Jason pulled off the silk boxer shorts he had taken from the Vane manor. Past caring, he didn’t even glance over to see if the others were looking at his naked body. There was enough blood on him anyway that it was effectively body paint. He pulled out the stopper and tipped it over his head. A clear, viscous liquid poured out and rapidly started spreading itself over him, thinning as it worked its way down. It excised the blood and filth from his body, cleaning with an intimate thoroughness. An odd expression crossed his face as the liquid cleared out the hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. He could smell a fresh fragrance coming off his body as the liquid evaporated into nothingness, its job done. He felt cleaner than he ever had in his life.

“It’s perfumed?” he asked.

“No, crystal wash is completely odourless and clears off everything,” Farrah said. “If there’s any stink left behind, that’s just you.”

Gary walked over and sniffed at Jason.

“Why do you smell like flowers?”

The other two crowded around Jason and started smelling him.

“Still naked,” Jason said, boxed in by the trio.

“We’ve seen Rufus naked,” Farrah said. “No one cares about your scrawny body.”

“Hey…” Rufus and Jason said together.

“You do smell like flowers,” Farrah said. “What’s up with that?”

“I think it might be an outworlder thing,” Rufus said. “I knew an outworlder who smelled quite similar.”

“Did you now?” Gary asked.

“Did someone have a little outworlder fling?” Farrah asked.

“Still naked,” Jason said.

“It wasn’t like that,” Rufus said. “I was young and she barely even looked at me.”

“WILL EVERYONE BACK OFF SO I CAN PUT ON SOME CLOTHES?”

“We’re right here,” Gary said. “You don’t have to shout.”

* * *

“If you had that bottle of cleaning stuff the whole time—”

“Crystal wash,” Farrah said.

“Right,” Jason said. “If you had that the whole time, why didn’t you give me some after I purged all those toxins?”

“Purging your toxins is like a rite of passage,” she said.

“So you didn’t use any when you went through it?”

“Absolutely not,” Farrah said, unconvincingly.

“She had a whole case of bottles on hand,” Gary said.

“If you didn’t learn the value of crystal wash, then you wouldn’t appreciate it,” Farrah said.

“Meaning you thought it was funny that I smelled so bad,” Jason said.

“It was pretty funny,” Gary said. “I’ve never seen that much sludge come out of a person. It’s like you were keeping extra in your storage space.”

They passed through another village near the middle of the day. Its astral space aperture was small, producing only a large pond. It had a quarrying operation, but it was much smaller than the waterfall village.

“Are apertures the only water sources around here?” Jason asked.