A strange rhythm settled into my life during the time after we bought the orphanage. For a few times, I was freed from my studies with Mr Schlaumeier and was thus able to be productive even in the morning, if I finished all the paperwork Mary left over for me during the night. Sadly, I wasn’t able to spend too much time with Mary because of that, but I was sure to catch up on my missed time on a later date.
First of all, was the meeting with the carpenters inside the handyman guild … did they have guilds for everything? I would really like to have a word with the cook guild … in any case, I mostly listened there as I wasn’t the best at these tasks. They talked about road layout, central places for communal activities and so on and so forth. Still, I tried to stress to make this development as sustainable as possible. There were quite a few solely focused on this task by trying to create the best environment for businesses to thrive. I didn´t want to subsidize the eastern slums forever after all. These filthy peasants obviously had to work for their own well-being!
Well … as I was never that interested in city planning, I left the guard captain, who apparently found his true calling behind and strolled with Hannah towards the orphanage which was just a few blocks away. Even then though, I still needed to talk to far too many humans who recognized me. Being a celebrity kind of sucked in that regard. At least some of those who tried to converse with me were eventually coaxed into helping out at the orphanage. Those were the benefits of being a saint. All of those who helped probably thought they would get a bonus in their afterlife or so … which wasn’t the case at all.
I had quite the following, packed with food, construction materials and furniture as we arrived at the orphanage. There, I was even more popular … with the five kids there who all weren´t orphans, but I was popular. And that’s all that counted.
After literally dumping all the reporters and my followers in the orphanage to help out the few craftsmen, Hannah and I put all the children on a cart which I promptly steered outside the city. At our usual place were already quite a few children with a few elders who watched over them. Waving happily, I rode the cart over to them, jumped down from the driver's seat and helped to get the two younger children off the cart.
“Lucy, Lucy! Look, look!” As usual, all the children had no idea how to hold back and directly swarmed me from all the distance while the older ones waited in the distance. They were a bit too embarrassed to storm towards a younger girl than they were and rather waved towards me as I did so.
“What is that?” I asked as I was presented with a rather dusty book. I neither knew how it survived the blaze, nor what it was as the cover was completely and utterly unrecognizable.
“We think it is a storybook.” The eight-year old exclaimed.
“A storybook? Well then, there is only one thing we can do!” I said and patted the girls head who giggled loudly. “Hey, Leonie, can you gather all the other kids?” She nodded happily and ran back towards the tent city a few hundred metres north. A few of the other kids followed her shortly afterwards to get their own friends and would probably return with a few hundred kids or so. Day by day, they were getting more and more which gave me a hard time remembering all their faces and names. I still gave my best though.
Anyway, half an hour later as quite a few kids gathered around me to listen while others played with different games, I opened the first page. I suppressed a chuckle as I read the first few lines about some random family in the north which was long extinct. I didn´t expect this to be a storybook at all, but I was nonetheless surprised as I read about the heroic deeds of Halvar and his intelligent daughter Wickie. As I didn´t want to feed these children hundred-year-old propaganda, I fished out another story I read on Solaris and simply acted as if I was reading. I nearly had to scream because of the number of interested kids, but otherwise, I had fun seeing their glittering eyes as I told them about princess Schlagmichtod and her trusted knight Mr Kannnix. And what a story it was.
Hannah, looking over my shoulder from time to time may have been the only one to notice what I did, but she said nothing as I told the kids how the duo fought a dragon while staring at a family emblem. In the end, I finished my story on the last page and closed the book in front of anyone.
For a short moment, I could see the glee in their eyes because of this story. Maybe I actually moved them to strive for more than living in the slums.
“Can we play chess now?” Or maybe I bored some of them as their attention span was shorter than that of a chicken. A very intelligent one maybe, but a chicken nonetheless. Sighing, I nodded and waited for Leonie to put her chessboard down.
“Oh, a nice move.” I commented as she basically sacrificed her queen, but I rather focused on destroying a pawn`s life like always. There was just something satisfying to see the little pieces falling down from the board.
“Hehe, thank you!” She exclaimed like a little ball of happiness and smiled brightly.
“But Lucy could have taken your queen there!” Interjected a boy, laying to my side and watching the match like his life depended on it.
“Oh? Yes, I could?! Oh noo … what a mistake.” I said and went through my hair, seemingly in embarrassment while Leonie giggled loudly. Both of them failed to realize that there had been a checkmate twice already. “Leonie, do you have parents?”
“No, they died four years ago.” She said, her mood slightly dampened by my sudden question.
“Is there anyone who takes care of you?” I asked in worry. Truly, if someone was able to touch my heart, then it was either Mary or children. And currently, I was with hundreds of these which did muddle my emotions quite a bit … not in a bady way though.
“No … I and four others lived in a simple hut before everything was burnt.” Leonie mentioned while apparently planning her next move.
“Oh … hey, I´m trying to build a place in the city where kids like you can live and play all you want.” I said hopefully. I wanted to gift them a better life … amongst other things I wanted to achieve with building up an orphanage.
“Uhm … I don’t like the city.” Leonie rejected my proposal, even though she probably failed to grasp what my offer entrailed.
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“Why not?” I asked, hopefully that she would agree in the end-
“The people there are mean.” She said which probably did have some truth in it. But all people were mean to each other, it was just that most liked to stomp on those beneath them.
“But I´m from the city as well?” I mentioned and put my index finger on my cheek.
“You are different …” She said, looking away embarrassed.
“And you aren´t an adult.” Commented the boy right next to me. For a short while, I wondered how that made any difference until I realized they must have lived through quite a lot of abuse as well which probably was initiated by adults.
“Hmm … how about you check it out for a night? Please …” I asked and made a rather troubled expression.
“Do you live there as well?” Leonie asked with hope in her eyes.
“No, but I will go there every time before coming here to pick you up, how about this? There is food for you, a nice bed and eventually, other kids your age as well.” As I talked about the prospect of a bed, all the other conversations around us suddenly stopped. I naturally expected quite a few to agree to my offer, but the prospect of a bed was probably a bit too much for them. With open eyes, they all stared at me as if I was some kind of saint … damn, I really need to find another word to describe a good person.
In any case, Leonie's eyes were quite round as she nodded repeatedly before dashing off into the distance to tell her friends. “Oh, the same offer goes for you as well.”
“And for me?” asked a teenager a few metres away. He was entirely conscious about the fact that I just gave them a ticket out of poverty. In the orphanage, they would receive as much education as the other commoner children, that was for sure. And what orphanage could be better than the saint`s?
“Sure.” I said and smiled brightly.
“What about me?” Asked the boy right next to me.
“Obviously.” I said. It went on for quite some time until I had to start a list because I couldn’t remember all of them.
Two hundred and twelve. That was the number of kids I would bring to the orphanage as the first batch. But I had to realize that I slightly miscalculated with my initial planning. The number of orphans was way higher than expected, mostly due to missing documentation in the slums. We may need to buy the neighbouring lots near the orphanage we bought as well …
Around afternoon, all these kids followed me into the city, which took merely a few minutes this time as none of the guards actually bothered with checking anyone. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the orphanage without losing any child at all! Okay, one went missing halfway, despite my orders to take each other’s hands, but Hannah luckily found her crying in a deserted alley. All the children were slightly kaput and would certainly need a lot of time to accommodate themselves to their new environment, but I was sure we were making progress. Slowly.
That night, I didn´t leave the orphanage early but rather helped the hopelessly overburdened housemothers by soothing a few children into sleep, talking to those who started to hoard food and made sure that the hundred or so beds we had were used effectively.
I even had to witness how a kid got a panic attack, only to hit the other children around him violently, including those way younger than him. We naturally stopped him before he could do any real harm, but it opened my eyes to the gravity of their situation. Some of them would be scarred for life, while others would need years of a normal life to fix their problems, if not more.
But I was there for them. For the years they would need me, if not an eternity more.
Because this is what I wanted to do. To help children in need. Not because of a publicity stunt, and not even because I wanted to find redemption for what I did at the other orphanage. I just wanted to see their smiles. Because that was what made me happy as well.