The next morning, Glocara carried a basin of dirty water to the doorway and saw Tusha standing in front of her. She poured the dirty water at his feet, and Tusha leaped two steps to the right to avoid it.
"Oh, Miss Glocara, there's no need for that."
"I told you not to come again. I thought you understood, so I couldn't see you standing there. Sorry."
She turned to go back inside, with Tusha following behind, craning his neck to peer into the rooms on either side of the hallway.
"What exactly are you trying to do?" she asked, turning her head.
"Be your assistant."
Glocara wanted to say something but held back in the end. She ignored him and returned to the room to drain the corpse, hoping he would take the hint and leave on his own. But after finishing with the body, she went to check on the room where laborers and the unemployed were staying, only to find Tusha chatting and laughing with the people inside while stitching up a wound on someone's thigh.
"Glocara, where did you get the idea to hire a troll as an assistant? This big guy may have some ugly teeth, but he's pretty handy," someone in the room said.
"Where did you dig up my tools?" Glocara ignored the comment and rushed forward, trying to grab Tusha's hand, but immediately realized he was still holding the thread over the wound. She had no choice but to retract her hand.
"Relax, Miss Glocara. I'm just doing some small tasks; no need to worry."
"Yeah," the earlier speaker said, "you should go enjoy life, Glocara. You've got this big guy here."
Glocara waved her hands forward. "From now on, any accidents that happen in this room are none of my responsibility." With that, she returned to her own room. For the rest of the day, Tusha made his rounds through the rooms where people were temporarily staying. Two or three days later, the neighbors all knew that "Glocara had hired a troll as an assistant." Though she was still suspicious of his intentions for clinging to her, Glocara had to admit that Tusha was skilled. Her attitude shifted from "let him do as he pleases" to "it's fine if he handles this" and eventually to "let him help with that." One morning, after she said to Tusha, "Bring me the ointment you just used," she immediately turned around and covered her lips, as if trying to swallow the words back, fully aware that it meant she was implicitly accepting him as her assistant. Tusha let out a couple of dry laughs, handing over the ointment with a victorious look he made no effort to hide.
A week passed, and everything fell into place. Tusha ate two meals a day there but never had the right to stay overnight. He left every night, only to be the first to return in the morning, carrying a pungent odor, which was said to come from the herbal mud he applied to keep bugs from biting him while he slept. Glocara didn't want to owe him any favors, but there simply wasn't space in the white house for him to stay.
And Glocara never allowed Tusha into Mareni's room. Whenever it was time to feed, clean, wash, or simply sit beside her, Glocara always closed the door tightly.
That wasn't a bad thing.