A Cleansing Interlude (Possibly Part 1)

[rix_scaedu]

I wrote this in response to jeriendhal's prompt, and I though we were going to touch on mind control or something (my apologies again to Lady Melanie), but what do I know?

It is, for those who read Nai, a quick, tiny glimpse into the future.

The courtyard house still a rental but they were in, and cleaning was underway. The bedrooms we were using, mine in the main house and Master Que’s in the east house, were habitable but we’d be eating out for a day or two yet until the gas plumber, the water plumber, and the electrician had done some unexpectedly necessary things in the main kitchen. For now we were cleaning the old classroom that was going to be the training room.

Our bedrooms had some advantages on the cleaning front. They’d had furniture in them that the, hopefully, soon to be former owners would be removing so we’d been able to move that to ground floor rooms, thus clearing our spaces and making it easier for their removalists in the long run. That had removed a lot of the dust, right there.

The large room had stood empty of furniture and floor coverings for who knew how long, and dust was everywhere – it even filled the cracks in the floor boards. When I looked, not just glanced, there were dusty cobwebs hanging from the ceiling far too high to be reached with any brush or broom. Dust even clung to the walls, painted plaster and varnished wood both.

I looked at my broom, dust pan, brushes and cloths.

I quailed.

It would take days.

It’s dust. The thought had the same tone I gave the mental voice of Wu Jen when I read Thoughts from the Floating Mountain and his other books.

I put the brushes down and took up a gi opening stance. I can do dust.