When Auberon woke, it was amidst pain and confusion. Pain due to the muscle-deep aches and stiffness when he so much as moved, and confusion because he had-- momentarily-- forgotten where he was and had been awoken by a particularly loud growl from one of the Outworlder vehicles as it sped by on the large roadway he’d crossed under to get there.

The sun was coming up, judging from the light he spied outside the large window he slept in sight of. How long did nights on Outworld last? How long had he slept for?

He fought against the stiffness of his limbs and got to his feet, making sure to listen for any movement inside the house. It was silent. His mouth was dry and he was hungry, but now with light to see, he had to secure the house before even thinking of that.

The room he was in was curious. A large sofa sat against the wall-- Auberon had used it as a bed, and had to admit it was more comfortable than some of the beds at high-class inns he’d been to. In front of it, a low table, next to which he’d shed and laid out his clothes during the night. He checked them. Still damp.

One thing of notice, however, was the strange sword sitting upon a stand on a cabinet on the other side of the room. He walked over to it, picking it up. It was long and smooth. The hilt did not have any sort of guard to speak of, and the blade was one-sided. He ran his finger down the blade. It was surprisingly… unsharp. The metal seemed brittle, flimsy.

What man would think such a sword would be of use anywhere?

Still, it seemed to be a solid stabbing implement. He’d lost his dagger in the river with the rest of his plate armor. His side-bag. All he had left were his damp underclothes and the necklace his sister had given him at her wedding.

He held it in his hand and quietly moved into the next room. The floor there was different, smooth and patterned. Countertops lined the wall with a basin built into it. A kitchen? He glanced into the next room and saw a table with six chairs, the walls lined with paintings and shelves.

Upstairs he moved. He found what were clearly bedrooms. Four of them, at least two meant for children, a closet, and what appeared to be an indoor lavatory.

It was devoid of people.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he returned to the sofa. He was alone for now, but there was no telling when the residents would get home. And it was best for Auberon if he wasn’t there when they arrived.

Still, the only place he had to go might as well end in his death. He couldn’t very well walk up and make demands to be returned unharmed. Auberon wouldn’t grant such mercy, he doubted the Outworlders would either.

And even so, one look at Auberon’s clothing would reveal his Embrayyan origins. The Outworlders didn’t dress like them, they dressed in bright colours and--

He spied several pairs of shoes sitting next to the large sliding window, then had a thought.

He went to the shoes and put his foot besides the ones that looked like they would fit him. He slid his foot into one. It seemed to fit.

He picked up the pair of shoes and dropped them on the sofa, then went back up the stairs. He rummaged around in the bedrooms until he’d found what he was looking for-- Outworlder clothing. He found underclothes, trousers, socks, even shirts and took a handful of each. They were odd articles, but they fit intuitively and comfortably. In one of the closets he found a satchel and put a few more articles into it.

He looked into a mirror he’d found in one of the other bedrooms. He was dressed just like them, the Outworlders. Indistinguishable except perhaps for his Embrayyan features and dirty face. But were they enough to identify him? Perhaps if he spoke to them. But would they even recognize he was speaking Embrayyan?

He was, however, quite filthy from being in the river and running barefoot through the Outworlder’s city. If he was to hide in plain sight, he couldn’t stand out. All the Outworlders he’d seen up close had been clean.

The river was far too dirty to bathe in. But he found a large basin in the lavatory that he assumed was for washing clothes. It would have to do, but where was the well? He hadn’t seen one outside. Perhaps it was in the front of the house? He peeked out the windows, taking care not to be seen, but could see nothing that looked like a well. A house across the road, however, appeared to have water streaming out of the very ground.

Auberon had never seen anything like it. Did water just spray forth from the ground in Outworld? Why?

He then realized that the grass in front of that house was greener than the rest. To waste water like that simply for green grass? Did they not have a care?

No. It wasn’t that. It was that water was in abundance in Outworld. Why else would they have basins on the top floor of their home? How it was fed, Auberon could not even begin to imagine, but somehow there was an easy way to get water within the house.

A spigot hung over the wash basin, and a single round knob was on top of it.

He reached out and pulled the knob, and the spigot sprang to life, spitting water out. He leaped up in shock and used the wall to prop himself up, then found himself surprised again as the entire room lit up.

Confused, Auberon inspected the wall-- there was a… a switch? He pressed it. The light turned off again. Then on again. He flipped it a few times, laughing. He’d wondered how the lights were operated, and now he knew. The little panels on the walls contained switches.

With light, he was able to see the room in much higher detail. Bottles filled with all sorts of goods, small brushes, towels and more lined every shelf, as well as the rim of the large basin. The smaller basin in front of the mirror appeared to have an identical spigot.

The water flowing into the basin was growing hot. He cupped some of it in his hands and used it to wash his face. He then looks back to the larger basin. The water just flowed down the drain. He needed to block the drain in order to fill it. After a moment, he found the small plug and blocked the drain. Success!

Auberon could bathe.

He shed his Outworlder clothing and climbed into the basin. Along the rim of the basin was a sponge, he started using it to scrub himself of all the filth he’d accumulated since... When was his last hot-water bath? Last month while carousing in Dunleth? More than forty days, that was for certain. He’d been lucky to bathe in the Ceylon River when Raptor Company had arrived at Mercer’s Mound.

Regardless, the hot water helped to soothe his aching muscles.

Suitably clean, he shut off the spigot, dried himself with the hanging towels in the room, and dressed again. He spent a few minutes grooming himself in the mirror with a comb and a bottle of perfume he’d found.

When he was finished, he went back downstairs in search of food. There were a number of cupboards in the kitchen, but most of them were filled with strange items, well-made porcelain bowls and plates and glass cups. Any other time he might have wondered at what such things would be worth in Embrayya, but his hunger was the most important part.

He opened a cupboard filled with small boxes with whimsical colouring, as well as small cup-shaped objects with pictures of what he thought to be food on them. He picked it up-- it was colored paper wrapped around a metal cylinder. When he shook it, he felt the sensation of liquid moving around inside of it.

Why the Outworlders would encase their food in metal, Auberon couldn’t have begun to understand. No amount of pricking and prying at the edges had any give. If there was a trick to opening them, he grew far too frustrated to bother opening it. Instead, he threw it to the ground.

There was a cupboard different than the rest. It stood almost as tall as Auberon, but was far more bulky, and didn’t seem attached to the wall. He pulled on the uppermost handle, and was surprised to find it resisted opening for a moment, as though someone were inside, attempting to hold it shut.

What he saw made his jaw drop.