Having completed her preparations, Marie quickly went into the kitchen and grabbed a burning piece of wood with the pair of iron tongs she had found in an abandoned corner.
She carefully exited the room again, Sarah still holding the door open for her.
Finally, she put the burning wood on top of the wooden dish, but that one small flame wasn't nearly enough to get the fire started.
She had to repeat this walk several times, of course replacing every firewood she took with a new one.
Although she excercised regularly and went to the gym at least once a week, after all the carrying and dragging Marie had already gone through earlier, her biceps and other muscles were aching horribly, even after stretching. Not to mention her back.
She groaned quietly, massaging her waist while watching the gradually growing fire.
The process was pretty slow and it obviously had some real difficulties burni-..., actually no, she didn't want to think about what those crisping sounds were.
After observing for a while, Marie was fairly sure that fire wouldn't go out of control for now and returned to the other women in the kitchen.
At this point, all eight of them were squatting around the vegetables and separating the mostly pristine ones by putting them on the lone wooden table in the center of the room. In this way, they were going through the piles of rotten vegetables at lightning speed.
It was great news for Marie, the bigger the group the faster they would be able to wrap this up.
She walked over to the group after telling Sarah to watch the fire for a moment.
Swatting away some of the many, many flies in the kitchen, Marie reached the group.
"Good work!", the women obviously stiffened at the sudden sound of Marie's voice and only hesitantely turned around," Can some of you help me carry the bad vegetables outside, please?"
Marie was obviously smiling and her tone was also polite, but the women still looked at her like deers in headlights and didn't answer.
She didn't take this to heart however, or insisted on a reply, Marie simply took some vegetables into her arms and left.
Forcing these women to answer or something like that was just stupid, Marie had realized that now. They were clearly scared of her, or rather, men in general.
And who could blame them?
So, she would instead wait for them join her voluntarily at their own pace.
This had worked earlier as well.
As expected, right after Marie had completed her second walkaround, along with Sarah who joined her this time, three other women also threw some vegetables into the fire.
At this point, the fire had already grown substantially, gnawing on the difficult to burn meat while using the added, more flammable plants as sustainance.
Still, the meat was slowly disintegrating into plumes of smoke and ash.
The smell wasn't any better though.
So, Marie hurried to finish this seemingly endlessly repetitive work, supressing a gag. She appointed one of the women to watch over the fire and call her in case something happened, before she set off for the next task.
With the garbage inside gone, the kitchen was already much more pleasant to look at, despite the layer of filth and dirty dishes standing around.
Marie also didn't feel quite comfortable without any ventilation after seeing how much molding food they had just disposed off, so she put a few pieces of firewood inbetween the open door to prevent it from closing, so they'd get at least some fresher air inside.
Now to actually cleaning the room.
First, she would have to sweep out the superficial dirt, and that step needed to be fairly thorough, there were no vacuum cleaners or any electrical devices (sob) in this world after all.
Marie turned to speak with Sarah.
"Do you have a broom somewhere? Preferable several?"
Sarah seemed to actually think about it for a moment before leaving the room and returning shortly with four brooms in hand.
These brooms were also quickly handed out to four available women who silently began to first sweep several kitchen surfaces as per Marie's request before moving on to the floor.
But Marie didn't just stand around taking the other three women along, she got Sarah to fill some water from the small well in the backyard into empty pots for her, putting first one, but then two next to the woman watching the fire after thinking about it for a moment.
The remaining two they carried into the kitchen.
Marie planned to put one after the other on the furnace to get hot water, yet again appointing one of the women with this task.
She also asked Sarah if they had some unused and unneeded fabrics laying around somewhere, which to her niece responded with a quick nod, leaving once more and returning just as quickly, a few ragged pieces of clothing in arm.
Sarah handed the clothes, which seemed to be severely ripped outer robes, to Marie.
Thanking her, Marie took the clothes and began ripping them even further, trying her best to ignore the several suspicious brownish, red stains and create fairly even-sized rags.
As it turned out, the earlier was much easier to achieve than the latter and Sarah took over with a sigh after Marie failed miserably several times.
Marie wasn't bothered by her supposed loss of 'uncle' dignity in the least, glady leaving this frustrating task to someone else.
In the meantime of Marie's struggle, the women sweeping the room had finished.
She scrutinized the floor for a moment to make sure that there weren't any obvious droppings and the like left, before she thanked them with a cheerful smile.
The women nodded awkwardly, brooms still in hand.
Happy to have received a reply, Marie moved on to help the woman at the furnace lift off the water-filled pot with steam already rising above it. They also put the remaining pot onto the furnace together.
After that, Marie grabbed the hot water and carefully dragged it behind her, too heavy to lift alone, at least for her.
She walked over to the group of women with brooms.
"Careful, I'm going to pour out some of the hot water."
The women really took a step back at Marie's warning, watching her with a slightly curious expression.
But Marie didn't even notice it, too busy holding onto the heavy, and more importantly, hot pot as to not accidentally drop it and spill all the hot water.
After a small puddle had formed, Marie set the pot down with trembling arms.
She got up from the ground with an unvoluntary, exhausted groan.
But didn't give herself any time to rest before she returned to the furnace and scooped up some of the ash below with a wooden scoop.
Dropping the ash into the puddle, Marie asked to borrow one of the brooms and started scrupping the floor.
This method seemed to work to some degree.
It was actually the first time Marie had tried cleaning with ash although she had read several times that it could be used as an universal cleaning detergent in her previous life. Thankfully this was one of those fun facts/life hacks that were actually true and useful.
Handing over this task to the four women once more, although they had slightly confused expressions on their faces and secretly looked at her as if she was crazy, they still faithfully followed Marie's instructions.
Now there were still two women remaining and Marie simply passed them some of the rags Sarah had ripped and instructed them on how to clean the dirty dishes with the ash, pouring some of the hot water for them to use into a dirty pot.
Finally she convinced Sarah to join her with cleaning all the remaining surfaces in the kitchen.
Small theater:
Marie: *stretching and massaging her waist with a deep sigh*
Marie: I'm much too old for this...
Author:... You're 27.
Marie: Exactly.