Next morning we woke up as early as usual. We got ready for the day and went to the refectory. Someone was already rummaging in the kitchen, and as Miss Tessa told us that we would have other duties today, we simply sat down at an empty table.

“I won’t miss preparing breakfast.” I twirled my left pigtail.

Caroline yawned. “Getting up earlier was hard.”

“At least we knew what to do after a while.” Milly pointed out.

“We will learn our next duty soon enough as well.” Tilly crossed her forearms under her chest with a determined smile.

“It’s not like we have a choice.” I concluded.

More and more maids appeared over the next minutes. The last who entered the room was Miss Tessa.

“Osara is back to the kitchen as of today. Lilly, Tilly, Milly and Caroline are in Teri’s care in the morning for the time being. They still will have kitchen duties in the afternoon.”

We looked at each other. I rolled my eyes.

The rest of Miss Tessa’s speech was about the duties of other maids. There were a few complaints as well. This was the first time we actually attended this meeting to the end.

We would have to cope with Osara as well.

As breakfast started a maid approached our table.

“Hello, I’m Teri. Let’s talk a bit while eating.”

Tilly, who sat beside Caroline all the time came over to Milly and I while Teri sat down beside Caroline.

Teri was a woman in her fifties perhaps. She hat dark brown curly hair hanging down to her shoulders, sprinkled with a few gray ones. She was about 1.60 m tall, smaller than Miss Tessa, and had dark green eyes. A wide smile played around her lips.

“Now, who is who?” Teri tilted her head and looked at us.

“I’m Caroline.”

“I’m Lilly.”

“I’m Milly.”

“I’m Tilly.”

“Is there a chance to discern you three?”

“Miss Tessa made us using bows with different colors.” Milly smiled.

“Ah, I see. I’ll get it wrong from time to time, I hope you don’t mind.”

We giggled. In the meantime breakfast arrived and we were busy eating the rest of the time.

After breakfast Teri herded us to the last unknown door of the refectory, near the staircase up. It was a large room, about 6 x 10 m. Stacks of baskets were lined up against the short wall by the door.

“Generally we fetch the dirty clothes from the floors above. There are shelves near the doors. It’s important to avoid mix ups of the baskets we retrieve from there and to put the cleaned clothes back to the correct floor. Mix-ups are pretty bad, failing to deliver it to wrong floor is usually not a great deal, since the responsible maids search the other floors. They will be annoyed if it happens too often though.”

We nodded.

“We fetch dirty clothes in the morning and in the afternoon. Ah. the washing lines are in the attic. There are enough of them to separate the batches.”

Teri looked at our faces.

“Yes. I know it’s running stairs with no end, but I’m not able to change that. In addition there are clothes directly delivered here. There are shelves in the attic to store them for retrieval. In most of the baskets are small tokens to identify the owner. Put the tokens in the corresponding shelf.”

Teri clapped her hands.

“Let’s start. I will accompany you for a few days, until I’m sure you know what to do. I’m not keen on receiving complaints.”

She left the laundry again. We followed suit. We went to the staircase near the entrance of the refectory. It was a spiral staircase and we went up until we reached a small corridor leading to a door. Along one wall of the corridor were shelves filled with a few baskets.

“This is the ground floor! Normally there is not that much to get here. Actually most of them are in the third floor. On the second floor are the guest quarters. During festivities there will me much more fetch from there.”

We took all the baskets here and carried them back to the laundry. After that we went up the staircase multiple times to get the rest of them. Most were from the third floor.

After that we started to wash the clothes one basket after the other. As soon as there were 10 baskets done, we all got two of them and climbed to the attic to peg out washing. We separated the basket and put the tokens at the line as well.

We repeated that until all dirty clothes were done, checking for dried clothes later on.

“Normally I need longer for this. I’m quite pleased to have some helping hands for a while. We have to check for dried clothes once in a while. As soon as a badge is dry, we iron the clothes, fold them and bring them back from where we got them. In the afternoon we fetch new batches.”

“Understood.”

“In the meantime we look for clothes to repair, we get those as well. Should all this be done I usually help out with cleaning around the castle. Let’s stitch some tears now.”

We took a basket with clothes and sat down in the refectory, starting to repair clothes. From time to time Teri sent one of us the attic to check for dried clothes.

Fortunately Miss Tessa had forced me to get some experience with needles already, thus I didn’t embarrass myself much. As Lumi started setting the tables for lunch, we took our stuff back to the laundry, putting fixed clothes in a shelf by the door.

“The people wanting them fixed will get them sooner or later.”

Teri was definitely nicer than Osara. I could see a more peaceful time while doing laundry. I don’t care about my legs protesting against staircases. In a few days this will be okay, too.

After lunch we started to collect dried clothes from the lines and ironed them at the attic at a spot covered with simple tiles. Without electricity everything was a bit more complicated, since the irons had to be heated using good old fire. Getting a decent temperature wasn’t that easy. Fortunately Teri prevented charred clothes

Caroline and Tilly were in the kitchen after lunch. I hope they will be okay this evening.

We delivered the ironed and folded clothes and took some new baskets down to the laundry to start over. We had time to chatter while we washed the clothes.

“The time after dinner is usually free time safe for most of us. There are two maids which are rotated to handle things that couldn’t wait for whatever reason.”

“Free time?” I looked at Milly.

“Miss Tessa usually takes it away for punishment if someone complains about your work. Osara is known to complain about everything though.”

“Maybe we have a free evening today?” Milly looked excited.

“Then she caned us for everything and then she complained about us with Miss Tess, knowing we get extra punishment?” I frowned.

“I won’t complain about additional hands. Don’t cause a mess and I’m satisfied.” Teri patted our heads.

“I like to finish everything in the evening though and often work after dinner. With your help that shouldn’t be necessary.”

Then time for dinner came. Tilly and Caroline served the meals and had the chores after everyone was done.

“Today there is no training.” Miss Tessa stopped by our table.

“Yes, Miss Tessa.”

“We will continue to train for an hour or two every two or three days, until I satisfied with your performance.” She patted our heads and left for the hall with her office.

“We go to our room?” Milly asked.

I nodded.

We left the refectory and went to the bathroom first, which was, as well as the toilet at the end of the corridor in two larger rooms. After freshening up we went to our room.

“Let’s get ready for the night and linger around for now.” Milly started to undress.

Shrugging I followed suit. A bit cuddling was okay. We hadn’t have time for that for quite a while.

We laid down in our bed and tucked ourselves in next to each other.

“It has been quite a while we had time for some cuddles.” I looked Milly in the eyes.

“So true.” She slung her arms around my neck and pulled me in.

I started to caress her waist and propped my head on my forearm.

“Still angry?”

“I am. With good reasons!”

“It was the right thing to do. Imagine the last weeks were similar to the first days.”

“You could have made it worse!”

“Yeah. Maybe. While it was bad to endure Miss Tessa’s wrath, it was over soon.”

“We were terrified hearing you scream. There were multiple doors between.”

“It did hurt. Much.”

“I was afraid.”

I hugged Milly.

“But it’s over. Being terrified over a long time is much worse. It hurts you deep inside.”

“You are still an idiot! I don’t want to lose you!” Milly started to weep.

“I don’t want to lose you too, Milly.”

“Then stop taking unnecessary risks!”

“It was necessary from my point of view. All of us were better of thereafter.”

“I still don’t want you to be hurt!”

Milly stopped weeping after a while.

“Let’s change the topic.” I dried up her face with the cushion.

“Fine. You’re cute!”

I blushed.

“I didn’t miss blushing!”

“But if you blush you’re even cuter!”

We cuddled in silence for a while.

“Caroline and Tilly aren’t back yet.” Milly looked at the door.

“Osara surely had complained about them. They’re probably with Miss Tessa at the moment.”

Milly nodded. “At least we made some progress. We have to find a means to do some research.”

“Learning to read and write would be nice.”

“Maybe the castle has a library.”

We fell silent for a while.

“How about your ... change?” Milly looked me deep in the eyes.

I sighted. “I didn’t have much time to think about it recently. Actually maybe it’s better that way, focusing more on the things at hand. Women are human, too. Different, but of equivalent. Effectively this a new life, and trying to embrace it is the only way to handle it without going mad sooner or later.”

I finally returned her look. “Just treat me as I am.”

“I will.” She hugged me tighter.

“I can’t promise you not to be an idiot once in a while though.”

I hugged her back.

After a while I fell asleep, still tired from the recent days.

Next morning I woke up sandwiched between Milly and Tilly. I decided to wait for them to wake up.

After a while Tilly yawned.

“Good morning.” I looked back over my shoulder.

“Good morning.” Tilly turned around and I felt her breath in my neck.

“Were you with Miss Tessa last evening?”

“Yeah. A bit training. But not really tough. We spent quite a while in the pool.” Tilly put a hand on my hip.

“I felt a bit bad lingering here while you were occupied.”

“Don’t worry. We were good.”

“The spoon?”

“She didn’t use it. We got some smacks over the day, but nothing noteworthy.”

“Well. As long as it’s bearable, I won’t complain. Tell me if there are problems.”

“Don’t.” Milly chimed in. “She’ll get herself in trouble again.”

Tilly giggled.

“Miss Tessa told us we could complain about her. She insisted we had to avoid further incidences. Sorry Lilly. You’re out!” Tilly started to tickle me.

“As long as it helps, I’m fine with it.” I started to tickle Milly who started to squeal and wriggle.

“Noo! Stop!”

“All awake, I see.” Caroline looked down at us with a smile.

Soon the wake-up call came and we made ourselves ready for the day.

The next three days were quite boring, and there was nothing really interesting. My legs started to adopt to climbing stairs. Two of us had kitchen duty in the afternoon. The others banned me from the kitchen, though, thus I had laundry only schedule.

On the third day, we were done with dinner and headed to our room.

Miss Tessa stopped us in the hall.“Get ready for some training tonight!”

“Yes, Miss Tessa.”

Caroline and I went to our room and sat on the bed waiting for Miss Tessa.

A few minutes later the door opened and she let us in.

“Start workout already. I’ll come back with the other two after they finished their chores.”

We redressed and went to the training hall and started with some running interjected by short other workouts. Since the main training was still ahead we decided to keep it easy.

Eventually Miss Tessa arrived with the others. After about two hours training was finished and we were wiped.

We continued to the bath. After cleaning we went to the pool.

I started to dive a bit and after a while I coaxed Caroline to start learning too swim. After a while we all tried to help her. In the end she managed her first few meters across the edges of the pool.

“As fun it is to watch you, it’s getting late!” Miss Tessa left the pool.

“Yes, Miss Tessa!”

We left and decided to continue swimming lessons as soon as possible.

We got ready for the night and chattered a bit before we fell asleep.

The next twelve days were nothing special. We did our chores, and had occasional training in the evening. Caroline learned to keep herself from drowning and was starting to get faster in the water.

I had fun diving around the pool and swimming quite a bit. The lanes were short, but better to have some endurance before you actually need it. And most important swimming was fun.

Our problems with the language were nearly gone.

“Tomorrow, you’ll get a new instructor!” Miss Tessa closed the door to our room.

I crawled under the covers. “I was quite content with Teri.”

Milly joined me snuggling her back against me. “They will run us through every task here.”

Tilly joined me on the other side and snuggled against my back. “I hope we find some time to actually research some interesting topics.”

Caroline climbed up to her bed. “As long as we don’t get a foul instructor like Osara, we’ll be fine. Remember it’s not for the rest of our lives.”

Caroline turned out the lantern. “Good night, Cutiepies!”

We blushed. “Good Night, Caroline.”