"And then the teacher closed the rulebook, looked me in the eyes, and said, 'Too bad we don't know who did it,'" I said.

The kitchen erupted with laughter, and I gave my own grin before returning my attention to the task set before me: cleaning this goddamn pot. It was an excellent exercise of controlling water and fire- for, of course, hot water worked better than cold water for cleaning- and besides, lightening the workload and pulling my own weight seemed like an excellent way to endear myself to those who actually worked for a living.

"If I may ask, what is a 'boy?'" Marnie asked, not looking up from the onion she was dicing.

"Imagine a young Alpha with narrower hips, broader shoulders, and no tits," I said. "You'll be close enough."

"So you're really from a world with only two sexes?" Penny asked. She was the baker's apprentice, and had been the most willing to try my suggestion of creating a sort of water roux and mixing it in with the dough to extend its life and delay staling. "So strange."

"Your world is quite strange to me," I said. "To my perception, all of humanity consists entirely of women, two thirds of whom happen to have penises. Which, as a woman who loves women and was, for a time, insecure about her own penis, is very much a dream come true for me, in addition to simply being very strange."

"Insecure?" Allie asked, working her wash-basin with water magic. "Were Alphas persecuted where you lived?"

"We didn't have Alphas," I said. "We had men and women, and the majority opinion was that only men were supposed to have dicks. Thankfully, I don't live there anymore. I live here now, and get to ask awkward questions, such as 'why are most of the staff here Betas?'"

It was more than just the four of us in here, of course, but the others, apparently, were content to let Marnie, Allie, and Penny field my questions.

One of the things I didn't have to ask about was what Betas even looked like. The answer, it seemed, was 'ordinary women, maybe slightly taller on average.' Standing at six foot two, I was the tallest person in the room, but it wasn't like everyone else was a copy-and-paste job. Marnie was on the shorter end of the Beta scale, at maybe five foot four, and Penny stood fully six inches taller, coming up to five foot ten. Nor were they all exceptionally curvy nor exceptionally slender. Oh, sure, Penny was a lanky beanpole, and Allie happened to have some particularly nice tits that it took some self-control to not stare at, but it all felt like just... the natural variation you saw amongst ordinary human women.

Naturally, the conclusion I drew from all this is that it was going to be pretty difficult to tell the three genders apart, and I was going to offend some people early on.

Maybe it was something to do with fashion? Sure, all of these women worked in the same household, but pre-industrial uniforms kinda didn't happen, and honestly, figuring out which fashions signified which gender role was going to involve learning a whole new fashion vocabulary, which would be really fucking hard.

"Oh, that's right simple," Marnie said, answering my question that I had apparently thought was so boring that I spaced out and monologued for a hot minute. Where Penny was still a teenager, and Allie a twenty-something like myself, Marnie was somewhere in her forties, and had a rather matronly air about her. "Alphas are the big strong bigshots who run the place, and Omegas are the soft, beautiful broodmares who carry their children. And we Betas, who don't lean towards either extreme, get to do all the real work."

"Here, now, let's be fair," Allie said. "Not every Alpha is a prince living in a castle. My older sister's a White Wind Alpha, and she was out in the fields before dawn and after dusk, pulling plows and swinging scythes. My mom, an Omega, was always spinning yarn, whenever she wasn't doing something else that took both hands."

"Don't suppose you know any fancy tricks for that, do you?" Penny asked, setting a fully-kneaded loaf on the board and grabbing another large lump of dough.

"As a matter of fact, I do know how to build something called a spinning wheel," I said. "Should let someone spin roving into yarn ten times faster than with a simple spindle. Maybe more. There were more advanced machines that did it even faster, with less labor, but I'm afraid I don't know how they worked."

"Huh," Penny said. "What did you do for a living on the old world, that you know all this sort of stuff?"

"Honestly, I didn't do anything for a living," I said. "I'm young. I was a college student. And, well... I took an interest in the old machinery of the early Industrial period, the simple labor-saving devices that slowly built upon each other into a rising standard of living, a rising degree of social sophistication, and... admittedly, some less good things that, nonetheless, I'm certain a group of peasant women are more than familiar with." I sighed. "Hopefully, this time, we can do it properly. I'll see about talking Rachel into sponsoring my attempts at making a spinning wheel. They're a great deal less portable than spindles, but then, perhaps not being able to spin yarn in all waking hours would be good for us."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Horsefeathers," Marnie said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. "Is the pot clean?"

I levitated all the water out of it, humming as I inspected it visually.

[Mana: 5/30]

[Skill Up: Void Manipulation, Level 5]

"I think so, yeah," I said. "You might wanna check it yourself just to be sure."

I held up the pot, and Marnie leaned over the counter, examining my handiwork.

"Looks clean to me," Marnie said, nodding.

"Great. Where do I put the dirty water?"

"Down that drain in the corner," Marnie said.

I was carefully feeding water down the drain so as to not cause airlock and back up the water onto the floor when the door opened and Rachel walked in, looking somewhat annoyed.

"Hi Rachel," I said.

"Lucy," Rachel said, nodding. "Is there any particular reason you disobeyed my instructions to not go anywhere?"

"You didn't tell me to not go anywhere," I said. "You told me to not wander off, as in walk aimlessly on my own, in a way that would get me lost in a large building I'm unfamiliar with. And I didn't! I struck up a conversation with Allie when she came to change the bed linens, offered to help with the work that needs doing to keep a household this size running, and that's how I ended up in the kitchen, using Water and Fire magic to clean a pot. Because I needed the practice. And now my skills are up to Level 5."

"...Very well," Rachel said, nodding.

"Also, and this is important, I made some friends," I said. "I think. We're friends, aren't we?"

"So long as these 'noodles' you raved about turn out any good," Izzy said, rolling out pasta dough with only a rolling pin. "I'll be quite mad if they're not any good." Izzy was a Blue Wind, meaning she had a primary affinity for Air and a secondary affinity for Water. Just like Allie, in fact. The difference between the two of them, really, is that where Allie used her minor talent for biosculpting, granted by a secondary affinity for Water, to give herself some rockin' cans, Izzy instead used it to give herself vibrant blue hair.

Another thing I'd noticed is that, contrary to pop culture's perspective, even in a medievalesque milieu, people traveled, and the population of a town wouldn't be completely monochrome, especially if it was near the sea, like nearly everywhere in Italy. Izzy was nearly as pale as the fresh-fallen snow, sure, but Penny looked quite dark, possibly some sort of North African equivalent, and Marnie and Allie had shades of olive that bracketed Rachel's own. And while the deep olive skin and coppery hair were the most common, it was by no means rare for other colorations to pop up, just looking around at the common people in this very room.

"Eating them plain should be more tolerable than porridge, but they're really good when you've got some kind of sauce on them," I said. "Or if they're served in a broth or a soup."

"If I could speak to you privately?" Rachel asked.

"Sure- where do you want this pot, Marnie?" I set it where she indicated, and followed Rachel out of the kitchen, noting that she shut the door behind us. She waited about five paces before she began to speak.

"I am of common birth myself," she began, inauspiciously. "So do not take this as a moral indictment. But... why do you feel the desire to consort with the common staff?"

"Because I'm also a commoner," I said. "Middle class. I had a summer job washing dishes in the back of a diner. Those people feel more human to me than aristocrats. And, well... It feels nice to pitch in, here and there, to feel helpful. And, in point of fact, that reminds me- I need your help in order to help others. With something specific, that is."

Rachel sighed. "What do you need?"

"I need material resources to tinker with and produce some of the machinery from my home," I said. "Right now I mostly just need a wooden wheel in passable condition, and... honestly, probably a skilled carpenter with a well-equipped workshop. But, that'll only produce a single copy of a machine that we really probably want more than one of, and so once I have a working prototype... I may need your further help in presenting the invention to your lord and convincing her to fund the production and distribution of a lot more of them."

"It would be helpful to know what sort of machine this is," Rachel said.

"A spinning wheel," I said. "It spins roving into yarn far faster than a conventional distaff and spindle can. I suppose it would be easy to convince your lord to fund the construction of more of them if she happens to employ spinners."

"Yes, you will indeed have an easier time selling machines to someone who has a use for them," Rachel said dryly. "Of course, before you can present your petition, it would be wise to prepare a new set of clothes for you, perhaps a haircut-"

"No haircut."

"-and generally render you fit to stand before the high seat of Nukem."

I blinked. "...Did you just say Nukem?" I asked. "Is that the name of the town we're in?"

"Nukem is an area much larger than any individual town," Rachel said. "But yes, it is called Nukem. Why? Does that name mean something where you're from?"

Yes, it absolutely did. No, I wasn't going to tell her that.

"It just sounds a little funny to me, is all," I lied.

I mean, sure, Kotor was a town and also a bay in Montenegro, as well as being the acronym for Knights Of The Old Republic, a classic Star Wars RPG. There were only so many sounds a human mouth was capable of, and so many combinations of them. Some eventual overlap was inevitable. Why not have a place called Nukem?

"Anyhow," I said, continuing past that. "Depending on how long we can wait before introducing me to your liege-lord, I might be able to demonstrate the worth of the spinning wheel by appearing in an outfit whose thread was produced on one."

"Well," Rachel said, mildly bemused. "At least I won't have to worry about keeping you occupied."