Ber woke to the sound of violent retching and blearily wondered, not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be worth it to spend the entirety of his earnings on renting a private room in some shabby little inn after all. The military promised a living wage, but for new recruits like himself who only had the clothes on their back, it apparently took some time before the promise became reality. What little he made was enough to cover cheap housing and food, provided he didn’t mind sleeping in a place where the building appeared equally likely to collapse in on him as it did to remain standing throughout the night and an abundance of fresh air was less of a choice and more of an obligation - or if he decided to forego food, housing in a somewhat nicer accommodation. Unfortunately, he had not yet figured out how to subsist solely on air and a lack of structural integrity in a potential home did not appeal to him, so midnight found him laying in the barracks, with his face in his pillow, half-awake, and desperately wishing for whoever was being sick in the barracks to either go outside or at least be quieter.

And then the smell hit him, and his stomach did its own sympathetic twist.

A tendril of dread began to worm its way through the clouds of semi-consciousness alongside the dawning realization that the unpleasant noises and odors seemed awfully strong for activities that were supposed to happening in the lavatory. Please, if there is any kindness in the world, don’t— was all he had time to plead before the spewing started - from right next to his bed.

Moments later, the cry of alarm sounded from a few bunks over, and Ber listened as the occupants of beds further from the epicenter than his own scrambled for the door. He did not move, as if he could force the night’s disruption to undo itself simply by fooling it into thinking he was still asleep. There was an unofficial understanding that came with sharing a limited amount of space with many other people, which was that in order to respect personal space as much as possible, each man’s bed and the small area immediately around it was his own. If the event had occurred farther from his bunk, he could have - and likely would have - fled with the others and ignored it, insofar as he’d be able, but that street ran both ways: since it was next to his bed, it officially became his problem.

Ber groaned into his pillow. He did not want it to be his problem.

Turning his head back to the side, he opened his eyes to see Octavius’s shadowy form in the next bed over, already dutifully sitting up. He only knew him peripherally, only about as much as one could know their bunk-neighbor in the short month since the older soldier had started sleeping there, but Ber thought he seemed like a good man. It wouldn’t be very kind of him to leave him alone with the mess that was in both of their spaces. With a sigh - which he immediately regretted because, stars above, that smell could decimate an army - he pushed himself up and peered down over the edge.

Luckily, because he claimed the top bunk as his own, Ber and his bed seemed to have managed to escape most of the physical mess as it was aimed, in the loosest sense of the word, primarily downward. The other soldier, a new recruit whose name he didn’t know but whose face he recalled seeing around a few times, was apologizing and offering to help clean everything up, even as his shoulders rose and fell with new rounds of nausea. Sitting up properly, Ber rubbed his hand over his face and waved him to the door. “Kid,” He said, with a weariness that sounded as though he had aged many years in the few minutes since waking up. “Just go outside before you make more of a mess. Please.”

To Octavius, he called out, “Let me go get some light,” before jumping down on the other side of his bunk, where he grabbed an unlit oil lamp hanging on the wall. After checking that it still had enough fuel - it did, thankfully - and carefully lighting it using the flame that illuminated the entrance to the room, he cautiously made his way back toward his bed. Held high in the air to cast the most amount of light, the oil light was moderately effective and lighting nearby areas in a flickering, orange glow - enough so, that he could at least see the mess before he stepped in it. “This is disgusting,” He reiterated simply, tiptoeing to the wall on clean stone where he hung the lamp. Then, despondently, he turned back toward the rancid puddle of assorted bodily fluids that pooled on the floor as if they were mocking him. “And dealing with it is about the last thing I want to be doing right now.”

Octavius' father was an inkeeper. They'd toiled all of Octavius' life and even before it to establish something to pass to the generations, a landmark that would make the family proud and start a legacy. If Octavius sat to recount all that he had had to wipe, scrub, or mop up over the years, not only would it serve to lose him every friend he had, but it would take the rest of the night. The body had many orifices, and could create a great selection of consistencies of liquids. As he slung his feet to the floor, glancing down hopelessly at the splattering that had managed to reach his covers, he reminded himself that even this couldn't be worse than volleying, dropping, and then scrubbing up what remained of the placenta that had been tugged out from between the legs of that woman who had decided to have her child in the middle of the tavern when he was fifteen. That night was forever etched into his memory.

"Good idea." Octavius intoned sleepily, casting a hesitant eye over the options he could spot in the dimness of the unlit room and deciding on his blanket. He'd burn it, and if he had to sleep without in the nights to follow then that was okay.

"We're going to need water, too." He called after...the soldier. Dammit, he knew his name. He'd heard someone say it. Bear? Barin. Ranger? No, he couldn't remember. Before getting to work, Octavius reaching into the bag at the foot of his bed and procured a shirt. He tied it around his face. It was an attempt.

"It's not a placenta." Octavius murmured aloud to himself, taking up his blanket and easing towards the floor with a groan.

“Got it,” Ber called back, trying to decipher dark puddle from innocuous shadow while carefully picking his way back toward the door. To himself, he muttered, “Water. Right.” There was a cistern for collecting rainwater nearby, and rubbing the remaining sleep from his eyes, he grabbed a bucket and started making his way there.

Unsurprisingly, the castle was quiet in the middle of the night apart from the collection of soldiers milling around the now nearly abandoned barracks. Arguing that the sooner they cleaned the room, the faster they could get to sleeping in beds rather than on stone floors, he roped some of them into at least helping him bring back more water to wash the floor with and sent a couple others off to finding proper cleaning materials. Low-burning torches and lamps lit his path to and from the cistern, where they encountered only one or two other sleepless wanderers, and it was with the small group of reluctant helpers that he re-entered the barracks.

The smell was worse than he remembered. Gritting his teeth, he carried the water over to where Octavius - knelt? crouched? with the shadows and flickering light, he wasn’t sure and didn’t much care, to be honest - with what looked like a blanket in hand. “Brought some water,” Ber said, setting down the bucket on a nearby clean patch of stone and gesturing for the others to do the same. They obliged and then escaped once more. “Have they come back with cleaning stuff yet? I told them to get some. Oh - does that actually help?” He had spotted the fabric tied off around the bottom half of Octavius’s face. Reaching over, Ber grabbed a random shirt from his own set of clothes, and if it seemed like the makeshift mask made a difference, he, too, was about to tie it around his face.

The ground sloshed beneath him as he pressed the blanket to it, hoping it would serve to absorb some of what had spewed out. It was a thick blanket, so he felt nothing on his hands. Yet. Octavius did his best to gather the juices, frowning in the darkness, as if doing so would enhance his sight. When the new recruit returned he breathed a sigh of relief, hoping a little watery help would dilute the poo and relieve him some.

"A little." He panted. "The trick is to breathe deeply of the cloth. Mine happens to be a sweaty shirt and it's a preferrable stench. Can you get the pail and tip just a little out?"

At the very least, Ber thought as he tied his own shirt around his face in a fashion similar to how Octavius had tied his own. It’ll stop me from accidentally eating shit. Hopefully. Not only was the floor treacherous in a sanitary sense, but the puddles of bodily fluids were also slipping hazards. He did not fancy the thought of losing his balance while trying to clean and becoming even more familiar with the insides of that sickly kid. Taking a cautious breath like the older soldier had instructed, Ber found that the stench was marginally less overwhelming.

“Anything’s preferable to this, I think,” He said, reaching back down for the bucket and carefully tipping a little out. “Here, look out.” He didn’t want to splash Octavius with any of the water or other… fluids. Turning, he quickly scanned his own bunk for something that he wouldn’t mind sacrificing to help clean up the mess and settled on a blanket of his own, an old secondhand one that was getting rather worn anyway. He moved to the other side of the pool and began trying to consolidate the mess. “Did you see who got sick?” After some time spent cleaning in silence, Ber’s curiosity finally prompted him to ask the question. “It was someone new, but I didn’t know his name.”

Octavius hung back as the bucket was tipped and some water joined the mess of liquid on the floor. He used the blanket to slosh it around, hoping it would serve to convince the stones not to hold the stench, for something far worse than suffering the smell this night would be to suffer it for the nights to come.

"We'll need starch from the kitchen if they've any to spare. I'm not sure our blankets are enough to get all of it up." He said it as much to himself as to his company, doing the best with what he had. At the man's question, Octavius quietly contemplated. He hadn't seen his face in the darkness, but judging by his size and location, he could bet it was,

"Probably Killian." If Ber was familiar with the name, he'd know the young recruit was wet behind the ears and likely never to do anything for the kingdom other than stand at a random corner in the castle. He was one of those that barely made it in, the kind you didn't want having your back when the enemy rushed in. Octavius would never say that out loud, so he let the boy's name stand for itself. Then,

"I'm Wulfbrand." Since they were military personnel and went by last names and all.

Ber grimaced slightly as the other soldier spoke, and the way it sounded almost as if he talking to himself had Ber hesitating for a moment before responding. “I can see if someone can get us any.” It was a task he would just as soon avoid performing himself. At this late hour, he wasn’t sure if there would be any kitchen staff still awake, and he didn’t fancy having to disturb the rest of someone who wielded a sharpened blade every day - never mind that the kid had successfully disturbed the rest of a whole room someones who also did just that. Perhaps one of the soldiers who worked a kitchen shift would be amenable to going.

“Huh.” As it turned out, Ber did not recognize the name, though he doubted he would ever forget it or the person it belonged to. And, he thought, it was unlikely that anyone else would either, much to the new recruit’s misfortune. Not a good start. “Well, hopefully Killian learns from this, and we don’t have to do this again.”

When the other soldier introduced himself, Ber glanced over at him, somewhat bemused. He’d learned the man’s name at some point long before and assumed that it must have been because they’d talked, but perhaps— no, now that he actually thought about it, he’d overheard someone else addressing him. Well, he supposed, better late than never. “Berengar Stormcrest.” Had they not been in the middle of cleaning muck off the floor, he might have offered to shake Wulfbrand’s hand. “How long— Wait, before I forget, let me go ask someone to get some starch.”

Rising from where he’d knelt on the floor, Ber made his way back to the door and managed to convince one of the soldiers still lingering outside to go to the kitchens and another one to grab a spare bucket, where they could collect whatever would need to be cleaned, or more likely burnt, after. Then he returned and finished his question, “How long have you been a soldier?” The man may have been in the barracks occupied mostly by new recruits, but he didn’t carry himself like one. It was possible that Wulfbrand, like Ber, hadn’t found any alternative housing - or perhaps he’d been kicked out of it, since he’d only recently shown up, which was altogether none of Ber’s business.

Octavius nodded at the other man. Stormcrest, eh? It was just as showy as Wulfbrand. He wondered if Berengar's family had adopted the surname just as Octavius' had. He couldn't blame commoners for wanting to sound fancy, but if truth was being told Octavius was a little embarrassed to say his--at least in the beginning.

If the two had happened to speak in passing then it was just that--in passing. Octavius wasn't in the barracks much and always seemed to be up to something. He didn't sit about and sharpen his knives or lace his boots with the others as some afforded the time to do. He was a man with much missed history and borrowed time in Nevermere as it was.

Appreciating the younger man's gesture to help with the mess, Octavius had sloshed his wet blanket over nearly all of the mess by the time Stormcrest returned. The question wasn't a unique one, and Octavius' answer slid easily off his tongue.

"A little over sixteen seasons." He said it as nonchalantly as possible, though a sharp ear would hear the ounce of pride poured into his words. He had served his kingdom well for the entirety of his adult life. It wasn't something everyone could boast of. "Most of that time was spent deployed in Cambria." He glanced up through the dim light for a quick look before refocusing. "Only been back about a month."

He didn't need to return the question. He knew the young face was fresh to the business. So instead he asked,

"What made you join up?"

Oh, Ber thought as he worked through the math in his head. Sixteen seasons was quite a while, especially sixteen seasons away from home. The younger soldier couldn't help but wonder what he would be doing and what he would have done by the time he reached sixteen seasons in the military, and for a moment, he let his imagination wander. Would he have been to Cambria, like Wulfbrand? Or perhaps Coheed? Or maybe even somewhere else? Though he'd heard some of the stories from the soldiers who returned from far off lands, he never had any of his own to share, and he was never sure how much of what the others said was fact or fiction. Some people had a way of embellishing their tales more and more each time they told them. Ber cast a glance toward the other man. "What is it like in Cambria?" A brief pause. "I've heard - are there really no men?"

When Wulfbrand asked him a question in turn, he shrugged. "It's something I can do," Ber replied after thinking about it for a moment. His decision hadn't been driven by any dreams of grandeur or a particularly patriotic drive to serve the kingdom, though he was by necessity willing to fight if it was requested of him. Without a father to teach him a trade or a noble's inheritance to fall back on, there had simply been nothing else for him to do. "I didn't think training was that bad, and it's a steady wage." And he knew how to fight - even before he had begun training, his childhood had ensured that. He shrugged again. "What about you? You must enjoy it to have served for so long. And it must be nice to be home as well."

Octavius was growing weary from the chore. It was one of those that seemed never ending. There would always be more wetness. There would always be more stink. Maybe soon it would be their turn to abandon the task altogether and let the matter be handled in the morning. It wasn’t like any soldier in his right mind was about to come back in and try to sleep in his bed…

“There really are no men aside from Nevermereans.” Octavius confirmed with an air of severity, and a hint of wonder. He might have delved into the enigma of Cambrian women, but he refrained. It seemed a better conversation had over a cup of warm ale than on his knees, wet with another man’s shit.

“You get used to it, just like you do anything. Time passes and before you know it you’ve been in your entire adult life and…” he shrugged his shoulders, “that’s just it. Life just goes on.” Spoken like a commoner, no doubt. He might not have fully answered Ber’s questions, but that was his answer.

Even as Wulfbrand confirmed the veracity of the rumors, it was still hard to imagine a place that consisted solely women, and Ber shook his head slightly in disbelief. “So strange,” He muttered, half to Octavius and half to himself. When the other man went on to explain his perspective on remaining in the military for as long as he had, the younger soldier found with pleasant surprise that he understood the sentiment. Time had a way of slipping away like water through open fingers.

Ber sat back and resisted the urge to run a tired hand down his face. Nose wrinkled, he looked around at the mess as his thoughts turned toward the sleep that had been so rudely interrupted. With a sigh, he observed, “What d’you think? Maybe one last rinse with water, then that’s as good as that’s going to get?”

Strange wasn’t the word Octavius would have used. “Interesting” with a suggestive eyebrow waggle. Fascinating. Appealing. Sexy… but then, his vocabulary wasn’t what it might have been had he been raised a noble. He kept this opinion to himself. He’d been there for duty, not for pleasure, even if the land had well pleased him.

“Agreed.” He said decisively, without a hint of hesitation. He wanted to be done. He wanted to sleep, too.

His scrubbing got a little more urgent, and Ber’s final flush of water would put an end on their attempts and spell their victory.

Wulfbrand agreed, and Ber obliged. Water was poured over the stone floors one final time, and the remainder of the mess was quickly mopped up by the sodden fabric, which he tossed into the now-empty bucket upon completion. Standing up straight for the first time in a while, Ber stretched and yawned before removing the makeshift mask. “Can deal with this in the morning,” He said, glancing down at the bucket and moving it out of the way. With their task complete, the exhaustion was beginning to return in full force, and he dreaded having to complete the exercises that awaited him tomorrow on an interrupted night’s sleep. Stepping carefully across the freshly washed stone, Ber looked over at Octavius. “Well, the circumstances were shitty,” He began with a shrug, hiding another yawn with his hand. “But nice to meet you anyway.”