Sophie made her way along the side of the shrine, carefully walking through the tall grass and weeds that had grown up over the years. She had seen a structure back here previously on one of her many trips to the privy, but hadn’t paid much attention to it before. Now, she could see that it was almost entirely covered in vines, with bushes and little saplings blocking the entrance.

She put her hands on her hips. She needed gardening tools to even get into this building. At the very least, she needed something like gloves. The last thing she wanted to deal with was a case of fantasyland poison ivy.

She made her way back into the shrine, and opened the small chest that the old shrine priestess had kept clothing in. She dug around in it for a bit, and finally found a pair of cloth gloves. Leather or some similar material would’ve been better, but she imagined something like that would probably be kept in the gardening shed along with all the tools. At least she would hopefully avoid the worst of it if she was careful.

She slid on the gloves, and stomped back out to the little structure that she was almost nearly positive was a gardening shed. First, she started pulling vines off the windows along each side. She tried to peer inside the building, but it was too dark to really see anything. It was set back in a denser part of the trees, where the sunlight didn’t reach so easily.

Next, she tackled the vines on the door. She yanked them down, needing to use quite a bit of strength to do so. She had to carefully step around the shrubs that had grown in the path. She would hate to cut them down, but she would have to eventually, she couldn’t just leave this all overgrown.

The gloves were surprisingly durable, and Sophie wondered if they had also been imbued with mana. She wondered when she’d be able to sense it. It sounded like maybe in another few levels. She stepped back to survey her handiwork.

“Well here goes nothing.”

Elowen appeared beside her, startling her slightly. “Are you going to open the door?”

Sophie nodded. “Don’t you remember what’s in here?”

Elowen looked thoughtful at the question, but she eventually shrugged. “Plants, maybe?”

“Plants? But it doesn’t get much sunlight over here.”

Elowen didn’t seem to have any sort of follow-up to that, so Sophie opened the door. She flung it open, stepping back hastily just in case some sort of small creature had made its home in the building. After a moment of waiting, nothing scurried out, so she peered inside.

It was, indeed, full of plants, albeit most of them seemed dead. The floor of the building was littered with brown crunchy leaves of all varieties, and there were even some mushrooms growing in spots where the leaves had started to decompose. The floor was oddly damp in places, and Sophie imagined the roof must be leaking in here.

“What are all these plants? They didn’t need more sunlight than this?”

It was more of a rhetorical question than anything. She doubted that Elowen had anything useful to add. But she had to wonder… What was the previous shrine priestess doing in here anyway?

She carefully stepped around the piles of dried leaves, and made her way over to a collection of gardening tools. They looked about as she would’ve expected gardening tools to look like – wooden handles, metal on the ends. Although she also noticed a scythe among the bunch. She picked that up first out of curiosity. The blade looked awfully sharp. This would definitely be useful for cleaning up some of the grass and tall weeds around the courtyard.

“Look at this!” Elowen called from a different corner of the shed. Sophie carefully shouldered the scythe and went over to investigate Elowen’s discovery.

A single living plant stood among the rest. In fact, if anything, it looked to be a little overwatered. Sophie glanced up at the ceiling, but it was too dark in the shed to tell. She imagined the roof must be leaking in this exact spot and dripping down onto the plant to keep it alive for so long.

“What a little trooper!” It felt sad to just leave it in here surrounded by all of the other dead plants. “Can we bring it into the shrine? The front area could use a little livening up.”

“I don’t see why not,“ Elowen replied. “Besides, it seems to have an awful lot of mana for a plant.”

Sophie paused where she was currently trying to lift the heavy container off of the table. “Plants have mana?”

“Of course! All living things have mana.”

Elowen had definitely explained that before, but for some reason Sophie didn’t imagine it to include plants. She supposed if stone could contain mana, then surely plants could as well.

After some finagling, Sophie managed to get the heavy pot into the shrine’s entryway. She regretted not spending more time working on her upper body strength in her past life, as she had recently started to think of it. If the plant had grown any larger, she wouldn’t have been able to move it alone.

It definitely improved the look of the entryway. But really nothing could help the pile of stuff that was still sitting in the middle of the room. Right. She really needed to take care of that today.

“What time is it anyway?“

She had no real way to tell. There were no clocks in the shrine. She wasn’t sure if that was part of the whole ascetic shrine priestess thing or what. But after her garden shed adventure, she was not in any sort of state to get cooking lessons from Acacia.

“I’ll tell you what,” she glanced over at Elowen who was floating around the plant with curiosity. “I really could use a shower after all that. I’m going to head back into town a little early, and also deal with all of this –” She gestured to the pile of stuff on the floor.

Elowen glanced up at her, blinking curiously. “Oh? How?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

Briony had mentioned something about sanitation services, so surely Sophie would be able to figure it out.

She cleaned up a bit, making herself at least somewhat presentable with the cold water from earlier in the morning, and then started making her way into town.

***

For another five coppers, Sophie took her second real shower in this strange fantasyland and had the startling realization that she was pretty sure it was already Tuesday back in Seattle. She had somehow started to get caught up in her new life here.

It wasn’t like she had much going on in her old life other than work. Surprisingly, her new job – if it could be called the job – seemed to fit her well, all things considered. If not for the fact that it wasn’t very lucrative at the moment…

She supposed that was the benefit of having a sentient shrine spirit scan you and determine what class you were most suited for in life. Why she had been deemed fit to be a priestess was another story entirely. But Sophie doubted she would ever learn the answer to that.

After her shower, she asked the friendly clerk at the front desk if they knew how to set up sanitation services to a location outside of town. This, of course, involved explaining her new status as a shrine priestess, and having yet another person excitedly tell her how glad they were that Caulis would have a dedicated priestess of their own now.

After Sophie reassured the chatty clerk that she was definitely intending to hold a shrine class festival at Midsummer – even though she had no idea what any of that meant – the clerk directed her to an administrative building a few blocks away, where she apparently would be able to take care of her task.

The administrative building stood among several other boring looking stone buildings in a part of town that Sophie hadn’t been to yet. It was quite far from the market and the other places she was used to going, and she tried to make note of her surroundings, a little worried that she might finally get lost. She missed her cellphone the most in moments like this.

When she finally found the building, she opened the door to a small, cramped space that was not unlike her unfortunate experiences at government buildings in her previous life. There was a long desk towards the back of the room, and several chairs lined up along one side.

The woman at the desk appeared to be reading a book of some sort, but the plain brown cover didn’t reveal what kind of book it might be. Sophie wondered idly if it could be a novel. She’d been so focused on training and cleaning the shrine recently that she didn’t have a chance to miss her romance manga, but she was sure she had missed a few updates by now. Did they have romance manga in this strange fantasyland? Somehow, Sophie doubted it.

The woman glanced up, setting the book down, as Sophie entered. “How can I help you? Oh! A Priestess? Well, then! Are you the new priestess everyone’s been talking about?”

Sophie felt her face heat at the idea that everyone really did seem to be talking about her. What was the obsession with priestesses around here? “I am,” she replied. “In fact, I stopped by to see about getting sanitation services set up for the shrine. I know it’s a little bit out of town –”

“That’s no trouble at all. Let me just check the books here.” She pulled out a much larger heavy looking book that reminded Sophie of the one at the Crafter’s Guild. “Let’s see…” She ran her finger down one of the pages. “It looks like I can have someone come out tomorrow afternoon, and then every fortnight after that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“That would be perfect,” Sophie replied. “Although, I do have a pile of old items from the former priestess that need to be taken care of initially. Will that be a problem?”

The woman shook her head and made a note in the ledger. “Not at all, dear. In fact, since this is for the shrine, if you would like to officially register as the town’s priestess, I can get that set up for you, as well. And then these services would be at no cost to you.”

Sophie’s ears perked up at no cost. “Registered?” she repeated. This was the first she had heard of something like this.

“Oh yes, it’s good to have the priestess on record. It’s just like you might register with the Adventurer’s Guild or the Crafter’s Guild, but this is with the town. Mostly for bookkeeping, you know?”

Sophie didn’t know. In fact, she honestly had no idea what the woman was talking about, since she hadn’t registered anywhere previously. But, if she could get free garbage service out of it, registering sounded fine to her. And she was sure Elowen, or at the very least Acacia, might know more about it.

“Sure, sure,” Sophie agreed. “What’s involved?”

“We’ll just have to send a Mage out to check that everything’s in order. I can send someone out as soon as tomorrow morning before we send out the cart if that works?”

Tomorrow morning… Everything wasn’t exactly in order in the shrine, but there didn’t seem to be much use in putting it off. “That’s fine,” Sophie agreed, although she privately worried what might happen if the mage didn’t like what they found. Would they kick her out of the shrine? Was that even possible?

It’s not like Elowen had anyone else who could even see her.

“Perfect,” the woman replied, interrupting Sophie’s thoughts. “And what was your last name, dear?”

“Birch,” Sophie replied automatically. “It’s Sophie Birch.”

The woman made another mark in the ledger and then nodded to herself. “Alright then. I have everything I need. Someone will be by tomorrow.”

Sophie did her best to smile at the clerk in goodbye, but as she turned to make her way back out to the main street, she had a sinking feeling that maybe agreeing to be “registered” wasn’t such a good idea after all.

She didn’t exactly even belong to this world. Could they do a background check on her? Was that even a thing in fantasy worlds?

She shook her head as she glanced up at the unfamiliar street signs. There wasn’t much she could do about it now. Instead, she needed to find her way back to the town that she was more familiar with. Maybe Acacia would know more about what registering involved.

Sophie re-traced her steps back to the more familiar part of town and hoped she didn’t just make a terrible mistake.