There are only two washboards in town.
An amendment, there are two washboards and the rusty thing that may have been a washboard once in its life but it would probably take a month of scrubbing it to make it useful enough to scrub clothes against. Honestly, when Shelby came wielding it like the holy grail out of the castle ruins, someone should have taken it and thrown it off the bridge for all the use it was.
So there was two washboards in town, and a week's worth of washing from twelve people. Thank the spirits that Pearl was looking for somewhere to move and Legundo was a traveller otherwise there would be none.
So with two washboards, a bit or rope for a drying line and three baskets of clothes, off Cleo goes to the river; with Pearl, Drift and the doctor trailing behind. You'd think more people could help but it turns out half of them didn't know how and the other half she didn't trust to actually do a good job.
So a trade was made, Cleo, and her rag tag group of partially bullied volunteers, would get the clothes clean. In return, the farms would be weeded, the animal pens cleaned and manure spread on the crops, the fire wood chopped and the hearths swept. Martyn even volunteered to darn some socks for them.
It just about made standing barefoot in the freezing cold river, skirts hitched and tied, worth it.
Drift had blushed and admitted when they arrived that she had no idea how to wash clothes either, always paying a washerwoman who lived below her to do her clothes each Saturday. Cleo had sighed and set her about rinsing clothes in the river to get off any surface dirt before passing them to Pearl to actually scrub in a tin tub with soap and water.
Cleo took the other board and scrubbed and rinsed the clothes clean of soap before passing them to the doctor to hang up. Legundo had tied neat knots, fixing the rope between two ancient trees, before hanging each item over it, in the hope the breeze would dry them out before they had to leave.
To be honest it was repetitive work. Pearl tried to amuse them by playing 'guess who's washing this is' but it got a bit repetitive fast. Drift told some stories of her time in the city. Legundo often wandered off to try and find some herb or other he could use in his makeshift clinic.
Conversation wandered from topic to topic until Drift finally asked.
"So, what did you want to be when you were a child?"
Cleo paused for a moment, glancing over to the other two women. She hadn't really thought about what she wanted to do in years, probably not since she was a child in her early years.
Pearl grinned wolfishly as her eyes lit up, " I wanted to be postman. Used to always watch them come in the morning. Mom thought I was mad getting up so early."
Drift chuckled as she grabbed another shirt from the basket.
"Yeah, I get that. I told my dad I wanted to be a pirate after reading Treasure Island. Farther said it wasn't lady like." She sighed, brow furrowed as she wrung the water out the shirt, "Don't think he would have liked the detective thing either."
"Well I think it's pretty cool." Pearl said, taking the shirt from her. Drift gave her a small smile in response, before taking another item to rinse in the river.
The crunching of stones on the river shore announced the Doctor's return from wherever he had been. His satchel slightly fuller than when he had left.
"Hey, Doc, what did you want to be when you were younger?" Pearl called out.
Legundo gave a startled huh, before turning to face her. Cleo had noticed that. If you were quiet enough, you could approach the doctor from one side without him noticing. Hell you didn't have to be that quiet, it was a miracle that everyone was so loud that he wasn't constantly startled.
"Ayy, I know it was a long time now, but when you were a kid, what did you want to be?" Drift teased, gaining a snort from the doctor.
"A knight, I think. Or some of that vein." He said, rubbing the back of his neck in thought. "I liked the idea of helping people, defeating some great evil."
The doctor's laugh that followed was slightly too hollow.
"What a foolish kid I was." He muttered quietly to himself, Cleo almost misses it.
Pearl turned to her, "What about you?"
Cleo blinked for a moment. What should she say. They couldn't exactly say the truth, no normal child wishes to be a vampire when they were older. After all, they were supposed to be things of legends. But it had been so assured, wrapped in her mother's embrace. A soft voice telling her the plan laid out for her. It was bittersweet to think of being wrapped in her cool arms, decanter of blood on the table beside them.
After... Well she didn't really think. Thinking meant processing, and processing meant experiencing. There are things no person can truly experience enough to get numb to. It wasn't a place to think of the future, the future just held the same horrors as the present.
Then all she wanted was to be free.
"I was always going to be a farmer."
