The world, at that precise hour, existed in a state of profound and perfect suspension. It was the silent, breath-holding moment just before the first, tentative birdcall, the instant where night had not yet conceded to day but was thinking about it. In the third-floor room of the Honey and Maiden tavern, a room that smelled faintly of lemon-scented washing powder and sun-bleached cotton, a faint, electronic beep-beep-beeppunctured the absolute quiet. It was not an alarm, but a confirmation. A tiny, miraculous device of black plastic and glowing green digits, strapped to a bony wrist, announced to the empty room that it was 5:10 AM.
As if summoned by this silent, digital decree, the single eye of Old Gimpy snapped open. There was no groggy blink, no fumbling wakefulness. It was the alert, instantaneous awakening of a man whose body had been calibrated by thirty-seven years of surviving a world that killed the inattentive. 5:10. Not a second before, not a second after. The precision gave him a small, private thrill.
He lay still for a moment, letting the reality of his bed soak in. It was the same pathetic pallet of lumpy straw and rags he'd slept on for a decade. But it had been washed. Actually, properly washed. He, Old Gimpy, had hauled bucket after precious bucket of the new, abundant well-water, mixed in a scandalous amount of the Lord's pink washing powder, and scrubbed the life—or rather, the deeply ingrained history of sweat, despair, and unidentifiable stains—out of it. Then, it had spent a whole day baking on the tavern's flat roof under the Wasteland's unforgiving eye. Now, it didn't smell of old man and mildew. It smelled… clean. It smelled, impossibly, of sunshine captured in threads. The sensation of lying on it was so profoundly alien, so luxurious, that it had, he reflected with no small amount of pride, even improved his nocturnal constitution. He was getting up to relieve himself far less often. A full night's sleep was a weapon he'd forgotten he could own.
Yet, he did not linger. The siren song of the clean sheets was no match for the greater allure that awaited. In one fluid, practiced motion, he swung his good leg and his stiff one out from under the covers, his feet finding the waiting pair of bright blue rubber flip-flops. He snatched up his personal hygiene kit—a treasure chest more valuable than any pre-Collapse relic—and was out the door, his uneven gait a rapid slap-thump, slap-thumpon the wooden floorboards.
The tavern, the whole of Cinder Town, slept. Only the night-watch, a shadow against the stars on the wall, shared the hour with him. He was, as he had been for sixteen glorious mornings now, the first man awake in the world. Sixteen mornings. He counted them like beads on a string. The first had been the day after the Miracle of the Gushing Stone, the day the world had changed from a dry, sucking mouth to a place that held the promise of wetness.
The 'facility' was next door, a converted storage closet that now held the second-greatest marvel in Cinder Town. He closed the door, the simple wooden latch a barrier of immense privacy. His hand, knotted and scarred, reached for the small, white lever on the wall. It was cool and smooth. He pushed it.
With a gurgle and a hiss, water—clear, cold, impossible water—fellfrom a metal spout into the chipped ceramic basin below. It wasn't a trickle. It was a stream. A torrent. A choice. He could stand here and let it run, just to hear the sound, to watch it disappear down the drain hole. The profligacy of it was dizzying.
He did not let it run. He was a practical man. He cupped his hands under the flow, the shock of the cold making him gasp, and hurled the double handful into his own face. The water hit him like a truth. It shattered the last clinging cobwebs of sleep, and with it, the last, lingering suspicion that the last fortnight had been an elaborate, water-deprivation hallucination. The wetness on his skin was real. The clean smell in his nostrils was real. The silent, powerful rush from the pipe was real.
This—this daily, private baptism—was the true reason he sacrificed the decadence of his new bed. Twelve days ago, Lord Harry Potter Michael had returned from one of his mysterious absences with a length of magical, hollow tubing he called 'hose.' It wasn't enough for the whole town, not yet. But it was enough to connect the roof-top water tank to a few chosen outlets. One was here. In this closet. His closet.
To a man from the old world, this would be a mundane chore. To Old Gimpy, it was a coronation. Every morning, he performed the rites. The small, stiff-bristled toothbrush, its handle not worn smooth by another man's teeth. The tube of toothpaste, a fat, red-and-white cylinder adorned with the grinning face of a man with dark skin and blocky, foreign lettering. It was not some gritty, fossilized paste scraped from a cracked tube in a ruin. It was cool, minty, and abundant. He brushed his remaining teeth with a fervor that was almost religious, the foam a sweet, cleansing lather. The towel he used afterwards was thin, but it was his, and it was soft from its own recent washing.
The face that stared back from the small, cloudy mirror when he was done was still the face of Old Gimpy—lined, leathery, with a permanent squint and a nose that had been broken more than once. But it was a cleanface. A face belonging to a man who lived in a town with rules. The Lord's 'Great Hygiene Crusade' had seen to that.
No more relieving oneself just anywhere. Fines for unwashed hands. And the most outrageous, wonderful decree of all: mandatory bathing. A weekly schedule was posted. The first offense was ten strokes of the switch for an adult, five for the child's parent. The second offense doubled. The third… the third was not a beating. It was exile. Banishment from the sound of the pump, from the smell of clean sheets, from the taste of the morning gruel. It was a punishment so terrifying it made the switch seem like a friendly pat.
Enforcing this new, soapy dogma had fallen to him, the de facto chamberlain of Cinder Town. His morning ablutions were thus both personal pleasure and professional example. He was examining the careful, damp comb-over he'd arranged over his bald spot when a fist, heavy as a sack of gravel, hammered on the door.
"Gimpy! You fossil! You finished in there or are you painting a portrait? My guts are in knots! I've only got the one pair of decent shorts!" The voice of John the Minotaur, thick with strain, boomed through the wood.
"Keep your horns on, I'm done," Gimpy grumbled, unlocking the door. As he slipped out, John bulled past him. In the Minotaur's great, hairy fist, Gimpy caught a glimpse of a small, red-and-yellow tube. The 'Mayinglong Musk Haemorrhoid Ointment.'
A strange, soft warmth bloomed in Gimpy's own chest at the sight. The Lord's medicines… they had names that were unpronounceable incantations. But the one in the red tube… it was a different kind of miracle than the well. It was a quiet, personal salvation. He'd tried it himself, on a certain painful, long-ignored complaint. The relief had been so immediate, so profound, it had felt less like a treatment and more like the mending of a long-fractured part of his soul. He walked with a lighter step these days, in more ways than one.
His morning rounds were a ritual of noisy, gratifying authority. As the town stirred, he moved through the grey dawn light, a screeching, limping prophet of cleanliness. "Bobby! That's not a wash, that's a dampening! Do it again, and I'll use the brush on you myself!" "Whose naked ankle-biter is this? Reeks like a rad-toad! Get him soaped up or you'll all be on latrine duty for a week!" His voice, cracked and sharp, spurred the drowsy citizens into a frenzy of splashing and scrubbing. The sound of it, the sight of it—the entire town trying not to be the filthiest—filled him with a bizarre, energetic joy. It made him hungry.
He returned to the tavern's main hall as the first proper smells of breakfast wafted from the kitchen. He took his seat at the long table, a place of honor among the serving girls. The cook, a severe woman from a clan that had adapted to the wastes with dark, thick skin, placed his meal before him. Every morning, it was a small shock.
A tall glass of milk, white and viscous. It was slightly too sweet, sometimes with a faint, sour tang at the very end—a product called 'school milk' that the Lord acquired mysteriously. A flaky, flatbread stuffed with finely minced lizard jerky and fried until golden. The flour for the bread was another recent miracle. And a small bowl of the standard grain porridge, but this morning, with a precious, crystalline dusting of real sugar sprinkled on top.
He closed his eye for a moment. "Thank you," he murmured, not to any god he'd ever known, but to the man who had made this possible. "Thank you, bountiful and wise Lord Harry Potter Michael. May your path be smooth and your strength endless." Only then did he pick up his spoon.
Halfway through his meal, he looked up. Lynda and Faye, the Lord's favorites, were picking at their food. Their glasses of milk stood untouched, beading with moisture. This was unprecedented. The milk was a treasure.
"Not drinking yours?" he asked around a mouthful of savory pastry. "It's good for you. Look at it. Thick. White. Full of… strengthening things."
At his words, the two young women flinched. Lynda's hand flew to her mouth. Faye went pale, a delicate greenish hue washing under her amber eyes. They looked at each other, a silent communication of shared distress, then back at their plates as if the very sight of the milk was an affront.
Old Gimpy stared, his spoon hovering. Well. That was odd. They must be coming down with something, he decided. A touch of wasteland fever, perhaps. All that extra… attending on the Lord. It was taxing work. He shrugged, and returned to his own, perfect, miraculous breakfast.