A few days later, we started operation ‘Abducting Children’. Okay, we didn´t really do that, but I let Tom decide how we should call it as he did most of the work. I mean, the commoner district of this city was his home turf and I couldn’t really run around freely anymore … not that I could ever do that in the first place.

In any case, I sat on the grass, my white dress sprawling around me in a circle and played a few games with kids while those who wanted to earn a bit of money worked to reconstruct the slums. Which meant first of all to clear all the rubble. Hundreds and hundreds of men searched the remains of their homes for anything even remotely of value or things that could be used to fuel the never stopping cooking pots.

Honestly, it was quite interesting to see how the life returned to a part of the capital city that was long seen as completely devoid of any life. At least for some time, I would let them have this peace, and even enjoy it alongside with them.

Children ran around me, playing catch for their first time. Others played a few board games I brought with me. Each and every day, I would bring new games and gift the old ones to those who liked them the most. Interestingly enough, these games were never stolen and the kids all brought them back to play with others around me. I was quite certain it had to do something with the crudeness of these games as I only bought used ones, but also with my reputation as the saint.

None of them feared me, but they did respect me, mostly for my egalitarian perspective. I behaved around guards, thieves, beggars, amputees, and so exactly the same. Friendly and without the usual haughtiness nobles usually carried around them. They could all come to me and eat for free, even though the guards surprisingly still wanted to pay which I gladly accepted after they insisted on it. Around me, the guards could forget they had to catch the thieves who in turn forget to steal things, even though they had more than one opportunity.

And I had fun. Fun seeing my ploys succeed as more and more humans opened up to Hannah, at least on the surface, or as quite a few children became attached to me and didn´t even want to let me go for getting a bowl of soup.

I ate it along with the others and even fed a little child his soup. Around me, the invisible walls of the city came crashing down. A noble fed a peasant and a man pleaded for forgiveness in front of Hannah. And even though she tried her best to hide it, I knew she wouldn’t be able to forgive him whatever he did to her. There was hatred in her eyes whenever she had to interact with anyone from the slums but no other than me seemed to have realized it yet. Well, her charming smile probably managed to fool everyone else. So much that even the reporters who were always around me opened up to her and forgot to pester me with questions.

This whole flowery atmosphere even dragged me somewhat with it. With peasants who didn´t know my real nature, I could ironically relax and could do the things I apparently liked the most: Crushing children in every game I knew.

Anyways, today, we weren’t just here to do the things we always did, but rather because of the homelessness issue of children. Most of them clearly lacked the development of their peers inside the city, no matter if you look at from physical perspective or from the intellectual one. I had no dreams of teaching them how to read and write, but everyone of them should be able to articulate themselves which was quite hard for them at this point in time.

And because of that, Hannah and I were searching for a few women who could work as a housemothers in the orphanage Mary brought with Tom´s money.  Without any of the other two, it would be quite hard to buy a house, which was why I was kind of grateful to Mary. And so, I went through one verbal application after another as Hannah sent more and more people my way. In the end, I chose sixteen women who either worked as a nanny somewhere before, or brought up their own children in the past.

Way past midday, I thus sat in a cart with all the hired women and their children and queued up at the beggar line … for those who had no identification cards. Well, I was sure nobody would mind us taking the express line, but we got to stay humble somehow.

I didn´t really regret my decision as I played tick tack toe with a little boy, but it took way too long in my opinion. Well, that wasn’t my problem … most of the time, so I didn´t bother too much. All in all, it took us a full hour to reach the empty building Tom selected.

Originally, it must have been an office for some kind of conglomerate that went bankrupt, but Tom already tasked a few craftsmen to renovate everything. There was still a lot of work to do as the facade was quite porous and the interior was quite suboptimal as well, but the necessary furniture and rooms were already there. A large kitchen with a massive canteen provided enough space for two hundred kids to dine at the same, while the two storey above the utility rooms at the ground floor provided enough space for a lot more to live comfortably.

It was certainly not perfect, but it was the best Tom could get his hands on, which started to mean a lot around this time. The women were a bit overwhelmed to be honest. I just gave them a house, a job and security for free, which was probably also why some of them were moved to tears.

But I, I wasn´t satisfied in the slightest. The water had to be bought here from a well a few streets away, most rooms were still dusty and here and there, I could even see a few nails sticking out of the walls. I certainly didn´t want to be responsible for any death in this house. Too many children already died by my hands.