Marius' Story chapter 2

A/n: Hello everybody!! Thanks for your patience!! Here's the next bit of Marius' Story.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Madame Harlot's inn was marked by a thick wooden sign over the door, with a painted image of a plate and a mug of beer. The thick glass window was small and scratched, but good enough to tell that the front room of the place was empty. There was a sign on the wall, though, that advertized 'crappy job, pays worth shit, inquire within.' Marius snorted. At least they're honest. There was a string running through a hole at the top of the door. Strange doorbell, maybe? Figuring it couldn't hurt, he pulled the string and heard a bell ring just inside the door.

A moment later he heard a woman shout. “Ran, get the door, please!”

A little girl opened the door, shoving her mass of curly black hair out of her eyes. “Who're you?”

Marius felt his eyebrows rise. “Well hello to you, too,” he told her. “Can I talk to an adult, please?”

“It's some boy, Mama!” the girl yelled, turning her back on him completely and going back inside the pub. “He needs t' talk t' Aunt Rosa!”

Feeling awkward, Marius followed the girl in and closed the door, remaining just inside it in case his presence wasn't welcome.

“We're closed 'till eleven!” a woman shouted. Hearing the sound from someplace downstairs, he realized that there was a staircase leading directly up into the room he was in.

“I know!” he called back. “I'm looking for a job!”

The job with the whore in the pub that the guy with horns recommended, he thought again. And yet, somehow, his mind wanted to see this as real. It felt – sharp, in that way that dreams didn't. He didn't have to pinch himself to know it would hurt. Hallucinations are probably just different, he realized. I'm probably talking to a lamppost or something.

“Alright, alright,” the woman said, emerging at the top of the stairs with a small wine casque carried in two hands. “You know we won't pay worth shit?”

She was huge, Marius realized, staring at her as she emerged from the basement. At least a head taller than his 5'8. The barrel she carried was evidently heavy, as he could see the muscles standing out on her arms. If she'd looked feminine at all before, the disfiguring scar over one eye and down her cheek. effectively killed it. She wasn't beautiful, for certain, but she was...interesting. Her voice, though, was unexpectedly attractive, smooth and feminine where nothing else about her was.

“Yeah I know,” Marius told her, meeting her eyes squarely so he wouldn't stare. “I'll take what I can get, right now.”

She grinned at him. “Good. That's us, too. You got the job, if you want it. I pay four coin an hour, plus a meal if you do well by us. Let me see your papers.”

Papers. He closed his eyes, frustrated. Of course my hallucinated world would include tax law. Why the hell not? “Papers?” he asked her, hearing his voice come out desperate.

She snorted and shook her head a little, clearly as frustrated as he. “Typical. No wonder you'll take this shit. I can't pay you without papers, though. I can't afford the fines.”

“I need a job,” Marius told her, pleading.

“And I need a grunt,” Harlot said. “But I can't give you money. I can pay you in meals and a shitty bed, but that's the best I can do.”

Relieved, Marius nodded quickly. “Yes, great,” he told her. “That's better than I've got at the moment.”

“Good enough,” the woman said. “You've got the job. I'm Harlot. You work from ten in the morning 'til we're done cleaning up after lunch. Bighana's our cook. You'll answer to her and to me and you'll work damned hard. Meals are at six, two, and nine. You'll take it?”

Well that sounds...bloody miserable. “I'll take it,” he confirmed. “I may only be here for the night, though.”

Madame Harlot snorted. “Not like you're on salary. You show, you eat and sleep. You don't, you don't. I'm assuming if you keep a shitty job like this one it's 'cause you need it and you won't skip.”

Marius winced at the truth in her words. This could be bad. This could be really, really bad.

No, he told himself, taking a breath. This is going to be fine. I'm going to wake up with a headache and find that I was hallucinating or dreaming before I even met the crazy woman with the baby and I'm going to call in sick to school.

“Where do I sleep?” he asked her.

“We've a room free upstairs for now,” Harlot told him. “You've got it unless we manage to fill it. If we do, you move to a pallet in the attic storage space. Now you'd best put your stuff upstairs and put the child in a carrier pouch, if you've got one. Otherwise she can stay in a basket in the kitchen. I'm sure Bighana'll have extras. Will you need it?”

“I'm not sure,” Marius said. “I might have a carrier, but I haven't checked.”

“You haven't checked?” She gave him an incredulous look.

At least I'm not the only one who finds this strange. “Long story,” he told her.

“Alright,” Harlot said slowly, apparently accepting that he didn't want to explain. “Anyway, I have to work and so do you. Get on upstairs, you're in room four at the end of the hallway. If you want lunch you need to get to work quickly.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he told her, adjusting the baby in his arms so he could take the big iron key she handed him.

“Harlot,” Harlot insisted.

“Harlot,” he repeated with a shrug. Whatever you want, lady.

Leaving her, Marius hurried up the narrow staircase in the back of the room to the second floor. From there, he entered an equally-narrow hallway and found his door at the end. Struggling a bit with the key and the baby and his bags, he managed to unlatch the door, then winced as it cracked against something behind it. He maneuvered himself and his stuff around to get in, and found himself in a short corridor that led sideways into the rest of the tiny room, just big enough to accommodate a dresser, bed, and bedside table. The bed was tucked under the sloping roof such that he would only be able to sit up in one direction. It was, in short, the tiniest, most awkward little room he'd ever had the misfortune of inhabiting.

The one perk was a decent-sized window that looked like it got good morning sun, and that sported a padded window seat that looked out over the street, so he could watch the goings-on below. Sitting on the bed, he discovered that someone had seemingly attempted to make up for the room's size by improving on the bed: the mattress wasn't great, but the covers were soft and of good quality. The room was also scrupulously clean, something he hadn't expected from the look of the common room downstairs.

I'll survive the night, at least, he told himself.

Relieved to finally be able to put the child down, he set her gently on the bed, one hand on her chest. Using the other, he put the supply bag her mother had given him down on the bedside table to dig though. Taking the hand off the baby and opening the main pouch with both hands, he found that it contained a pile of cloth diapers, several changes of baby clothing, a bottle of labeled diaper-rash lotion, several clean, folded, washcloths, and what he guessed from his very limited experience was a changing pad.

No carrier, damn. He hadn't expected there would be – surely the kid's mother would've been wearing it if she'd had one – but it would've been nice to have.

The smaller pouch held three glass bottles wrapped in silk and ten hand-labeled paper packets.

Moriyana's formula, he read, mix one packet with a bottle's worth of warm (not hot!) water and mix thoroughly (don't shake it, she'll throw up because of the air). She should eat a full bottle every 2-3 hours. Good until 10/20, longer if refrigerated.

Why so much? Keeping half his attention on the squirming infant next to him as he dug around, Marius noticed almost too late when what he'd figured was aimless wiggling turned into a roll, sending her to the very edge of the bed. He reached for her quickly, and caught her with one arm just before she went over. Holding her still for a second, he found adrenaline racing through his system, speeding up his breathing and heart rate even as he tried to calm them.

She's fine. She didn't fall. I'm an idiot. Don't put the baby down where she can roll off something. Duh.

Eventually he managed to calm down enough to think again, and immediately sat down on the bed, pulling the baby onto his lap and running a hand through his hair. The infant fussed, apparently unhappy at having been jostled, and he rubbed at her gently, unsure what would help. She stared up at him, and finally smiled a little, fingers of both hands clutching clumsily at her mouth, slimy with her own spit. Staring at her, he found himself suddenly overwhelmed.

This is insane. I can't take care of a baby. He had to find the kid's family. And how the fuck am I supposed to do that here? He was in a pub, for goodness' sake. And the world outside was insane.

Yeah. That's not going to happen. The kid could go to an orphanage, or whatever system they had here. Presumably they had some system for unwanted kids in this - world. Yeah great. For all I know they sell them as edibles. He winced, and suddenly remembered the beautiful woman who'd brought him into this fix. Damn it, woman, what am I supposed to do? How could you just hand your daughter to a complete stranger then- just up and die? You barely even looked sick; you couldn't've held on a little longer? I can't do this!

But the word orphanage resounded in his head with the same cold feeling he would normally associate with the word tomb or prison. The warm child squirming on his lap had nothing to do with such places. I'll find her family, that's all. A whimpering sound drew his attention back to the baby just as her face started to screw up, and she started to cry, a keening, mewing, wailing sound that seemed to fill the whole room.

Oh, shit, what did I do?

“No, no no no don't do that you were okay like two seconds ago what the hell is wrong with you?”

Oh yeah, sure Marius. Blame the baby. She was probably hungry. Warm water. Presumably they had some in the kitchen. Grabbing up the diaper bag, he took the baby back up in his arms and carried her quickly down the stairs, wishing that he had an extra hand to plug his ears. Damn but that noise was irritating. The stairs took him into the common room, where he stood for a moment in confusion before a woman came out of a room behind the bar.

“Where' the screa-oh. You mus' be that boy Harlot jus' hired.” The woman was tiny and dark, with the same crazy dark curls as the girl who'd answered the door before. She didn't seem at all perturbed by the infant's cries as she faced him.

“Yeah,” Marius told her. “I'm Marius. Please-” guessing she was the cook Bighana, he shrugged one shoulder to draw attention to the diaper bag. “I'm supposed to work but can I feed her, first? I think she's hungry.”

Bighana frowned, but nodded. “Co' with me,” she said, leading him back behind the bar and into a kitchen. “I have hot water on the stove f' rice. You can mix some of that with cool to make warm. Mind yeh start work quick after that or Harlot won' be pleased, though. I'll make the li'l'un a basket while yer at it.”

Putting the bag down on the broad table that took up a large chunk of the kitchen, Marius pulled out a packet of formula and one of the bottles. Bighana pointed, and Marius went to the small wood-burning stove set off in one corner and found an enormous pot on top of it, apparently filled with water, and a ladle set just next to it. It was awkward, working with the baby on one arm, but he finally managed to open the bottle and pour a dipper full of hot water into it. Looking to Bighana for guidance, he followed her point to a large barrel of water in the corner of the room and mixed it with the hot until it was cool enough. He'd filled the bottle with too much hot, though, and he ended up pouring some out before he could get the right temperature. Then there wasn't enough room for the powder, and he ended up pouring out more.

Great. Totally incompetent, as usual. And the whole time the baby screamed, the sound somehow making his hands shake with nerves. Still, he finally managed to finish the task, swirling the weird-smelling powder and water carefully so that he didn't slop or shake any air into it. The bottle had fallen into three pieces when he'd opened it – the nipple, the bottle itself, and a ring that connected the two. He managed to maneuver the three back together, finally, but then he was stuck. Now what?

“Here,” Bighana said, taking the bottle out of his hands, “Si' down and slow down. Whatever she' sayin' now, she' not abou' to die with those lungs. Ran, tend the stove, please.”

“I'm going to burn everything.” He hadn't noticed the girl, but now he saw her, getting up from where she'd been preparing green beans in a corner.

“Yeh will not,” Bighana retorted, sounding amused. “Do as I ask please.”

“I will so,” Ran said, walking over to a second stove to stand on a stool and stir the gigantic pot that was cooking there. “Just you wait.”

Bighana pulled a stool out from under the huge slab table that dominated the kitchen and pushed him into it with surprising strength. “Hold her with her head by your left elbow.” Freeing his hair from the kid's grip, Marius gingerly shifted her back onto one arm and looked up at the cook hopefully. She just handed him the bottle, and he took it, carefully putting the nipple of the bottle in the the squalling infant's open mouth. The kid just screamed around it, and Bighana sighed.

“How've you kept her alive this long, lad?”

“It's been all of two hours,” he snapped back in frustration. “She's not even mine. Her mother just fucking shoved her at me. It's not like I wanted the stupid helpless thing.”

“Watch yer language in front of my daughter please,” Bighana said calmly, effectively quelling some of his panic. “And relax. This ain' that hard. She jus' don' know the bottle's there. Run it around her gums gently. She'll figure it out.”

Taking a breath, Marius did as he was told, and after a moment the baby did latch onto it, sucking happily and mercifully quiet.

“Thank you,” he said finally. “I'm sorry.”

“What's her name?” Bighana asked him.

“Mo-Moriyana,” he remembered, trying to relax. “Moriyana, plus something too long for me to really remember.”

“Pretty name,” Bighana commented, looking down at the finally-happy baby. “An' look at all that hair. She's a real darling li'l thing, ain' she?”

Finally actually looking at the tiny person he'd so inauspiciously acquired, Marius saw some of what Bighana was talking about. The child's eyes were closed, as if her entire consciousness was wrapped up in the act of drinking from the bottle in her mouth, and it seemed suddenly strange that she could make so much noise or cause him so much trouble. There was something oddly beautiful about her tiny face.

Her mom's dead. Dad, too, if the mom needing to shove her at me is any indication. Suddenly the fact seemed a tragedy. How are you going to survive, kid? he thought at her. Reminded of her mother's assertion that she would die if he didn't keep her, he bit his lip hard. It didn't seem so unlikely, now. It could even be straight fact, in this world.

“Her mom told me she'd die if I didn't take her,” he found himself telling Bighana. “Could that be true? Could there be a reason that it had to be me?”

Bighana frowned at him thoughtfully. “It ain' likely,” she answered slowly, “but maybe. Mos' littles need to be raised by their own species. I've heard tell that sometimes it's more specific than that, but I don' know the particulars.”

“Great,” Marius answered, going back to his inspection and trying not to think too much on that. It's just a hallucination, he reminded himself. Nothing to worry about.

Touching her hair gently, he pulled one of the short curls straight and let it go. It sprang back into place, and he almost smiled. The hair was incredibly soft. After a moment of staring, though, he realized that it was not black, as he'd originally thought, but really a very dark purple.

Swallowing hard, he carefully propped the bottle against his chest and gently examined the baby's hands and feet and face with his free hand, looking for anything else strange. She apparently liked this, and released the bottle as she giggled and kicked the foot he was holding. The air rushed into the bottle as he caught it, making a strange bubbling noise. Oh. Vacuum. Whoops. He set the bottle back up for her, and continued with his inspection, paying attention this time to make sure he made her let go once in a while.

Her ears were just slightly pointed, he finally discovered, but other than that the only strangeness he found was a stud and tiny hoop in the cartilage of her upper ear, where he had two hoops. Exploring further, he found that they had no clasps. Reaching up to his own, he found the same thing.

Great. Yey for permanent body jewelry. Strange that a five-month-old would already have it. Her mother had said something, when she'd given him his – that he'd need them? Definitely strange. But he was relieved that that was all. Her mother was from this world. It wouldn't have surprised him much, at this point, to find that her child had horns or a tail or something.

Bighana had found a basket somewhere, and was lining it carefully with some clean towels. “Umm...excuse me?” he said to get her attention. “Do- do you know why she'd have purple hair?”

Bighana snorted without looking up from her task. “Why shouldn' she? She' some kinda fae. They have the colorfullest hair you'll ever see, and not a one of them quite alike.”

Fae. Like fairy? “You- you're telling me she's not human?”

Bighana turned her head to frown at him. “Yer from the other side, ain' you?”

“Other side of what?” he asked her.

“Other side of the divide,” she said, apparently finishing with the basket. “Yeh got here through a gate? From the United States, or the like?”

Hearing the words 'United States' on her lips gave him a jolt, and he realized with a shock just how fast he'd come to take his surroundings for reality.

“Yeah,” he said. “I came in through the arch on tenth street.” It was strange to talk about it normally. I dreamed that I came through the imaginary gate on nonexistent tenth street. Except that it was increasingly hard, after two hours, to really believe that this wasn't reality. Strange as things were, the world was solid. He could see and smell and touch things, and what he saw corresponded to what he smelled and felt and heard. No dream he'd ever had had been this...rich; perfect. Hallucination. Not a dream. Totally different kettle of fish.

“You a witch?” Bighana asked next, pulling some kitchen tools out of a cupboard.

Marius looked at her strangely. “No? I mean, I don't think so?”

“You don' know nothing, do you?” Bighana asked, sounding dismayed. “What idiot brought yeh through without making sure you go' taken care of?”

“Same idiot as shoved a five-month-old baby into the arms of a sixteen-year-old boy,” he answered her. “Today is not being my day.”

“And it is not going to get better if I don't feed you,” Madame Harlot said from the doorway, startling him. “She's done eating and swallowing air won't do her any good. Get to work, please.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he told her quickly, pulling the bottle from the baby's mouth and putting it down on the table.

“Burp her,” Bighana said, taking over the work on the green beans as she watched him. Marius froze partway to standing and sat back down, unsure who to obey and worried about Harlot's reaction. Bighana came to his rescue, turning to Harlot and saying, “and don' yeh give him a hard time, Rosalind, the boy jus' got here and there's no point lettin' the chil' throw her food back up.”

Marius was tense for a moment, but finally Harlot gave him a nod. “Go ahead. But mind you get your babying over with before work on other days,” she told him. “I'm not running a charity.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. “Thank you.”

“The name's Harlot,” Harlot repeated to him.

“Harlot,” he confirmed again. “Sorry.”

To his surprise, she grinned at him. “You'll get used to it.”

Burping, he'd seen. At least on television. Looking to Bighana for confirmation, he shifted the baby up so she was leaning on his shoulder and tapped her back gently. It was Harlot that alerted him, though, as she didn't attempt to hide her smirk.

He stopped. “What?”

Harlot just smiled broader, but Bighana explained. “If yeh don' put a cloth on your shoulder, yer likely to end up with a wet shirt. And the chil' won't break. You can pat her pretty firmly.”

“Oh,” Marius said, glaring at Harlot before remembering that she was his boss and focusing back on Bighana. “Thanks.”

Reaching back into the diaper bag, he pulled out one of the washcloths and draped it over his shoulder before once again lifting the baby, one arm under her rump and another holding her up to his shoulder and patting. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes of this, the sleepy baby made a little hiccuping noise and urped up a small quantity of gross-smelling whitish baby formula onto the towel.

“Ugh,” he protested, pulling the baby off his shoulder to hold her up in front of him. “You're gross.” The baby just grinned back at him, more of the white stuff still dripping from her mouth. Taking the washcloth back off his shoulder, he used it to wipe her face.

“Am I done, now?” he asked Bighana, realizing that Harlot had left and Bighana had returned to working at the stove.

She smiled over her shoulder. “For now. Her basket's ready. Make sure she' tucked in and warm enough and then come help with the potatoes.”

Bringing the diaper bag with him, Marius went to the basket and tried to lay the baby down only to find that she had once again latched a hand onto his hair. Pulling only made her grip harder.

“Come on, kiddo, let me go,” he said. Finally giving up on pulling, he instead put the diaper bag down and worked on her hand, gently opening her fisted fingers and working his hair out from between them. Finally, he could put her down, and he tucked her in as best he could. Sighing in relief, he got back to Bighana just in time to hear her start to cry again. He turned back toward her, but Bighana interrupted the movement.

“Leave her, lad,” she told him. “She' fine.”

He hesitated, swallowing. She was not fine. She was crying. Somehow the sound seemed to communicate that nothing in the world was fine.

“Harlot really won' feed you if yeh don' work,” Bighana said more sharply.

“Yes ma'am,” he said, fighting to keep it from sounding hostile as he moved away from the infant and towards her. “What do you want me to do?”

“Wash your hands, first.”

There was no sink, he realized. Instead there was a basin of water, and a pinkish grey bar of harsh soap. He washed his hands in the freezing water as ordered, and Bighana set him to peeling potatoes with a knife. He focused hard on the task, using it to distract him from the baby's continuing cries. He found that the sound put his teeth on edge, and he couldn't relax at all. After ten minutes or so, though, the baby stopped crying and fell asleep, and Bighana spoke to him again as his shoulders relaxed.

“You should get a carrier,” she told him. “I've no problem with you caring for her and working at the same time.”

“Thanks,” he said, once again wrestling to keep his frustration out of his voice. His situation was not Bighana's fault, and as Harlot had pointed out, this was not a charitable organization. He should just be grateful that he'd found the job so fast and had a place to stay for the night, instead of sleeping on the streets in the equivalent of a foreign country.

Just get through today, he told himself. Tomorrow will be better.

Today, though - there were a lot of potatoes, and he found quickly that his hands got tired and sore, unused to the repetitive activity. Even better, the potatoes he was peeling came out lumpy, and he knew he was wasting some of the flesh as he gouged them. He could type fifty words a minute, but apparently peeling potatoes was not his forte. And the likelihood that I can get a job in IT in a world where there's shit running down the street? Not high. So far the only way his high school education had helped him was the Spanish.

After the potatoes were done, he was set to washing dishes, using the same soap he'd used for his hands, as Bighana cooked. The water was freezing, and no relief to his sore hands as he washed the dishes in a bucket of soapy water and dumped them in a basin of clean. When the second basin filled with dishes, he dried them and put them where Bighana pointed them, then returned to washing. Quickly, the water he washed the dishes in was filthy, and the rinse water was soapy. He pointed the problem out to Bighana, but she just shrugged.

“We're a pub, not a hunt club,” was all she said.

Oookay, Marius thought, turning his mind from the thought that these were the dishes he'd be eating off of later and returning to his 'washing'.

Seeming to sense his unease, Bighana smiled slightly. “It was only recently the government stepped in t' help keep the sewage out of the drinking water, lad. There' some plumbing uptown, but down here we haul water from the well. Yer just lucky my husband hauls it every mornin' or that'd be your job.”

Ah. Marius just focused on his washing without responding. There was only so much of this 'new world' he could take in in a day. For now, he was washing dishes.

Dishes, too, were hard work in these numbers, he discovered, his back and feet starting to get sore. His skin had felt a bit rubbed from the knife, earlier, but now it felt dry, and the parts that had been sore were stinging. And he wasn't making any headway, either, as Bighana kept cooking and producing dishes and then needing them clean for another step of the process. He became mostly numb to it, after awhile, but his head snapped up again when the baby woke up and started to fuss. Oh right. Baby. He'd almost forgotten she was there. How long has it been? An hour? Two hours?

“Go ahead and take a break, lad,” Bighana told him. “She'll probably need a diaper change, and I can spare you for a bit. You'll have to make it up later, but it's not healthy leaving her dirty. Ran, take over for the boy for a bit?”

“Thanks,” he said, placing the remainder of the dishes in the dirty water to soak and rinsing his hands in the soapy rinse water. Straightening up sent a stab of pain to his back, and he twisted, hoping to ease the strain before needing to work again. Going back to the baby, he lifted her carefully to bring her to his chest, remembering his cold hands as he felt how warm she was. “Hi, baby,” he told her. No longer fussing, she grabbed his hair and pulled it clumsily towards her mouth. “Great, thanks,” he said, holding her securely to his chest. “It was just getting dry.”

“Where do you want me to do this?” he asked Bighana.

“Table's good,” Bighana answered without turning. “It needs to be wiped down before I use it anyway, so as long as you set out a diaper pad it should be fine.”

That hardly seemed sanitary, but then that seemed to be SOP around here. “Thanks.”

Once more digging in the supply bag, he pulled out what he'd identified earlier as a diaper pad and laid it out on the table. He had no clue how to change a diaper, but surely it wasn't that hard? As it happened, though, the baby's mom had once again anticipated him: as he pulled the diaper out of the bag he found a neat note in the same handwriting as the instructions on the baby formula. Holding the baby awkwardly with one arm, he unfolded the note with the other and read:

Moriyana is sensitive to diaper rash. Make sure she's really clean – without using soap – then wrap her in a clean diaper. The diaper goes short side to the front (marked with a blue dot), and is clipped with two of the little metal tabs in the smallest silk pouch. Use the clips to connect the side flaps to the part of the diaper that comes up between her legs. In case I didn't get a chance to say it before, thank you for taking my daughter. I realize you don't know me, and that I didn't give you much of a choice, but I know you'll take good care of her. Goddess bless, Lliannan.

Marius read the note twice, an uncomfortable feeling growing in his gut. You don't even know me, woman. This 'Lliannan' either had a completely naïve faith in the goodness of human nature, or she was just so desperate that she was lying to herself. Probably the latter, he admitted to himself. How could she have felt, finally tracking him down and discovering that her 'savior' was only sixteen years old? Completely relieved, he realized. She didn't have ten minutes to spare. Why him, though?

Realizing that he was staring at the note without moving, he put it down next to the diaper pad and got to work following its instructions. Clean, without using soap. He had washcloths, but they were dry.

“Bighana?” he asked tentatively. “Do you have any more warm water to spare?”

“Remainder o' the rice water by the stove,” she told him. “Shoul' be fine for washing, and I'll be using it on the floor later so it don' have to be perfectly clean.”

Marius nodded and, still carrying the baby on one arm, went back to the stove and to the pot of still-warm water. It smelled like the rice that had cooked in it, but otherwise seemed clean. He soaked the washcloth in it, squeezed it out as best he could with one hand, and went back to the table.

Don't let her roll off, he reminded himself as he lay the squirming infant down on the table and worked at undoing the tabs holding the diaper on. Mercifully, it was only wet, not soiled. He put it aside and reluctantly wiped at the baby's bum with the moist cloth.

“Grab her ankles and lift her,” Bighana told him, talking over her shoulder.

That did make it easier, he discovered, and soon enough he'd figured out the rest of the progress and had the baby back dressed. The diaper wasn't as neat as the dirty one had been, but it'd do for now.

Finally. Now he'd be free for another couple of hours. Well, sort of, he realized as he wrapped the dirty diaper in the washcloth and put it away in the diaper bag, then gathered up Moriyana and put her back in the basket.

“Dishes?” he asked Bighana shortly.

“Switch out the water, firs',” she told him. “Dump the dirty in the sewer trench and replace it with clean from the barrel. Then yeh come back and use the old rinse water to wash. We jus' opened. Yeh wash 'til they leave and we're done cleaning up, then yeh eat.”

Great. And he'd been hungry before he even started.

It felt weird, leaving the baby in the basket and walking away, but she was safe with Bighana, and he had work to do. Yey. Hauling dirty water. Even more fun than dishes.

As lunch went on, the dishes went out clean and came in dirty in enormous numbers. He was grateful for the close presence of the stove, though it made him sweat. With his hands as cold as they were, the heat was nice. It was about the only thing that felt good, at the moment. He was in pain. His feet and back were both really sore, and his shoulders had started to ache as well.

Finally the baby started to cry, again, and this time he just put his head down and kept washing. He was hungry, too. There wasn't anything he could do about it, for either of them, until lunch was over.

“Ran!” Bighana called over the clattering of the dishes and the common room noise. It startled him, and he realized that the child had been there as long as he was, chattering to Bighana and constantly doing something. Generally smaller tasks, like shelling peas or slicing apples, but Ran worked.

She's like nine! He thought, unsure whether to be appalled or impressed. The girl didn't seen run down, though. Her chatter remained cheerful throughout, and she did her brainless tasks and joked with her mother without any sign of tiring.

“Mama?” Ran answered her mother.

“Take over the dishes please,” Bighana told her.

“Awwwww,” the girl complained, “I hate dishes!”

“Yes, please,” Bighana told her firmly before turning to him. “Quickly, boy. You're making up the time at the end of your shift, remember.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he told her, unsure whether to be grateful for the reprieve. The fact that Ran promptly took over and proved to be more adept at the dishes than he was didn't help. Once again, he went through the process of mixing cold water from the barrel with hot from the stove and then adding and mixing in the powder. He had an easier time of it, this time, and soon he found himself seated at the table, holding the baby carefully as he fed her. Sitting down felt amazing.

God, I hurt. He'd thought that track practice was bad, but that was just muscle-tired. That hurt, but it felt healthy, too. This did not feel healthy. And he still had at least a couple hours in his shift. I'll live, he told himself again. Tomorrow will be better. And the break was good, even if it did add to the length of his shift. He could almost be grateful for the kid's screaming.

Moriyana, he remembered. What a mouthful. It was just such a long name for such a small person. Mo, he decided. If I'm going to be stuck with her, I'll call her what I want to.

Meanwhile, the kid was drinking from the bottle like she'd never had anything so good in her life. “Just wait 'till you've had chocolate,” he told her tiredly. “Way, way, better than instant milkshake, I promise you.”

“You do realize she can't understand you, right?” Harlot asked, startling him. Looking up at her, he felt himself blush.

“I don't talk to babies,” he told her.

“Clearly,” his boss answered, turning away from him and talking to Bighana. “Kahrn's back,” she said. “Wants room two tonight 'til at least a week. Do you remember if the weres check out today?”

“They do,” Bighana answered her from her place at the stove. “Do tell him 'bout the l'il'un, though. I won' tolerate him causing trouble.”

“Kahrn? Cause trouble? The man's got a stick up his ass,” Harlot answered her. “He wouldn't know how to cause trouble if you got him drunk and sent him to Mistress Buri's. Besides, the kid's all of five months old. He'll be fine.”

They were talking about Mo, Marius realized, stroking her head with one hand. “Why would it be a problem?” he asked them.

“Kahrn's an elf,” Harlot said shortly.

Oookay, Marius thought. Kahrn's an elf. “And...?”

“And Moriyana is fae,” Harlot stated, face and tone clearly indicating that he was being slow.

“I don't understand,” Marius finally said, shifting Mo as he realized his arm was falling asleep. She protested faintly as the bottle was pulled briefly away from her, then settled again.

“He's from the other side,” Bighana explained over her shoulder to Harlot, cutting some sort of fruit into thin slices. “Came in through the one-way on tenth.”

“On his own?” Harlot questioned, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

“Kid don' know jack,” Bighana confirmed as Marius looked between them. Was his situation unusual, then? Come to think of it, they'd probably come up with some system if people like me showed up all the time, wouldn't they? The guard had genuinely believed that he was trying to cheat her.

Harlot seemed impressed. “You got screwed over but good, then,” she said to him.

“Yeah,” he replied, once again looking down at Mo, and feeling a sense of panic growing in his chest. What the hell am I doing here?

“You a witch?” Harlot asked.

“No,” he answered, before stopping and thinking. “Actually, I don't know. As Bighana pointed out, I don't know shit.” Which is interesting, considering I'm going on the assumption that I'm making all this up myself.

“You'd know,” Harlot told him. The certainty in her voice alerted him, and he looked away from Mo to look at her face. “Even in your world, it'd be obvious by now. Tough luck. Witching's damned profitable. Better than this, anyway.”

He was still just trying to process the fact that they were casually talking about witches as if they existed. “You- you mentioned weres earlier. You meant werewolves?”

“In this case, yes,” Harlot told him. “They're most common, and the others usually have their own group names.”

Yes, clearly. Werewolves, but also others. “Like what?” he found himself asking.

“Hmm...,” Bighana said, “the Amazons, in South America, they could be called were-jaguars... and there're a couple of different species of were-cat around...Rajas, those are tigers...were-cats are the next most common after the wolves.”

“Not a lot of others, actually,” Harlot continued. “Were-rats? Maybe? Were-hyena?” She looked to Bighana for confirmation and the latter frowned.

“Maybe,” Bighana said. “Around here all we get are the wolves and the occasional cat, though. The others are real exotics, and you can't really be sure what's real and what's legend.”

Funny how statements like that were starting to sound like normal conversation. Oh no, those are the real exotics. Not nearly so common as your average werewolf.

Finally, Mo was finished eating, and the note on the formula had said she'd throw up if she swallowed air. He pulled the bottle away with a sense of relief and dug in his bag for the same washcloth he'd used to burp her before. He knew what to do, this time, and soon enough she was back in her basket and he was taking the dishes back from Ran, the pain in his back reawakening as he bent over the sink. He almost welcomed it as a relatively normal distraction, after the confusion of the previous conversations.

Harlot had left when he stopped talking, saying something about being needed in the common room, and Bighana didn't bug him as he focused back on his task. Quickly his world narrowed to the repetitive grab-scrub-rinse-stack pattern, driving unpleasant thoughts from his head, until Bighana finally touched his arm to get him to stop. “Marius,” she said, looking him in the eyes when he looked up. “Yer done, lad. I've food for you.”

Oh, shit, how long had he been working? “I- what?” he asked, suddenly feeling the strain of the last hours. His feet had gone from merely sore to feeling like his heel bones might just poke out through the bottom of them. He'd thought his back was sore before, but now he felt like he'd be permanently incapable of standing up straight. His shoulders and biceps were exhausted, too, but that at least didn't feel like he'd injured anything. “Is the kid okay?” he finally asked, realizing that he'd been ignoring her, too.

“She's asleep,” Bighana told him. “She'll need a diaper change after her nap, but for now you can sit and eat your lunch.”

Right. Lunch. He was so tired that, hungry as he was, he couldn't muster much enthusiasm.

Bighana was already holding out a plate for him. “Take it into the common room,” she told him. “I've still work to do, but I'll hollar if the lil'un does.”

“Thanks,” he told her, taking the plate. The food was strange, he realized dimly. It looked like porridge, and he recognized the potatoes he'd peeled right next to it, but the porridge was a strange, decidedly grey color, flecked with purple. Weird.

“Let me know if you want more,” Bighana told him. “It's cheap, and Harlot told me that it and a bed are all we're paying you.”

Thanking her again, Marius headed out to the common room. He knew in theory that it had been full earlier, but now the only occupant was a wrinkled, very sharp-faced...man...who smiled as he entered to reveal numerous small, sharp teeth.

“Uh...hi,” Marius said.

The creature just smiled broader without saying anything. Shivering slightly at the strange expression, Marius turned away, tucking himself into a corner off one side where he could see the room without being disturbed.

The food tasted nearly as strange as it looked. It wasn't bad, by any means, but having faintly purple porridge that tasted more like a combination of almonds and coconut, and yet showed no evidence of either, was definitely odd. What he'd thought were potatoes were strange too, tasting stronger than they should have – slightly radishy, but with a texture still identical to potato. He had to wonder if they were potatoes at all. Certainly they were some sort of root, but he really didn't know enough of plants to know whether they existed in his world at home, or if they were unique to this one.

As he was finishing the plate, and deciding whether he wanted another, a young man came in and headed straight back to the kitchen, then emerged again quickly with a plate of food similar to Marius'.

The man was...strange. Human-looking, but still nearly as strange to Marius as the other beings he'd met. Roughly 25 years old, very buff, and dressed in tight brown-leather pants and an even tighter sleeveless shirt, cut short to display some of his stomach. Straight hair cut long in the front flopped down into his face, giving him a strangely boyish look. His features were strong and masculine, but, strangest of all, accented with makeup. Eyeliner made his eyes exotic, and oddly feminine, while his lips were reddened just a tad with what had to be lipstick.

Marius wasn't totally innocent. He's a stripper, he realized after a bit. Or, well, a dancer, at least. Though men wearing makeup could be normal in this world, actually. As he looked at him, though, Marius suddenly realized that the man was staring back, a slight smile on his painted lips. “Like what you see?” he asked Marius bluntly.

Marius blushed. “I'm sorry,” he said, looking down.

“I am quite used to being stared at, boy,” the man said, then smiled a bit broader. “Though I'll admit I'm used to getting paid for it.”

Teach me to stare, Marius thought dumbly, focusing carefully on his plate and fighting back his blush.

“Naw, don't be like that,” the man said next. “My name's Jordan, yes, I'm a stripper, and I sleep here. Now your turn.”

Marius looked up, feeling his blush increasing but refusing to stammer. “Marius. I work here.”

He half expected the man – Jordan, he remembered – to give the condescending, “now was that so hard?” reply, but instead he just smiled further. “Nice to meet you, Marius. Harlot's probably quite pleased, she's been looking to hire for awhile now but nobody would take what she was able to offer.”

Good to know he was the only one quite that desperate.

The young man cocked his head. “I certainly did not mean it as an insult,” he said curiously. “Far be it for me to blame a man for how he gets his money.” He paused a moment, then frowned. “Come to that, if you ever need to make more I'd be happy to refer you to my boss.”

Horrified, it was all Marius could do to control his expression as he shook his head vehemently. “No, thank you. I'll take the dishes.” God forbid I ever get that desperate. He had food and a bed. That was enough.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A/n: Thanks for reading!! Hope you enjoyed!! Please comment!