Welcome to Gaia! ::

It wasn't long before Kostya realised that something was incredibly and utterly wrong. Personal hygiene was something he tried to maintain as much as possible, especially in the wake of the island's lack of power. It involved a lot of soap salvaged from the beach, and bottles of water he'd stowed away long ago.

It went a lot slower when he didn't have to account for two people, after all.

The itching that crept on his scalp (he could almost feel their legs, scurrying around, digging in--) immediately raised alarm bells. Especially when itching did not relieve it. It was not the kind of itch that went away, not without some sort of help.

As it dawned on Kostya as to what the problem was, he made an upset face and muttered in Russian to himself about how troublesome this was going to be.

Some children at school, when he had been young, had exhibited such symptoms. Morosely scratching at his head with fingers more furious than he was, he redirected his course upstairs, heading right for the infirmary.

"Apply it as soon as you get to running water you don't want to drink," Sunny had said, thrusting the bottle of shampoo into his hands. Hers, he had noticed, had been covered in latex, a fact that he winced at.

"Yeah, thanks a*****e," she said, wiggling her fingers at him. "Thank you so much for bringing highly contagious lice into my infirmary. Now get the ******** out."

Waved off, like a fly or a child or a cross between the two. He returned to the basement, fishing out a metal washing bin that he'd scrounged up (it had a hole, at the bottom, and was dented in three places, but it sort of worked. Sort of.) and a few gallons of water.

This wasn't something he wanted to do in the view of anyone nearby at all. He had some dignity, after all, and while some people likely did not mind contracting lice, Kostya was not one of them. Not by far.

Plugging the hole in his bin with an old rag, stripping out of his coat and top--both of which in sore need of a wash, and a good sterilization with bleach, for that matter-- and removing his glasses, the trainee got to work.

He poured enough water over his hair to wet it, and then lathered some of the shampoo into his hands. Huh. It smelled weird-- like medicine and ozone all at once-- and was oddly thick and a little bit on the lumpy side. It tingled, too, and none of these things added up to confidence in the product, but...

It wasn't like he could go off island and pick up some lice killing shampoo on his own, could he?

Leaning over the bucket, Kostya began to massage it into his scalp, hissing as the tingling on uninjured fingers translated to stinging on a sore scalp, but maybe that just meant that it was working?

With slippery he hands, he groped for the bottle, squinting at it to read the label.

There was no label, or instructions, and he supposed he should have asked Sunny, but it was too late now. He let it sit for a while, moving the suds around enough to keep them out of his eyes and above the nape of his neck, and suddenly grew thankful for his short hair. He couldn't imagine having to deal with long hair all the time.

Maybe that was part of why Mimsy never cared for her hair beyond the occasional (to put it kindly) wash.

He rinsed his fingers in the shallow rinsewater below, and began to rinse his hair out with the remaining water in the gallon jug, massaging it out the best he could.

Konstantin stood, drying his hair with a towel, and immediately decided to go for a walk to the cafeteria.



What kind of King of the Woodland Realm did not have a crown?