I’m going to the Royal Capital. Like, the Royal Capital with the Crystal Palace! And somehow Susy — no wait should I be saying Lady Susella now? — Lady Susella wants me to be one of her handmaidens!”
“I hear you.” I raised an eyebrow at the signature quirky language that was leaking through her excitement.
Her attitude suddenly spun a one-eighty degree turn. “There’s no way this is a good idea,” she laughed self-deprecatingly.
There was a short awkward pause between us.
“Well…” I searched for something to say.
“Oh, you don’t have to make something up for my sake, Kiel,” she interjected while smiling brightly. “I know Susy picked me because there’s literally nobody else. But no matter how I look at it, picking your toilet scrubber as a handmaiden sounds like the start of a bad joke.”
She looked serene and peaceful as she comfortably picked up her ceramic jar.
Her raven-black bangs swayed slightly as she adjusted the large container in her arms. Her hair was wavy and a few stray unruly strands hung as far as her chin. Overall, she was plain and forgettable. She was neither tall nor short, neither attractive nor ugly, and there was absolutely nothing memorable about her figure. She might as well have been faceless. There was no way she could have been anything but a side character.
However, her dark pupils betrayed a faint spark of sharply perceptive intelligence.
I always had a feeling that this inconspicuous watermaid was more cunning than she let on.
But at the same time, my excessively colorful imagination had gotten me into trouble in the past, so it wasn't something I was going to place bets on. Susy told me I had a bit of a reputation for developing ridiculous headcanons for perfectly normal people, so it was probably advisable to treat my melodramatic fantasies with a healthy serving of skepticism.
+ + +
I ended up walking back with Mari to the mansion.
“Did you end up buying anything with your new salary?” I asked, our casual chatter continuing on.
“Oh right! Right! Yeah, that was like more money than I’ve seen in my entire life! Handmaidens sure get paid a lot of stuff! I like money! I mean, sure you can’t eat money, you can buy lots of edible things with money!”
“Of course.”
“I spent most of it on Isie though!” She laughed. “Isie’s going to be a footman in the entourage, so he definitely has to look the part! No more excuses for lazy outfits! I mean, Isie is naturally pretty so I think Susy scored slam dunk points getting a sexy bird with beautiful feathers as killing as his. I’m sure she’ll get a lot of jealous compliments for having a rockstar cupbearer like him at her side.”
The bizarre watermaid looked oddly content and smug bragging about her pet beastkin, Iseria, in such a fashion.
Ordinarily, my impression of most owners was that they tended to be slightly possessive and territorial about their beastkin. At least, I felt like my relationship with Susy fell more along such lines. It was more difficult for me to comprehend the angle that Mari was coming from, but then again she had always been rather quirky to begin with.
That said, it was impossible to stop comparing myself to Iseria now that Mari had mentioned it. Although an aristocrat’s personal beastkin traditionally had a reserved spot accompanying their owners at a banquet table, I was fully well aware of my own appearance and breed.
I mean, I was a bedroom pet.
My kind weren’t bred to be shown off in public. Rather, the focus was comfort.
Although I had never known my parents, it wasn’t difficult for me to infer that hundreds of generations of my ancestors had been selectively bred by humans and mated with each other for their plush tail. To put it skeptically, most humans probably looked at me and figured that 95% of my worth as a beastkin was focused on my rear end. Any other qualities I had were purely coincidental.
Of course, I could do a lot of other things and was generally knowledgeable about the broader world thanks to being raised in the Telleste household. However, this was not my main intended function. My entire reason and purpose of being born into this world — as well as the obvious rationale for being chosen as Susy’s partner during my infancy — was to be used as a fancy plush pillow.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me this. All beastkin stumbled upon this sort of logical self-realization at some point in their adolescence.
If I didn’t satisfy that function… it would be like existing as a pencil that never got used as a writing implement.
That said, my appearance was plain. All I had to me were a couple shades of a grey and a squishy midsection. There just wasn’t much of me that would be impressing anybody at a dinner party, even if I was Susy’s personal beastkin. There was no way that I could compare to someone like Isie in terms of pure attractiveness.
I forced myself to push those thoughts aside.
“How is Isie reacting to all of this?” I asked with a smile.
“He’s ecstatic and can’t wait to be dressed up like a true bird of paradise.”
I almost choked when the watermaid said that.
“That’s such a sniping lie! Oh my lord! That’s not even close to believable.”
“Tee-hee~”
“Isie probably hates your guts. I can’t imagine him being any other way.”
“Nope! Not at all! We’re a very loving and harmonious couple.”
I shook my head skeptically as I opened the door. After I allowed Mari to go first, I shut the doorknob behind me.
It closed with a click.
∎
