"So yes, can I borrow a few buckets and cloths, Dad?" Lucas asked, interrupting Drake's wandering thoughts.
"Of course, there are some rags and buckets in the back of the smithy that I'm not using anymore. Feel free to take them, Lucas," Drake quickly pulled himself together and agreed to his son's request. It wasn't like it was anything he would have said no to in the first place, so there was never a reason to refuse.
"Thanks, Dad! Also, is there anything more to the story you and Mom told me about getting blood stains out of your clothes and armour using wood ashes from your campfires?" Lucas was quite eager to begin experimenting, but he didn't forget to ask his father about the one clue he had to making his own Bathing Cream.
Seeing no harm in helping his son out, Drake ruminated on the issue for a moment, trying to recall what he had been taught all those years ago, before explaining in simple terms, "When your mother and I were adventuring, one of the veterans we worked with told us that by soaking our campfire ashes in water overnight, the next morning, we could use that liquid to scrub out the blood and smell from our clothes and equipment."
Lucas went over this brief story in his mind a few times, but nothing else from his new memories seemed to pop out, so he simply nodded and thanked his dad once more before running off.
As he watched his son scamper off and then heard the sound of Lucas rummaging through the tools in the back shed, Drake couldn't help chuckling slightly before he shook his head and got back to work on the plow he was making.
Originally, he had learned blacksmithing to forge and maintain weapons, but it didn't take Drake long to realize that in a quiet place like Redwood Town, only knowing how to work with weapons would put him at a big disadvantage. Of course, Drake would still regularly handle swords, spears, axes, arrowheads, and other weapons, but the bulk of his time was spent on farming tools and kitchenware.
It was simple, really. Some people needed weapons to fight and hunt, but everyone needed tools to farm and cook.
…..
After collecting two buckets and some old, stained pieces of cloth his father must have used to clean up his smithy with until they were threadbare, Lucas ran back to the house where he had left the bucket of ashes from the stove.
Since this was his first attempt to make his own Bathing Cream, he decided to first try out the method his father had told him about.
With no other clues about how to start, Lucas simply poured half of the remaining ash into one of the big, sturdy wooden buckets, then the other half into the other. The two buckets were quite large and of roughly equal size, probably because they were used to hold the large amounts of water needed for smithing metal, so the ashes only filled up to about one-tenth of each.
Lucas felt it was better to start with extremes, so to the first bucket he added a roughly equal volume of water to ashes, while the second bucket he completely filled to the brim. After giving both buckets a good stir with a long stick he found in the yard, he placed lids on them and moved them to a shady spot beside the kitchen where they would be out of the way.
For the rest of the day, Lucas went about his regular activities, helping out around the house and the smithy.
When evening fell and Anna returned home to see two big buckets next to the kitchen door, she couldn't help asking about them, but after learning what her son was up to, she decided there was no harm and simply got to work on dinner.
The next day, after his morning exercises, Lucas decided to use the ash-water he had made in order to scrub his sweaty clothes, eager to see what kind of results he would get.
Upon opening the buckets, the young boy saw that while the ashes he had stirred up yesterday had settled, the water itself was still somewhat murky and dirty looking.
Frowning slightly, Lucas felt that instead of getting his clothes clean, using this kind of pale brownish water would only result in making them look more stained.
Sighing in resignation, he replaced the lids of the buckets and went to the well to wash his clothes and body like usual.
The rest of the day went pretty much like the day before. Lucas accompanied his mother to the Town Lord's Manor, taught the Unarmed Foundations Art to his 4 students, shared some cheerful conversations with his big sister, then returned home and got to work on his chores.
It wasn't until another 3 days later that Lucas finally realized that the water wasn't going to get any clearer as it had remained a kind of brownish-yellowish colour this whole time. There was very little water left in the first bucket as some of it had clearly evaporated over the past 5 days, while on the other hand, the second bucket was still relatively full, though not almost overflowing like it had originally been.
Using a big wooden ladle typically used by farmers to water their crops, Lucas carefully scooped out some of the ash-water from the less-full bucket and poured it over his morning exercise clothes. He then took a stiff brush made from short cut straw and began scrubbing his shirt.
Almost immediately, Lucas got some of the water on his hands and felt a slight stinging sensation.
At first, the boy ignored this, but as time went on, the stinging got worse, to the point where it was actually beginning to hurt a little. Frowning, Lucas ran over to the well and drew up some cool water before rinsing off and scrubbing his hands.
Unfortunately, the stinging sensation only continued to worsen.
It took Lucas quite a few rinses like this to get his hands to finally stop stinging.
Standing in his backyard, Lucas thought to himself, Clearly, there's something different about the ash-water I made. Whatever it was, it made my hands itch and sting, like something was burning them.
Unsure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, Lucas had a hard time deciding what to do next, but after pondering on the matter for some time, he decided that first he should rinse off his shirt.
While he didn't need to worry about not having clothes to wear as his family was pretty well-off compared to the average household in Redwood Town, it wasn't like he could just throw away a perfectly good shirt as his mother would surely skin him alive to make a new one.
Not having forgotten the unpleasant burning sensation from just now, Lucas awkwardly used the wooden ladle and a stick to scoop up his wet shirt and carry it over to the well, where he proceeded to douse it with a bucket of clean water twice before being brave enough to touch it with his bare hands again.
Picking up his now thoroughly drenched shirt, Lucas was relieved to find that his skin didn't start tingling again. To be on the safe side, though, the young boy scrubbed down his shirt a few more times in clean well water before hanging it up to dry.
Turning back to where his dirty pants were, Lucas hesitated for quite a while before he carefully scooped out a ladle full of ash-water from the second bucket, the full one, and began scrubbing with the same brush he had used before on his shirt.
This time, whether it was thanks to him being more careful or the ash-water being more dilute, it wasn't until he was basically finished scrubbing his pants that Lucas noticed a slight tingling sensation on his fingertips. While this was irritating, it couldn't be described as painful or burning like when he used the ash-water from the concentrated bucket, so Lucas just thoroughly rinsed off his pants before hanging them up next to his shirt.
At this point, Lucas had originally planned to use some of the ash-water to wash himself off as well, but after his previous experience, he felt it would be a bad idea to do so. The ash-water from the second bucket didn't seem to be as bad, but that was only when it came to his hands which were used to doing work with and had lots of calluses on.
Lucas had absolutely no desire to find out what would happen if he got some of the ash-water into his mouth or eyes, so he wisely decided to just clean himself up using the well-water.
Lucas was now somewhat concerned whether his little experiment had any merit at all. What he eventually wanted was a product like Bathing Cream that would create bubbles when he scrubbed and washed himself, but when he was testing his ash-water out on his shirt and pants, forget a foam, it didn't even produce a single bubble despite him scrubbing quite vigorously.
Then there was the fact that he didn't even dare to rinse himself off with this ash-water because doing so was quite uncomfortable, possibly even dangerous.
Now a bit dejected, the young boy spent the rest of the day in a bit of a gloomy mood, making his morning teaching session somewhat dull and drawing concerned questions from his mother, aunt and uncle, and big sister.
Fortunately, by mid-day, Lucas had basically recovered. He was mature for his age before the accident, and was now even more-so, but Lucas was still just a kid, so bouncing back from disappointment wasn't exactly a difficult task for him.
After Eris shared some of the sweet preserved fruits she had been saving with him after their morning lesson, the 9-year-old Lucas found himself in good spirits again and decided that even if his experiment this time didn't yield any results, he just needed to keep trying until it did
Upon returning home though, Lucas was greeted by a pleasant surprise.
Once he was done sweeping up the kitchen and emptying the ashes from the stove, as was his usual routine, Lucas next went to fetch the laundry which had been drying in the mid-day sun and noticed that both his shirt and pants from this morning, which he had scrubbed hard in the ash-water, had a fresher, cleaner scent to them.
Even some of the stains which he could never get out before seemed to have gotten a bit lighter now, though it could just be his imagination.
It certainly wasn't like his clothes were brand new again, but it was a definite improvement.
Lucas almost jumped for joy when he saw this as he realized that his efforts had not been in vain. His first experiment into creating his own Bathing Cream had been a success. A limited success, yes, and a very small step in what the young boy expected to be a long and difficult process, but a success nonetheless.
Eager to keep experimenting, Lucas quickly gathered up and folded the rest of the laundry before hurriedly fetching the heavily stained cloths he had gotten from his father's smithy and began scrubbing them down with the ash-water, making sure this time to keep a bucket of well-water nearby so he could rinse of his hands whenever they began to sting again.
Thus, for the next half-and-hour or so, Lucas busied himself trying to get the dirty cloths clean again, using different amounts of ash-water from the two different buckets, and even mixing the two to create different strengths of the solution he had created.
By the time he was out of ash-water from the first bucket, Lucas had thoroughly scrubbed out a dozen dirty rags and his hands were now feeling a bit raw.
Despite the residual stinging in his hands, the young boy was still quite pleased with himself as he now had a basic understanding of how concentrated the ash-water needed to be and how much he needed to use to remove most grime and treat stains.
Lucas even began wondering whether this ash-liquid would be useful for cleaning other things, like the floors in the house or the pots and pans they used for cooking.
The possibilities seemed endless!