‘Dormitory’ makes it seem like it’s much more impressive than it is: a long, wide room with a clump of beds on each side. The warmer weather allows the windows to remain uncovered, but during the winter it’s as dark as a crypt inside. My bed’s in a corner, with no other beds around it as the kids here like to pile on top of each other when they sleep.
I think it’s a combination of my grip, my unpopularity, and my sleeping habits that led me to my island of a bed- but I could be wrong. Who doesn’t want to get potentially strangled by an insanely strong short child?
A tall child with shaggy hair covering his eyes waved lazily to me from the boy’s side of the room, which I politely nodded at. He loped over, slouching as he lightly tossed a pair of my shoes onto my bed.
“Maybe you ought to wear them all the time.” He suggested, to which I shook my head.
“Loup, you might not’ve noticed, but that just caused Chad an’ the boys to haul me by the pants and steal ‘em off me.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, I think it was after I tripped him in front of the miller’s daughter”
“Lucy wouldn’t’ve been into that snot-nosed jackadill anyways.” Loup asserted, to which I made an ‘ehh’ noise to show I disagreed. Lucy goes after whoever seems the strongest, and she has a terrible sense in men; she is pretty though, so I can get the fuss after I’m done retching over her personality. Loup, despite knowing my thoughts, disagreed with my disagreement and huffed in response.
“Aw, Syb you just don’t know her well enough- she’s really sweet.” Loup tried, then he popped a squat on my favorite bench, the one I nailed down after ‘commandeering’ it from Raun’s farm. I fixed it up from the scrap heap so rightfully, it belongs to me. It can’t shift from its spot next to my bed but it’s not like I have a desk or need of a table. Keeps Chad from stealing it discretely; boy’s too stupid to figure out how to dislodge it without tearing a floorboard and I know Brunhilde would have a thing or two to say about that.
Frankly, Chad’s too stupid to do much else aside from tattle and steal my shoes but since he’s relatively good-looking and always smiling, all the adults in town believe his lies more often than not. Right pain in the ass; Brun thinks every child under her charge is full of shit, so at least I’ve not been hounded for my ‘bad behavior’ when I’m done carrying everyone’s box of fuck-all. I think some of the meaner townies add extra rocks when they see it’s me coming down the road to do my chores.
I asked Brun, and she says it’s rude to break people’s noses because they’re stupid.
Lame, I replied.
Then I had to go to Keller down the road to ask for some potatoes on behalf of Brun and got distracted. I really need to work on my focus- maybe Raun has something for that? Something that isn’t wasps hopefully.
Don’t take advice from someone who thinks that the majority of life’s answers involve launching wasps. However, Brun is too busy wrangling the little ones and almost every adult in town is either uninterested or involved in my bothering. Maybe I can ask for advice from Pat? She seems plenty wizened to me. Dale and the stoic Herb would be rather useless by one never talking and the other never shutting up. Worse than useless sometimes, but at least Herb makes a good roast.
That requires finding her, which ever since she got some letter from the capital has been a pain and a half; something from a guy she called Al? I think maybe a boyfriend or something, but the bird’s damned me to know. For all that I’ve learned from my stay, nobody’s been able to teach me how to read.
Pat showed me some scribbles that she claimed made up my name but who knows. It could be an insult for all I know, but from the few times I get to see the three idiots who found me, they’re always running around or getting shuttled to fight something called ‘demons’. Demons are animals I think? That word sounds animal-like, so maybe they’re like really big wolves.
Wolves don’t taste good. Orphanage once got a scrounging from a bored hunter that tore a wolf badly and decided to donate the meat; can’t make a cash profit? Donate your crap to some orphans and make a social profit! Douchebag still insisted he keep the tattered pelt, which nobody objected to; even in winter that pile of scrap would be unused except by teething babies.
So yeah, demons are wolf-shaped animals running around causing trouble until idiots come around and bap them with swords. Because the idiots have to chase after them so often I rarely get to see one of the few people in town willing and able to teach me what this ridiculous language looks like on hide. Or dirt, rather. Hide is expensive, not to mention ink.
I asked Brun once but she just chuckled and told me that under no circumstance was she actually qualified to her station and scooped another bowl of soup into my bowl.
A light item bonked against my skull, startling me out of my thought process as I watched a left shoe plop lightly into my lap.
“You really need to work on your listening skill,” Loup informed me while holding the other that he evidently picked back up, and at my confused look and with an indulgent eye-roll he repeated what he was apparently yammering on about during my brainstorm:
“Are you ready for the Ritugam? You’re counted as five years of age this year, right?” He pokes my leg with my shoe and I shrug.
“I dunno” I replied bored as Loup, finding joy in bothering me, begins poking me with the shoe over and over until I snatched it from his annoying hand. Holding both my shoes close to my chest I curl away from him as I grumble “When I say I dunno it means that I dunno.” I twitch as he pokes the back of my neck and sit up to better glare petulant at him.
“Well, even if you’re not sure, Brun said she’s tossing you in the next ceremony so that the brother stops reminding her to send over her, what’d he call us? Oh yeah, her charges.”
“Bet Brun replied that she’ll send the bill in the morning.”
“I’m not a gambling man, and even if I was I wouldn’t look for money-losing bets”
A bit more jostling between the two of us before Loup leans back and takes a deep breath, sobering a bit, “I’ve been through Ritugam and nothing happened, the same’s probably going to happen soon and we’ll be waving bye to the kids that lucked out by getting their woo-woo magic and got adopted by some noble that grew a conscious overnight.”
“Yeah, I think it was after I tripped him in front of the miller’s daughter”
Yep that'll do it.