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Nobara wakes up in her bed, trying to put together where she is. She looks around and remembers. Oh! I'm at the okiya! I wonder if there's anything I can work on. She puts on her yukata and slips out of the room. She reaches the kitchen and grabs a mop, and starts on the floor.

((Post Two))

Drying her feet, Mizu slipped on her tabi and zori again, relishing their warmth as she returned the wicker basket to where she had found it. With a wry smile she looked down at her faded kimono.
"I ought to have washed this with the others; it's all sweaty now that I've been dancing in it," she murmured to herself with a quick laugh.
Slipping off her zori as she stepped onto the porch, she excused herself to Serena-sama and headed off towards the maids' room for another kimono.

Rummaging through her chest of a few clothing, she stripped quickly out of the soiled kimono and wrapped it up in a cloth to keep it from the other yukata and kimono before dressing in one of a faded blue-gray that had once belonged to an aunt of hers. She dressed herself hastily, tying the obi with practiced ease before straightening out the gown and reporting back to Serena-sama in case there was anything else she needed to get done.

((Twenty))

((No problem Dea-san ^-^))

Mizu nodded, quickly collecting a broom, a bucket, and some cleaning rags, wondering why in the world there were no mops in the closet. Passing various rooms in the okiya, she giggled. It was no wonder there were no mops available, it seemed they were being used. Drawing water from the well, she placed both water and rags at a corner of the porch as she began to diligently sweep the porch. Having done that, she leaned the broom carefully against the wall as she dunked a cleaning rag into the water and wrung it out.

Just as she began to wash the porch, she realized something. Besides the fact that the okiya was probably now very clean from repeated washings, the chores were probably meant for some greater purpose as well. "To teach us something?" Mizu wondered. Vaguely musing whether she was reading too deeply into simple things, she began, each movement as graceful as she could possibly make it. She imagined graceful things with every sweep of the rag: the flight of a crane, sakura petals in spring, ripples of water on a still pond. Her arms began to ache, her knees pleading for relief as she traversed the porch slowly from one side to another.

The movement became like a dance as her mind filled with images, snowfall, her mother dancing at home, the vibrating of a shamisen string, and Mizu drifted away on those thoughts until the porch was finished. Her arms felt leaden, like her fingers had after doing the laundry, but her heart was singing. She wasn't certain what had just happened, but she felt nothing but happiness as she collected bucket, broom, and rags before reporting back to Serena-sama. Behind her, patterns shaped like perfect fans dried on the porch, each the identical twin of the one before it.

((Twenty-one))

Mizu blushed in pleasure at the honor of trimming the rose bushes. Though she hadn't said anything, her eyes had been drawn to the delicate structures heaped with roses of all colors, one of her favorite flowers. She took a pair of shears and quickly went outside.

The bushes, along with the trees and other flowering shrubs that drifted through the okiya grounds, were of the delicate sort to reflect the beauty of women who lived within its walls. With delicate hands, she tenderly clipped the few branches of the bushes that were dying, pulling off browning leaves. Finally, her task was finished, and she let herself succumb to the seduction of roses. A sweet smile graced her lips as a fingertip stroked the silkiness of the blood-red rose petals, sending an ethereal puff of scent to spiral around her.

"Roses..." Mizu had to force herself not to clip a rose for herself to admire, and quickly left the leaves and stems around the bushes themselves as fertilizer. Her lacquered zori clattered lightly against the shale cobbles that made a garden path as she returned to the okiya's main building. "I've finished Serena-sama..."

((Twenty-two))

Mizu blushed deeply from the praise, bowing low to the geisha. "Please Serena-sama, you flatter this low maid too much," she replied quietly before taking her leave to the kitchens. It was with a look of surprise when she realized how many dishes there actually were to be washed. She hadn't noticed them earlier. Chiding herself, she quickly rolled up her sleeves, filling a tub of water before moving dishes into it. The suds quickly rose to her elbows as she submerged her hands into the water, scrubbing at the dishes with a rough cloth. Glancing to the door to make certain no one was outside and close enough to hear her, she began to sing.

It wasn't really a song, more a wordless tune that curled around her like the steam of a hot bath drawn on a cold winter morning, with lines that she invented mingled into the music. The pile of unwashed dishes to her left shrunk as the pile of clean dishes drying in racks to her right grew. Her knees were beginning to ache with kneeling by the tub, her fingers growing familiarly numb with the cold of the water she kept drawing to rinse the dishes, but her voice never once faltered. Unbidden, memories from her past filtered by, her mother, father, and a childhood friend whose name she no longer remembered. Shaking her head quickly before the memories did anything worse than break her from her song, she reached for another dish, only to realize there were none.

Cheerfully, she poured out the soapy water, stopping suddenly as she realized she could use the water to clean the cobbles near the gate of the okiya. Her cheeks flushed, knowing part of her desire to scrub those cobbles was for a glimpse of the street, something she hadn't seen in the days since she had arrived at the okiya. Deciding to salvage what was left of the soapy water, she contented herself with washing and drying her sud-wreathed arms before putting away the dishes and returning to Serena-sama to report that she had finished this task as well.

((Twenty-three))

Mizu gasped in surprise at Serena-sama's announcement. Had she been holding anything at the time, it would have tumbled to the ground from her shock at the head geisha's words. A happy blush filled her cheeks with crimson warmth, and she was about to give the geisha a hug before her common sense stopped her from doing anything so rash.

"I am honored Serena-sama, Onee-san, to be a maiko under you," she replied, the shine of her eyes revealing how earnestly she said this. "I hope to make you proud to have taken me as a maiko." Bowing low before her new sister, she couldn't help but have her thoughts turn to her mother. I am a maiko now Kaa-san...

((The link you can find under the ID's thread on the main forum. As for classes just post in parenthesies in your two chosen classes and the geisha teaching it will answer you))
"Why don't you go put your things in the maiko room and then come back down stairs and I will take you to the teaghouse,"Serena smiled.

Mizu smiled sweetly, the thought of being invited to go to the Teahouse with her new Onee-san enough of a treat to have her hurriedly gathering her things from the maids' room and taking her few belongings up to the maiko room to store them there. Quickly arranging her things in a chest in one corner of the room to her liking, she changed into a more suitable kimono, one of blue-gray cloth and fish-and-wave embroidery around the sleeves and hems, with a blue-green obi before returning downstairs to her Onee-san.

"Onee-san, I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, smoothing her kimono. "I'm ready now..."

((Thank you! ^-^))