Cinder X Bella ~ Sixteen!

The steps to the bottom of the cellar were uneven, forcing Bella to keep her hand on the wall as she descended, or she would trip and fall down the stairs. Only the thought of how much it would please Matringa if she broke her neck kept her moving slowly and cautiously. 

As she stepped into the main portion of the cellar, she sneezed, only for the sudden burst of air to kick up dust. A moment later, she was coughing and had to cover her mouth and nose with her dress simply to keep from falling into a repeating cycle. Just as she thought everything was settling, someone walked overhead on the floor above, causing dust to rain down on her. 

Her eyes were slowly adjusting, and Bella realized it perhaps wasn't as pitch dark down here as she had expected it to be. She found the source of the soft glowing: a set of thick, murky glass set on either side of the cellar, which were so dirty that even the filtered light coming through them was nearly extinguished. “How long have I been relegated to the position of a maid that my first thought upon seeing this area is how badly I need to dive into cleaning my room? Great.”

Though she was angry with herself over already starting to consider this space as her own, Bella started singing her frustration to try and take note of it, so she could begin setting it aside. “I've been sent to the dark, I've only arrived, but without help, I don't know if I'll survive. But I'll persist, I'll pay the price, so long as I have help from my darling mice.”

Thanks to her mapping out the house with her small creatures, Bella knew they had access to this space as well. With only a few repetitions of her song, scores of mice poured through the ceiling and crawled down the wall. She watched them come, wondering how other people could be so disgusted by their presence. “Thank you all for joining me; I'm sure you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today.” 

*Squeak,* Mert Junior replied for the group, pantomiming confusion at the change in locations. 

“We'll get to that, Mert.” Bella put off the question for now, still too upset to want to discuss it. “First, I have to start with a question. Was I able to be clearly heard upstairs, or was it my skill reaching you?”

Mert Junior grabbed his oversized ears with his tiny paws, pulling them down so they were flat along the side of his head. Bella raised an eyebrow, nodding in understanding, “I see… so perhaps there is a small silver lining. We'll have more leeway with singing and planning down here. Well, to answer your first question, this is apparently my new room. It's nearly as large as my original bedroom, so we will have more space to train, practice, and continue the battle against the evil step-intruders.”

*Squeak!* The large group of mice responded near-simultaneously, each of them standing at attention on their hind legs. Many of the smaller creatures looked around in confusion, only slowly mimicking the others around them.

Bella saw this and smiled happily. “Oh, some of you are new! Well, let's get acquainted. I'm Bella, and I'm going to teach you how to do wonderful things.” 

*Squeak.* Mert Junior reached over and patted one of the young mice, nodding his head in agreement before standing straight once more. The Beast Singer watched on with amusement. She was almost positive she had seen the older mouse wink at the younger. 

“The first order of business: I can't live like this.” Bella swept her hands out to indicate the entire room. “I don't mean figuratively. I might actually die from exposure down here if this place doesn't get cleaned. I need large rags, soap, and perhaps a bottle of cleaner, if someone can figure out how to get it down here without putting themselves in danger.”

“After that, I've been kicked out of dinner time and told I will no longer have breakfast.” Bella nearly snarled at the thought but kept her voice even as she spoke to the mice—who could perfectly understand her, thanks to her Basic Skill being maxed out. “I certainly don't intend to go hungry, and since I'm not in the kitchen anymore, it's going to be up to all of you to figure out how to liberate enough food from the pantry for all of us. House Vigatori has money again, after all. They can afford to keep us all well-fed.”

Only then did she notice she was speaking of the family as an estranged group and was slightly saddened by the realization. Bella shook it off, muttering to herself, “If it's the truth, it's the truth. What else will we need for the war effort? Shelter will be taken care of, food… water? I'm going to need to scavenge some canteens and dig a hole into the floor.  Lastly… my final hope, Alaric, has failed me. I must plan my escape and start gathering money for travels.”

Turning her attention back to the mice, she singled out Suzy. “You've been working with me for a year now; are you ready for a new task? Good. Coins, small pieces of jewelry, gems that fall out of jewelry and go otherwise unnoticed, I need you to start collecting all of it. Keep it in a place you can get it out, somewhere in the walls, but don't even tell me where it is. Perhaps a spot which connects to the outer portion of the house, so I'll be able to pull away a section of paneling and have it all fall into a sack?”

Suzy paused for a long moment, considering Bella's words, then nodded a single time. *Squeak.*

“Thank you. Money means freedom and the ability to go to a Class Shrine to advance my class. I'm certain Matringa made sure I have never gotten pocket money, as yet another failsafe to keep me dependent on them. I'll talk to the birds as well; I know they admire shiny things. If I can figure out how to get them to collect fallen things for me, we can start building a true hoard for our escape. I wouldn't leave you all behind, after all. Not forever.”

This caused a slight commotion as the huge group of vermin started chittering amongst themselves, as if whispering excitedly. Bella understood their excitement. “I hope there was never any doubt that I'd bring you along. You've been helping me for so long, what sort of friend would I be if I didn't do the same for you?” 

Having decided on her next steps, Bella took a deep breath—only for her nose to wrinkle as she was reminded of her unpleasant surroundings. The air was thick with dust, and a damp mildew scent she just knew would sink into her clothes if she let it.  Looking around the space, the only good thing she could say was that it was a large, open area, and it wasn't the wine cellar. If it had been, she would have needed to deal with people coming and going in her room anytime there were guests or dinner time was approaching. 

The area had been cleared for her imminent arrival, and crates, empty casks of wine, and other sundry had all been cleared out. While she considered the area, her mice had been hard at work, filtering up through the ceiling, rushing along their pathways. In the span of only a few minutes, the fastest among them was returning with a large rag clutched in its mouth. Within half an hour, a veritable army of rodents had returned, each dragging scraps of cloth or entire rags with them.

One particularly ambitious mouse carefully pulled along a rag, which was folded around another that had been soaked with a potent cleaner. She grabbed it right away, pulling it away from the sensitive noses of her companions. “That was very impressive! Don't put yourself at risk, but I can't thank you enough for this.” 

Before anything else, she set to work on the windows. Using the soaked rag, she scrubbed away at the thick glass, little by little wiping away the years of muck that had accumulated. “Only a few minutes into cleaning, and there's ten times the amount of light in here!”

She knew it was a bright day outside, but the warped glass shifted the light enough that it appeared to be a gray, cloudy day outside of her hole in the ground. With her surroundings now illuminated, Bella set the mice to scrubbing, with an additional instruction to notify her if they found any patches of mold. 

Many hands, no matter how small, made the work go quickly. Each time a *squeak* rang out, Bella hurried over and applied the potent chemicals on the rag to the mold, knowing she would need to come back and do a more thorough job with a whole bucket of the stuff in the future. For now, she did her best to scrub it away, leaving a dense, medicinal scent behind which would allow her to easily find these patches when she was looking for them again.

The floor was packed dirt, so there was only so much her creatures could do to tidy it up, but soon a huge pile of dust and debris had been collected into the center of the room. Bella steadily worked on the parts of the ceiling she could reach, running a dry cloth along the seams of the wood and trying her best to remove all dust from between them. Bella chuckled to the mice around her. “While I desperately need a shower, a dust shower whenever someone walks overhead is certainly not what I have in mind.”

There were few squeaks of approval for her wordplay, causing Bella to purse her lips and snort, “Tough crowd, huh? Not my best attempt, I admit. Don't worry, I'll have you laughing by the end of the day.”

Though a part of her mind was on the task of keeping herself safe by having a clean environment to live in, she mostly allowed her body to carry out the familiar actions on its own as she considered other things. Every few minutes, she would pause to redirect the mice, who had organized themselves into teams of runners and cleaners—some going to bring the filthy rags to the laundry room then return with clean ones. Others focused on cleaning the walls and ceiling with dry cloths, and the last group collected the falling filth. 

There wasn't much of a visual transformation, but the difference in comfort was extremely stark. Hundreds of spider webs had been taken down. Nothing sparkled, the area was still dark, but ever so slowly, it became a space someone could survive in, even if it wasn't yet somewhere someone could properly live in. 

Hours passed, and the dark cellar, which had been all but forgotten by the family before, now was finally clean, the air smelling bland with an astringent tang. The floor was flat and clear, the walls mold free, and the windows were shining with a surprising amount of light as the evening sun directly beamed on the western wall. 

Exhausted but pleased with the change, Bella carefully sat on the floor and reached out to gently pet the heads of the hard-working mice. She whispered to them, her voice warm with intense gratitude, “Thank you, my friends. This would have been a terrible trial without you.”

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, surrounded by tiny bodies, the sound of many feet on the floor above her caused Bella's eyes to narrow. “What's going on? That's not stomping, but they're not just walking, either… it sounds as if someone is-”

Her eyes went wide, and she hissed at the mice to disperse up the walls and into the ceiling, “Someone's carrying a heavy object; it can only be the bed on its way down here! Run, there's nowhere for you to hide!”