Lament of the Slave

Chapter 9: Choosing

I came to my shift at Broken Mug when the inn was already full of people and noise. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Byron ran between the bar and the kitchen while the waitress served the tables.

I stood at the bar and waited for the innkeeper to return from the kitchen.

"Hi, Mr. Byron, am I late?" I asked him before he started tapping another beer.

"Korra. You're just on time. It looks like a busy night tonight," he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

I nodded. "So should I start now or...?"

"Definitely now. Go to the kitchen. I'll be with you in a moment," the innkeeper said.

I didn't want to keep him from working even more, so I walked around the bar and entered the kitchen through the flying door. I have already seen a few restaurant kitchens. After all, I earned extra money in restaurants as a waitress during my studies. This kitchen could not be compared to modern ones. It was old, but it looked homely, and like everything else in the inn, it was tidy. Apart from the dirty dishes in the tub on the ground, there was nothing to show poor hygiene.

Prepared food smelled in the kitchen as a pot of soup was cooked on a magic tool that looked like a hotplate, and meat was baked in something like a large oven. The scent in the room was mouth-watering, stimulating my stomach, which rumbled. That reminded me it had been quite a few hours since I had lunch. After all, it was already evening. Dinner time was approaching.

The kitchen door opened, and the innkeeper entered in a hurry. He quickly stirred and checked the soup and basted the meat in the oven.

"Okay, I should have shown you what to do and how this afternoon when we had more time, but there's nothing we can do now," Mr. Byron said, then pointed at the wooden tub. "There's a tub for dirty dishes. We don't wash it here, but outside. Take the tub and follow me."

If it were on Earth, I would definitely protest. The wooden tub itself was heavy, not to mention full of dishes. But I was in Eleaden now, and during my time here, I grew stronger. The innkeeper, whom I would have once considered loutish and rude, knew very well that carrying something like that would not be a problem for me, even though I was a woman.

From the kitchen, we walked down the hallway through the back door to the backyard. Besides the outhouses, as in the Broken Heart's backyard, was a well of drinking water. Drinkable, according to Byron, I had to trust him in that. However, at least at first glance, the water was clear. My only concern was the three outhouses near it.

The innkeeper did not explain much more to me. I got a rag from him, which they used here instead of a sponge, and a bottle of potion, which they added to the water instead of detergent. That was all.

In Broken Heart, I forgot to verify Alyson's class, and now I almost forgot to check Byron too.

[Innkeeper: lvl 67]

I couldn't judge how good innkeeper Byron was because I didn't see many people's levels and classes. I had no one to compare him to. My level was high, but my skills were useless or after the exchange at a low level.

Instead of speculating on the innkeeper's capability and his inn's quality, I started washing dishes.

I soon found out how uncomfortable the work was as crouching by the tub and washing dishes in cold water with bare hands was very uncomfortable. I immediately missed my dishwasher, where I just put the dishes away until it was full. Yeah, you don't realize how much you get used to these things until you lose them.

I had to figure out myself that I needed another basket for clean dishes and a dry cloth to wipe it dry. Mr. Byron somehow forgot to tell me about that. When I returned to the kitchen with washed dishes, another pile of dirty dishes was waiting for me on the kitchen counter.