The red-scaled woman purses her lips and looks me up and down. "Are you... Are you working here?"
"More or less," I reply.
Behind her, the server or whatever they are that followed her back into the kitchen makes some sour remark about not doing anything. The kitchen staff laugh.
"Looks like a never ending job!" Red says at volume.
"I'll take a break in a minute," I say and add, insincerely, "then we can catch up."
I intend to take a break. I'm going to do it when I manage to get the plate pile down a little bit more. The job is made harder by having Red watch me, tapping bright gold finger nails against her red-scaled arms.
I stop and look at her. "You may as well go eat."
The server nods enthusiastic agreement.
She ignores us both. "This is taking too long! I have an idea!"
I have a feeling this can't be good.
"Wait here!" she says and charges off through the back door.
I keep washing up and wonder if I'll be able to have a cup of tea when I have a break.
The server makes some comment about customers skipping without paying and tells me to hurry up because we need more clean plates out front. Their colleagues add to my stacks even as their speaking. I keep washing up.
There's a rumbling sound that makes the kitchen staff pause - all except for me, anyway.
Then the floor shakes. I wash up as fast as I can because the tops of the dirty plate piles are precarious anyway and the extra shake is threatening to make them fall over.
The back door bursts open and there's a flood of water. Not a trickle that covers the floor, not a quickly fills the room so that everyone is left treading water and trying to catch a lungful of air in a tiny pocket trapped above door height, but a one moment the room is empty of water and the next moment it fills all the available spaces.
I'm grabbed by a huge claw that drags me with the water as it crashes through the servers doors into the restaurant proper and through that to the street outside. It's only then that the water stops filling all space available and becomes a flood of ankle-deep water covering everything, leaving the remains of kitchen utensils and restaurant décor in its wake.
"There!" Red says triumphantly. "The washing is done!"
The huge claw is gone and she's standing there again. I can't help thinking of her as larger than life, despite her not being particularly tall.
"What did you do?" I ask.