Flashback [Orphanage] A Shady Friend for Torrid Days

[Philomena]

Winter 75th, 479 AV
Midday
The Girl's Ward ('The Kennel') Of the Zeltiva Orphanage
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Minnie could not understand how the dolls had gotten there. It was Snatching Day in the Kennel side of the orphanage, and the girls were gone, all of them but her - she had stayed behind, sucking absently at the tail of her leather belt (she had sucked it more than some of the girls socked theirs, and it had lost most of its comforting, meaty-salty taste), and huddled beneath her quilt and read The Book, her flybeaten copy of the Wright Circumnavigation, slowly, sumptuously, the way a gourmand might enjoy a sweetmeat. Noone else was there. She had heard nothing, and the quilts were so thin, she should have been able to hear anything. But nonetheless, when she got up to shiver off to the privy, there they were, plain to see: the two dolls, the Gods of Hopeless Causes.

They were not on her bed (thank the gods), they were on Lanie's, just a few beds away from her own. And while the how was a mystery, the why was certainly not: for Lanie, in the common parlance, had it coming. The problem with Lanie was that she was too small -- no that was not precisely true. There were many problems with Lanie. She was small. She was always, absurdly hungry - in the ignorant wisdom of experience, Minnie figured it was worms of one sort or another. She was unpersonable and more or less friendless. She did not listen to reason. But still, all those other reasons could be the strange virtues of the cornered wolf, if only she did not have that first one - she was small, and not scrappy small. Scrawny-small.

The sin for which Lanie now had to pay was stealing. Stealing in the abstract, as a moral principle, of course, was not sin at all in the Kennel. It was an economic strategy, and one of the more popular ones. But, there were borders to stealing - stealing happened outside the walls of the Kennel, and towards outsiders of the Kennel. At worst, one stole from the teachers and keepers, and even that was only for extremities, for robbing a matron was a recipe for bringing heavy hands on everyone's heads. To steal from each other was a sin (there was taking, the strong from the weak, but that was not stealing - it was extortion. And extortion as it included the rationalizing power of the fist was morally acceptable).

Lanie, though, had done an act of pure, unadulterated sneak-thievery. Minnie honestly couldn't even understand it. It was as if the girl wasn't even trying. Drewy Bannister, one of the big girls, had gotten hold of some jam-pots, fingered from a cart delivering to the Uni, and yes, every girl had lusted after them. But a jam-pot is a horrible target for thievery, for it leaves evidence - the pot itself, first off - and Lanie stole them at night so she couldn't be rid of them until morning when the doors were unlocked! - and then beyond that, the smell of fruit on the breath, a truly rare odor in the Kennel. She had not even waited to eat them - Minnie had awoken in the dead of the knight, to a faint echoing clink of glass on glass, and looked up to see the tiny girl shoveling handfuls of dewberry jam into her mouth, her face smirched like a cannibal's, her eyes red with terrified tears she was falling to hold in. Minnie had watched her the whole time, made no secret of watching, left her eyes wide open, and Lanie had seen those eyes, had shrunk back, had gone forward to offer Minnie a handful, with a wheedling air of bribery. Minnie knew better. Minnie knew how easy the smell of jam would be ferreted out, and she shrunk back in terror, making Lanie go white, and shrink back to her bed. She licked the last of the corners of the jar, sticking her slender white-pink tongue in so far she bruised her cheek, then stared, with a shivering horror at the empty pots and hidden them under her pillow.

The next morning, when the matron lined them up for class, the older girls made their rounds for 'cleaning up' the younger. This was supposed to be a way of alleviating the staffing problems at the kennel, and of teaching the older girls a certain tender motherliness. In reality, of course, it was the period of enforcement. It was the period of unspoken law. The jury trials occurred with silent stairs in the morning. The sentencing happened during the day. It was read in the silent mouths of the Gods of Hopeless Causes. Punishments and executions occurred in the darkness.

The trial for Lanie was so simple it would have been funny without its ramifications. Drewy Bannister went from girl to girl as the matron unlocked the heavy doors, swept out the night air, bustled exhaustedly after breakfast (such as it was). Drewy had grabbed each girls chin and squeezed, to open up their mouths, then pinched them to make the exhale. She stopped after Lanie, for she knew she need look no further. She took the toe of her shoe, and using it flipped the front of the girls skirts, then. IT was so easy - where else was Lanie to hide the jam jars to get them out of the building? She was no patient sneak. There, cinched onto Lanie's thighs with boxing twine, were the two narrow jars. Drewy dropped the skirt, and turned to the other older girls, gestured with her neck.

"Its her."

The older girls nodded consent, some smirking, some frowning.

Drewy looked at Lanie, "Get rid of them, Mousehunter. Won't do anyone good now." Her words were icier than the winter air.

And Lanie, crying, gobbled up her porridge at breakfast. And Lanie, when the doors were opened, ran out, as fast as she could, and disappeared into the city.

And that, Minnie knew, and every girl in the Kennel would know when they returned, was why Lanie had the Gods of Hopeless Causes on her pillow, now. However it had arrived.

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Lanie came home late, just before the doors were locked. She missed supper, and for Lanie, whose stomach gnawed with tiger teeth in the best of times, this was a sign of desperation. But, she had found no other nook to sleep, and the Watch did not let children just sleep on the street, after all. This, was a civilized city, a city that cared for its poor, cared enough to build them orphanages and workhouses. And so she walked in. When she came, the other girls were already dressed in whatever scraps of heavy wool passed for winter night-clothes - Minnie's own was a peacoat, sewn shut, over a sloppily patched pair of woolen stockings - so that when Lanie entered, none had such pressing business that they could not turn and stare. She walked to the bed, looked down at the two dolls with a sullen misery, and broke down crying. Minnie turned her face down. She knew this part, knew how horrible it was, now, to have to lie down, to go to sleep - or at least to pretend to - knowing, waiting for the hour when you would be awoken with a blow, a smash of a stick, the sting of a willow-switch. Knowning they would come, and never knowing just when. She whimpered, and looked around, murmuring, "Please, I'm sorry, I'll… I'm sorry… I'll get some more… I was…"

But the room did not stir. The stares did not turn or soften. This was the law, and the law must not be mocked. They weren't all bad girls - in a sense, Minnie knew, none of them really were bad girls. But there was a reasoning, cold and cruel, but orderly, that must take hold in any society of desperation, and this was it. There was no question, one did not argue over clemency. The Gods of Hopeless Causes had spoken. Lanie's cause was hopeless.

Minnie would perhaps have loved to feel she was so noble as to feel a pity that kept her wakeful. But the nature of the Kennel was that one learned to sleep. One had to. If worry and pity and fear kept one awake, one would wait a long time for a good night's rest. She slept. She slept deeply. So dreamt she was a great, sharp-toothed cat, whose blood was monk's-ink, who was pouncing through the city, tearing people to shreds, unable to stop pouncing and tearing, pouncing and tearing. And then, the cat felt a hand on its shoulder, and Minnie's mind felt the shadow of the hand in reality, and jerked her awake.

She started violently away, one hand clutching the penny-pocket on her peacoat-gown, the other going to her face. The jerk was violent enough it made the bed groan across the stone floor. But there, beside her bed, eyes terrified, was Lanie.

For the first time, Minnie really looked at the girl crying, instead of the abstract idea of her. Lanie was blessed with the rare ability to be beautiful while crying, her tiny, wasted face taking on a shadow of the eyes, a sinking of the cheeks that made one think of tragic actresses. She said nothing at all, just stared at Minnie, imploring. Minnie looked back. What did the girl want from her? They knew each other, yes, but hardly. She whispered, as soft as she could, but with the sharp bite of anger, "Why did you do it Lanie?"

"I was so hungry. I couldn't even help it. I couldn't leave them. I'm so hungry, Minnie."

Minnie wrinkled her brow, and shook her head, "There's nothing I can do Lanie. You know how it works. Its not like they'll listen to me."

"I'm scared, Minnie."

"You should be, stupid!" but Minnie regretted the words as soon as she said them, and her regret swelled an aching, lonely tenderness in her, the tenderness of one miserable for another. She looked up at Lanie. They could kill her, or at least break her hard. She was so small!

"I'm sorry, Minnie, I'm sorry."

The girl looked down at her feet. Minnie couldn't understand why she was apologizing to her - it wasn't her that would be ---

She stopped. She looked at her arms. She looked at her own body - thin but not wasted, small, but not scrawny. She looked at her arm, with its narrow switch scar from a beating she'd taken. Lanie crawled back into her bed, and huddled in her blankets.

Minnie stood up from her bed, shaking violently. Noone moved. She knew there were other girls awake, but none moved. She stepped across the floor, past the bed of Dewer, the girl that separated her from Lanie. She stood at the head of Lanie's bed, and Lanie turned to her, her tiny tear-stained face frightened. Minnie turned her eyes away and didn't say anything. Minnie sighed. Courage was suddenly easy - it was miserable and irritating, and immensely stupid, sure. But it was easy enough. IT was easy because it would have been harder to just walk back to her bed. She plucked up the two dolls from Lanie's bed, and stared hard at them, then at Lanie again, whose eyes were wide, and very, very still. Then, she went back to her own bed, set them at the foot and shivered back under quilt.

She lay, staring at the ceiling. She could feel Lanie staring at her. She found herself, resenting the girl, wishing she'd be brave back, that she'd come and take the dolls and put them back on her own bed. //This is how it has to be, no. I'll smart, but it won't kill me.//

The girls came just past the apogee of the night. Dewy had a heavy stick in her hand - stouter than would normally meet the code of the Kennel, even. But Hannah was there too. Hannah looked down at Minnie coldly, then at the dolls.

"You take these, Min?"

"Yes, Hannah."

"You forced to do it? You take 'em on your own?"

"Yeah. I took 'em."

Dewy looked hard at her, and put her stick down.

Hannah shook her head, sadly, "For a smart kid, you're pretty petching stupid, Min."

Min pulled her arms in close, and screwed shut her eyes. She didn't grab the quilt - she knew better than that. You tried to pad the blows, they just made it worse. The first fist landed in her belly, and she doubled over. But through the whole thing, it was only fists, and that was a blessing. IT lasted, perhaps, three minutes. Then the girls left, and went back to their beds.

Minnie cried quietly (but ugly, she knew that), trying to stretch her bruised leg, her pinched neck. She tore a thin strip of bed sheet and, stinging, set it to the cut of her split lip, found the cold iron bed knob and unscrewed it to set against the swollen bump beneath her eye - the basic first aid of the gamine. Then she felt something warm come up and wrap around her. She startled at first, but turning she saw it was Lanie. Lanie didn't say a thing, just wrapped a leg and an arm around Minnie. Minnie hurt, oh did she hurt. But she had hurt before. And if you won't sleep when you're hurt in the kennel, perhaps you might have to wait a long time to sleep. So she closed her eyes, squished back into the wormy little girl's warmth, and went to sleep.

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +1 Medicine Lores Lanie the Childhood Friend Lanie the Thief The Zeltivan Orphanage Suffering Together with Lanie during Childhood Taking a Hit Honor Amongst Thieves Comments Good development going there. While there isn't much that I can award in the form of skills or lores, please know that I really appreciate reading this thread. This is, at the least, what I can give to you in the form of my appreciation.