As we entered the building hand-in-hand alongside the white haired man, I saw two kids run out of a door and another pop up behind them to look at them running. He turned toward us for a second and laughed before running after the others.

As we walked down the hall, I noticed more and more children walking around.

This is… An orphanage.

I came to the realisation before we even reached our destination at the end of the hallway. It was a hall filled with small beds. He guided me to the one beside the door and went to the small chest in front of it. I could see from the other chests that that was where the orphans kept their belongings.

“But you’re not an orphan Silika…”

Darkie said.

I thought about what she said for a moment. What IS an orphan exactly? Was it when a parent died? Or was it just when you weren’t with them anymore. Regardless, it doesn’t matter.

[I am now.]

The man smiled at me and opened the bag he had been holding. Most of it seemed to contain paperwork and other trinkets, but he took out a few daily necessities Goldie must have put in the bag before we left. There was a single change of clothes, a yellow dress, a hairbrush, a toothbrush and a hairband. None of them resonated with me. They were an assortment of objects I had never seen before. There was the same balm she had used on my wounds and the coach driver had applied during our journey as well, but he put it back in the bag. I also had no use for all the paper he didn’t take out from the bag as I still couldn’t read. The only important thing to me was in my arms, and he wouldn’t go into that box any time soon.

He finally took out a brown pouch. It’s content looked heavy, and I could make out the circular shape of coins through the leather. He looked at it for a second and then back at me.

He said something to me in very slow words trying to trace every syllable with his lips.

I somewhat understood that he would keep it for now as he put it back into the bag and closed it.

After placing my things in the box, the man took my hand and we headed back down the corridor. We turned at a door into what looked like a large playroom. A dozen kids were playing with toys and games with each other. I could even see some of the older kids reading to the younger ones.

I saw the man clear his throat and exclaim something loudly. I couldn’t tell how loud, but suddenly I felt the entire building shake and two dozen more kids poured from the door behind us. One bumped into me but didn’t even apologize.

Once everyone was gathered, the red-eyed man made me stand in front of him with his two hands on my shoulders. He spoke to them for a while as the younger ones struggled to keep still. Eventually they were all dismissed. Some of them came to greet me or simply waved as they went back to their games. He motioned to a girl a bit older than I was. He told her something and then lightly pushed me in her direction. I looked back at him, but he was already waving goodbye as he left the room.

She was almost a head taller than me and had jade coloured eyes and blond hair. She had a kind smile on her face and took me by the hand. She dragged me to a corner of the room with a big box. She let go of my hand for a moment and dug out something from the box and showed it to me.

It was a brown horse plush.

[Wow! You have a plush too?]

She grinned proudly and sat down on the ground and I did the same.

“Hi there I’m Darkie!”

Darkie waved.

“Hi! I’m Horsie!”

The horse waved back.

“It’s the first time I talked like that with someone else! Normally I only talk to my friend Silika.”

Darkie pointed at me.

“Really? I have a lot of friends! Let me show you.”

The other girl helped Horsie up to the box and took out a wooden soldier with a stick for a sword.

“Look! This is Knight!”

“Wow! He’s pretty cool! But isn’t his armor too hard?”

“Not at all, look!”

The girl put the toy soldier on the horse and made it ride on its back.

I laughed. The horse was way too small for the wood soldier.

“But sometimes he does this weird thing…”

I watched as the girl grabbed the sword from the soldier's hand. I felt a sting in my chest.

“...Where he hits me with it”

She took the wooden stick and smacked it against the horse. I felt my breath getting stuck in my throat. My eyes dry up. Tears pooling at their corners.

“All I can do is run faster when he does that, but it hurts…. So… Much…”

I felt the sting of the crop as Horsie was hit by the wooden soldier in the shadow of the girl’s golden hair. Horsie was hit over and over again as it struggled to move faster.

My mind froze. I was suddenly back on that marble floor. I saw the shadow of legs in the light filtering through the seam of the door. I tried to turn and run, but the crop reached me first. It whipped me. Tearing my skin and leaving painful marks.

I screamed for help but it didn’t stop. I curled into a bar holding Darkie as the stick of the crop hit me over and over again as I begged for it to step through tears and snot. I kept emptying my lungs hoping to drown out the pain, but no noise came out and every hit was more painful.

The feeling slowly started to fade and the hit of the crop on my back turned into soft pats. I wasn’t on the marble floor. Instead I was being rocked back and forth.

I opened my swollen eyes. Through my burning eyes I saw white hair dancing above me. I was in the man’s arms as he sat on the floor, eyes closed, trying to sooth me.

He was moving his mouth slowly as if singing a song. I couldn’t hear it, but the simple idea was recomforting. He opened his eyes and noticed I had calmed down. He picked up Darkie from the ground and handed him to me. I hugged him tightly.

“Are you ok?”

[I’m ok now.]

The man stood with me still in his arms as the other children stared, scared looks on their faces.

We entered a room that looked like an office and he sat me on a couch.

I noticed my sleeves were torn in several places. I could feel a sharp pain in my arms. The man went up to his desk and came back to me with Goldie’s balm and started rolling up my sleeve.

He had barely raised it up to my elbow before he stopped his hand. I followed his gaze to the countless bruises on my forearm. They didn’t hurt anymore, but it must have been pretty ugly from another's perspective. His brows furrowed and he looked at me.

This amount was nothing to me anymore. Nothing compared to the kicking, the choking, or even just the smell and the stomach churning stickiness of the marble floor.

I looked at him unwavering as he bit his lips. He continued applying the balm without meeting my eyes.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. I sat in the office as the man worked through documents. He wrote letters and made notes on paper. He occasionally left the room and came back minutes later giving a worried look in my direction as I simply sat still on the sofa.

I tried my best not to think, not even speaking to Darkie. There were memories and thoughts at the edge of my consciousness. I feared that if I let myself feel joy, the pain would also come back just as quick.

As the sun started to set, he held me by the hand and we walked to the dining room. There, I could see the older children cooking a meal as the younger ones were setting the tables. He sat me down at the corner and sat down beside me at the end of the table. An older kid placed a bowl of stew in front of me. Everyone sat down and looked toward the man. He said a few words before dipping his spoon into his food followed by everyone else in the room.

No prayer or anything. Strange.

I hesitantly picked up my spoon and ate along, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. The supper concluded and we walked back to the office. My eyes felt heavy. It had been a very long day.

It was already dark outside. The winter solstice is probably drawing close… The man put down his quill and looked up at me. Probably noticing my fatigue he stood up and helped me off the couch. We walked down the corridor into the dormitory. No one else was in bed yet, but he helped me settle into my bed.

It wasn’t long before my eyes closed and this long day finally came to a close… Or so I had thought.

It was the dead of night when I awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling only illuminated by the blue moonglow. I turned to my side and saw a boy, maybe 7 or 8, sleeping in the bed beside mine.

Boys and girls sleeping in the same room? That’s odd… My mother would be furious if she…

From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something. A pale flutter of pink. I turned my head but it was gone. I saw a similar flutter at the bottom of my vision and sat up.

She’s here, she must be.

Panicked, I looked around but couldn’t see her yet...

Suddenly, it fell on my face. A long strand of pink hair. Panicked I fell off my bed, but it stuck to my face. I tried to pull it off but it hurt my scalp.

The hair… Her hair… It’s part of me. She’s part of me.

The idea made me sick to the stomach. Her silver eyes filled with hatred as she choked me surfaced in my mind.

I ran out of the room. I needed something. Something to take her out.

I reached the kitchen. I found a sharp knife and started cutting. Cutting every pink strand that came into my view Until no matter how much I shook my head, no hair came into view of my face. I dropped the knife in the pile of hair and simply walked back to my bed where Darkie was waiting for me.

“What happened?”

[I saw something scary.]

“Is it gone?”

[Yeah, it’s gone.]

I hugged him and fell asleep, my heart lighter.