Aloys placed one of those magic orbs, a marvusel, into the empty slot by the base of the tub faucet. He made sure it was secured properly, and turned on the tap. Like the pump outside, water started coming out of the faucet in short spurts, but soon a steady stream was produced. The water was cold and clean like the pump from outside.

That clear water very soon highlighted the grime of the wooden tub.

Hana fussed about cleaning the bathtub so much that Aloys had to stop and make comment. She had to take a minute after seeing that in the tub.

“You’re a very clean person.”

A bold thing to say when she herself was still covered in dirt from her impromptu arrival. An even bolder thing to say after she discovered a dead rat inside the tub. It wasn’t some small field mouse either, it was about the size of a volleyball— large, round, matted and dusty, and dead. Aloys wasn’t keen on touching it either, so he did some spell to whisk it outside discreetly. Truth be told, she had never seen a rat before and was perfectly content with that bit of ignorance, and she wasn’t keen on seeing one again.

“I’m normal. This place is just too dirty. How does the tub drain?”

There was a plug at the bottom that connected to some sort of drainage system. Like with everything new here, Hana didn’t need to know the particulars, only that it worked. The water that drained out of the tub was murky brown.

“What do you use to clean on Earth?”

“There’s cleaning wipes, disinfectant sprays, cleaning solutions, detergent, bleach, sanitizer, body wash, shampoo, conditioner…” Some of these words had gone right over his head, the translation spell finding no corollary in the language he spoke, but he never prompted her for an explanation and let her rant on. He even left at one point, returning with a bundle of bar soap— there were two bars inside— while Hana was talking about pressure washers. She almost cried at the sight of it, unwrapping it immediately. It was a plain white bar soap, not scented with anything in particular, but it smelled clean and that was all that mattered. She would use one for cleaning, the other could be used for bathing.

“Earth keeps itself very clean,” Aloys said in amusement.

“Definitely not.”

Disease, disease, disease, was all she could think about. Weren’t rats one of the main carriers of disease, or at the very least, hosts to things that did? Bacteria were the bane of humanity for centuries before the advent of antibiotics. There was no modern medicine she could rely on here. She spent fifteen minutes scrubbing every last inch of the tub, the first ten it was so dirty that there were no suds, and she changed the water five times. This world might just manage to turn her into a mysophobe.

“You could eat out of that tub.”

“Absolutely not,” Hana sighed, resigning herself to a less than satisfactory clean, wringing out her soapy rag. The tub was technically squeaky clean, but she still didn’t trust it. “But it’ll do.”

Bar soap and cold water was not going to be popular with the children, but it would get them clean, and that was all that mattered.

This isn’t going to be fun.

But the things that needed to be done in life rarely equated to having fun, so Hana forced herself to get over it.

The children were along the wall outside, sitting under the shade of a tree, looking for bugs within the bushes and grass where the patch of mullein leaves were. Momoka was especially excited to hear that they would be able to wash up, she was particular about cleanliness, and wasn’t looking too happy to begin with.

A cleaning line was formed. Hana had to clean their clothes while they were bathing and have them ready when they were finished. She attacked smudges of dirt, and patches of dried mud. The smocks were easy to wash, as they were made to be, but getting stains out almost everything else proved much more difficult even with soap.

Intermittently, she was interrupted by a call for help in the bathroom— how to use the faucet, or a complaint that the water was cold, or that they had accidentally dropped the soap, or that they were done but their clothes weren’t cleaned yet. Once they were cleaned and changed, they were sent back inside the inn before they could run around and get dirty again.

She was glad for Aloys, who had offered to dry the clothes as she washed them. There were no spells to conveniently clean clothes, he explained when she asked, but drying them was simpler. He passed a hand over the clothes, and the water rose up from the cloth and into an amorphous, liquid blob underneath his palm. He cast aside the water into the bushes, where it scattered like a broken water balloon. Every now and then he made a comment about how fascinating Earth clothing was— t-shirts, jeans, plain old long-sleeved shirts, it was all delightfully intriguing to him. He held up a purple shirt and asked her how it was dyed, to which she had no idea.

Getting everybody, herself excluded, clean took the better part of three hours, which she only knew because of the bells that seemed to chime far too often.

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“Satsuki.”

She turned around at the sound of her name. Satsuki was expecting this conversation to happen sooner rather than later, and now was as good a time as any. Souta was preoccupied with looking for bugs with Jun. So long as he didn’t wander off too far, and he rarely did, she could keep an eye on him while she talked with Ritsu.

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“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

Yes, he did that a lot. Maybe too much, Satsuki thought, but it wasn’t her place to tell him not to. He’d just think about it even more. He was always stuck inside his own head, to his detriment most times, though he seemed oblivious to it. They had been in the same daycare class since they were four, and though they didn’t talk much, they weren’t strangers either. She got along with him about as well as anyone else in their class did, which is to say, not much. They tolerated each other, but beyond having to share an activities table or art supplies, their interactions were limited.

“About what?”

“This situation.” She waited for Ritsu to continue. “Ms. Kano obviously doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“She’s been acting nervous,” Satsuki agreed. There was an edge in their teacher’s voice that was unlike her usual self. Satsuki would have been more worried if their teacher was acting like nothing strange had happened at all.

“We don’t know how we got here, so we don’t know how to go back. I think it’s safe to say that we’re stuck here.”

That would be the logical conclusion. But Satsuki wasn’t entirely sure what could be considered logical anymore, since magic existed. Which was difficult to believe, her mother told her magic was just visual tricks and not to be fooled by it, but they had all seen proof of it earlier. And if Mr. Aloys could talk to them from inside their heads, who was to say that there wouldn’t be a way back eventually?

“There’s no way home for now,” she corrected.

“And how long is ‘for now’? We need to have a plan.”

“For what?” Surely not to find a way home, as he seemed to dismiss.

“Living here. Surviving here.”

Ritsu went off in great detail about how they needed money for food, rent, clothing, utilities, etc., and Satsuki was beginning to regret starting this conversation. He had been overthinking. He said something about taxes, she wasn’t sure what those were, and she had to cut him off there.

“What do you want us to do?”

“For starters, we should work on managing the others.” He went off on a spiel about how they had to keep the others in line, make sure that their behaviour was acceptable, that it would lessen the burden on their only caregiver, et cetera.

Satsuki didn’t mind. They were the eldest of the kids, so having more responsibility was a given. It was only right that they help out more since they were capable of it. Making this whole situation work was a team effort. How well Ritsu would be at corralling the boys, she wasn’t sure, though he seemed confident he would have it under control.

“I was going to do that anyway. Do you think you can handle the boys?”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

She looked over his shoulder to watch Itaru and Kazuo jumping off the wall and tackling each other in the process. A good amount of yelling and roughhousing was involved. Ritsu was taller than them, as was Satsuki, but she didn’t think that he could hold up in a fight against the two of them, especially if Taiga decided he wanted in too. “Hmm.”

Ritsu glanced behind himself and rolled his eyes, not particularly worried. “Then we make it official. I’ll handle them, you handle the girls.”

“If you need help you can ask.”

He rolled his eyes again.

Splitting up the work and having each other for back up was a good idea, not that she thought he would ever ask for any. What was the word again? Pride? At any rate, it was better to start it now and improve as they needed to.

“So we work together. The Alliance.” She had heard the word once on TV and asked her mother what it meant. The definition she was given seemed to apply well here.

“We are not calling it ‘The Alliance’,” he scoffed, crossing his arms. “How lame is that?”

“Do you have a better name?” She asked this knowing full well that neither of them were the creative type.

She was right. He didn’t.

----------------------------------------

A lot had happened today.

Taiga had climbed up onto the wall that surrounded the backyard, kicking his legs out idly. He still had his stick sword, and it rested on his lap.

He wasn’t sure what was going on. He knew it was some sort of surprise field trip, which he was definitely a fan of, but there was something different about this one.

Ms. Kano seemed kind of panicked, but she seemed to know what she was doing. Mr. Aloys was cool, and since Taiga had always suspected that magic was real, it was nice to see that his suspicions were proven right. He was wondering when they’d be able to go out and look for dragons, which had to exist if magic did too. He hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Mr. Aloys, he seemed to know a lot, but he was sure he would get the chance to later.

They were waiting in line to take a bath. Some of the girls insisted on going first, Momoka mostly, and it only seemed right to let them if they cared that much. He didn’t think he was all that dirty.

He was getting hungry though. It was the one downside of this surprise field trip. If he had known in advance, he would have told his mom, and she would have packed him an extra bento and a pair of shoes he could actually run in.

I’m bored…

After kindergarten and daycare, he would usually watch TV while his mom made dinner. Aside from the anime on the weekends, he liked the real-life programs that explored animals and the wilderness. They once showed a komodo dragon, which was really a lizard. A huge venomous lizard, sure, but that was just a cool lizard that looked like it didn’t have teeth. It didn’t hold up to a fire-breathing, flying, giant, scaly dragon.

Earlier they had seen a rabbit-deer and the dogs that followed Ms. Mott— was it Mr. Mott? He hadn’t been paying that much attention. He wondered what other types of animals there were here. Fox-bears or spider-falcons? Or kaiju? Dinosaurs? His mind kept going back to dragons.

“Taiga!” Ms. Kano called him over, and he realized he was the last one waiting outside. Mr. Aloys was still there, and since he wasn’t doing anything right now, he could answer his question!

“Mr. Aloys.” Taiga tugged on the man’s wide sleeve, and a white stone came tumbling out of it.

“Oops.” With quick reflexes, Aloys snatched it up before it hit the ground. “What is it?”

“Do dragon’s exist?”

The wizard smiled. “They sure do.”