Can't do the dishes with a sword

The hero pokes at his food.

“Tell me about this Main Quest. that old man barely gave me any info before leaving.” He says, while dividing his food in smaller bowls.

“Well, that’s the quest I’m on. You can be forgiven for not really knowing about it with your lost memories.” Furian piles up his plate off the food filled platters. “It’s for the elite adventurers such as us.”

“The old man said it’s for underperforming ones.” Sunder ladles soup on one of his bowls.

“Anything involving me is bound to be elite.” Furian grabs a piece of bread off a plater to put directly in his mouth. “It’s about looking for the lost Goddess.” He says, muffedly.

This disgusting dog talked with his mouth open.

“Mm.. A lost Goddess.” He ponders on. “A lost Goddess!?”

“Mhm, it’s the patron deity of this area. Her domain expands beyond the empire as far as I know,” Furian says, tearing into his bread nervously. “She’s been missing for a few years now. It’s terrifying to think about the kind of power that could subdue a goddess.”

“Right, so expendable people are tasked with what, rescuing her?”

“Moreso, just finding her, you know. I think that’s the plan.” Furian tears into his plate with a knife. “The people at the church have been looking for her on their own, too. There’s this tower. It has existed for ages, but they’ve been adding floors to it ever since the Goddess went missing.” Furian’s plate looks like a small massacre of battered seafood. “You know how Grace wanted to see where you’re from? People from the church can usually have visions like that. As far as I know, they’re using the ancient magic of the tower to find the Goddess.”

“Ah yes,” he pretends to remember anything about Grace other than her being cute and smelling nice. “The big one, looming over the city.” He doesn’t mention how much it clashes with the rest of the city.

“I think there was some kind of vision involved. I wouldn’t know, though.” He says, poking around his food. “I refuse to go to the Tower. It gives me the creeps.”

Furian means well, but his information is always just short of useful.

“So, our quest. Do we go look for her anywhere in the country? Sounds rough.”

“Well, no. It's common knowledge, but since your brain is goo, I'll spell it out for you. The dragons in the sky are also looking for her. We would have to follow them whenever we see one.”

Sunder struggles to remember ever seeing a dragon.

“Ugh, don't look at me like that!” Furian throws his hands over his face. “There used to be a ton of dragons all over the place, you know!” His head falls on the table with a loud thud. “They've been dwindling in number since the Goddess has been missing.”

There's a lull in the conversation and Sunder finally starts eating. He had been refusing to eat, but this evening his body revolted. He feels there's something missing. He reasons that the food in this world must differ from the one in his original world.

“Sunder, buddy, why do you put your food in bowls?” Furian raises his head over his plate.

“Huh?” Sunder looks down at his separated food. “I don’t like it touching, I suppose.”

“Is that how you always eat?” Furian narrows his eyes at him.

Sunder stares down at his bowls. Mussels soup. Loose garlicky rice. A vibrant yellow chicken stew.

“What are you getting at?” He squints.

“We didn’t really get a lot of info on you.” Furian steals a mussel off his bowl. “We only really know your name is Sunder. You’re an adventuring mage, and you’re a local. Or at least your parents are.”

“Right.” Sunder pretends he knows what the other man is talking about. “I’ve only been so long in the city from my… ship crash…from where I lost my memories.”

“Your family and your crew are probably going crazy looking for you.”

Sunder strongly suspects something has somehow teleported him into this world. So he’s sure he has no family or crew. He stuffs his mouth with food so he won’t have to respond.

“We could keep looking for them. I only came back to town for the jellyfish festival. I’ll help you look for them and overall settling in until then, yeah?.” Furian continues eating.

“The jellyfish festival?” He parries a food stealing attempt with his fork.

“Yeah, it’s when the jellyfish migrate at the end of the summer.” Furian goes back to his plate. “I travel the region but, I come by a few days before any festival. Festivals are good for business, so I can stock up on food and money before I move on my quest.”

Sunder’s gaze turns down to the now empty plates. He has thought little of what he’s going to do other than survive. Doing this quest would work as a distraction until he figures out something he wants.

Furian stands up in a quick motion.

“Well, rules are rules. Whoever stands up last has to do the dishes.” He says as he takes off running. “Come find me for a mission when you’re done!”

“Wait!” He calls out after him to no avail.

He doesn’t know where to wash them. He also doesn’t remember how to wash dishes.

He wanders around the building with a loaded tray in hand, feeling stupid.

Thinking about it. He has a feeling that doing the dishes must be normal both here and in his original world. His broken memories tell him it must be done in the kitchen. Logic follows that one needs water for cooking, so it makes sense it’d be stored there. He figures out his way to the kitchen from the smell.

He stands around, lost. His muscle memory tells him that the dishes go in a box to wash, but his instincts tell him to wash them in the sink. His fragmented mind hasn’t been so hard to work around, even in life or death situations. So, why is doing the dishes so hard?

His brows furrow. The dishes sit in the sink.

He doesn’t panic. It’d be beyond moronic to panic over dishes. The hero does not panic over doing the dishes.

Sunder opens the sink, grabs a dish and runs it under. It’s not great, but it works at getting most of the stains out. When he tries the same with the cutlery, he gets a huge splash of water on the face from a spoon.

Yelling out curses, he points a hand at the sink.

A burst of magic travels through his body and covers that corner of the room with a black tar-like substance.

With a sigh. The hero proceeds to wash the dishes, the wall, and the sink.