Cleaning up

This is a bonus chapter. It may reveal details relevant to the story, but is not required. It also does not feature our protagonist.

The big difference between succesfully cleaning your house and cleaning the street is how high your expectations need to be. When you clean the floor in your house, you hope it can be very clean. You sweep up the dust so it doesn't build up or crust up. When you step on a suspicious sticky spot you wipe it up to avoid living with the unpleasant sensation. Some would go so far as to say the floor of your kitchen should be spotless.

In the street, a little dust and dirt is a given. As for sticky spots, said dust and dirt likely stuck to it and got scraped away. Perhaps a better word for high standards in street cleaning is 'tidy' in place of 'clean'.

Lauretta likes to clean, but she is beginning to learn she hates having to leave things tidy. Lauretta is cleaning the walkway in front her new home. The nice little apartment is down a gated alleyway. It's part of a little space made from remodled abandoned churches. Now the small collection of shops and homes on the nice side of town is an excellent place to live. Still, little chores like cleaning need to be done.

Lauretta sweeps the little alleyway while her neighbors walk in and out of their apartments. They greet her happily, but some leave little soiled trails as they track dust or mud from their travels. Eventually she gives up, knowing she can only keep the courtyard almost clean for so long.

Just outside the gate on the street there sits a pile of broken bottle glass. People with tough shoes make little cracking sounds as they step over it. Lauretta promises to clean it up before somebody less well-shod cuts their feet, and then be done. There aren't many drunks who come by here. At least, none that are far enough from home to cause trouble. So, as long as she works quickly, Lauretta can keep the street tidy enough to keep it hospitable. She gets right to it, saving some ragged ruffian as they walk past. Lauretta couldn't see their feet, but they don't seem the type to wear shoes.

Just as she collects her dustpan to sweep up the rest of the glass a well dressed human approaches her. His stiff round sunhat and the riding gloves on his belt give him the air of a traveller. Relatively long hair swept out of his eyes and behind his ears framed a face that appeared boyish despite his fit posture. "Pardon me for taking up your time ma'am, but may I ask you some questions?" He seems professional and smells as if he bathed recently, so Lauretta sees no problem saying yes. Actually, he looked rather handsome.

"How may I help you?" Lauretta replies.

"I'm investigating something for a friend of mine, and I was wondering if you had caught wind of any pests around town. Rats, slime, ravens, you know? That sort of thing."

Lauretta took a moment to consider the question. "I haven't heard about anything around this part of town, but I do have an uncle who has a slime problem. He lives a bit farther that way." She points up the street. "He runs a butcher shop. He keeps it really clean too, but he had an incident the other week with some grey slime, and apparently an orange one? I think that last part is made up. Have you ever even heard of an orange slime?

"Anyway, he thinks it's because he's been forgetting to throw out the offal, but I'm pretty sure some ranger tracked it in from the woods. What are you investigating for your friend?" Lauretta asks as she watches the gentleman take some notes on her comments. He seems very keen for someone picking up neighborhood gossip.

The stranger finishes his note before absently answering. "Oh, my friend's a banker who does work around here. Some valuables of his went missing. His wife, er, fiancee says she got scared by some pests that night which might have run off with them. That's the leading theory anyway."

"Oh, are you some sort of constable or police?" Lauretta asks with innocent curiosity.

"Haha, no!" The man laughs by way of explanation. "My friends and I are simply touring around, visiting friends and partners. We'd be vagrants freeloaders if some of us weren't obsessed with helping out where we can."

"Hah, doesn't that sound like the life?" Lauretta guffaws in response. "Well, I would probably one of the friends who keeps you from laying about. Maybe you should be on your way before I recruit you to clean the street."

"Of course ma'am, have a good day." The stranger salutes Lauretta with a tip of the hat and continues on his way. Looking at his notes, carefully made with a little charcoal nub, he sees a list of seven odd occurrences. The butcher shop Lauretta mentioned accounted for three of them, but it was big news. An orange slime lurks in a random place of business this far from the coast? That is highly improbable, and the meatcarver himself correlates it.

That's not all either. The orange slime, the yellow slimes in the treetops and Briena's story all mixed together to put an idea in the mind of this man. An image and perspective which he would soon share with his adventuring companions.