The lab proper and the main storeroom took up the building’s expansive basement, and Makhus held off on even stepping foot into the lab until everything else had been taken care of - he knew he wouldn’t step foot out of there for hours, if not days, were it as well-equipped as he thought it was.

The upper floor had living quarters for a full family of four, including two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small but decently-equipped kitchen. The household alchemic devices had decently-sized essentia crystals and were in full working condition as far as he could tell, though it would take some actual use to determine whether any malfunctions were present.

The main storeroom was mostly untouched, if a little empty, mostly stocked with rudimentary goods that wouldn’t spoil and weren’t easy to transport - chiefly, a massive butt cask barrel that turned out to be full of Liquid Vigor.

So it was that the two men took to cleaning the store, waiting for Zefaris to arrive and join them. Both of them knew what had transpired the night before, but neither of them knew that the other knew, and so they spent a short while pretending to be annoyed at the markswoman for sleeping in before Makhus slipped.

“Swear I heard some weird moaning from their room last night…” he absent-mindedly remarked, his mind entirely too focused on sorting the empty seal-bottles that the previous owner had left behind to filter what he said.

He realized his mistake well before he heard Sigmund chuckling into his beard and remarking, “Let me guess, you saw the Fog leaking from under the door and popped your auditory enhancement? Was that why you were singing in the bathroom, waiting for it to wear off like an upstanding non-pervert?”

“I thought they were fighting!”

Sigmund only answered with a hearty chuckle, continuing to sweep the floor. They continued to work in silence for some time, until a few minutes past noon the doorbell rang when Zefaris arrived, radiating an uncharacteristic sense of positivity. It was as if she was rid of the ever-present quiet tension that she had possessed for as long as they’d been in the Exclusion Zone.

Neither of them had the mind to question her in regards to this, and she joined them in cleaning the store without more than a few words to ask what needed doing and where to find the tools. A rag, a bucket, some water, and off she went, cleaning dust off the many countertops and shelves.

They had heard the distant, sonorous singing of some unknown street performer, but a short while after Zef arrived, he went silent. A few minutes later they heard him noodling away far closer, just across the river, before he broke out into that sonorous war-cry of a singing voice. None of the three brought it up, but they all took some solace in the existence of someone with the gall to express such patriotism even after the war. Zefaris made her approval of the singer’s provocative lyrics most evident, quietly humming along as she scrubbed away at the shelves under the counter.