My feet hit the cobblestone stone streets and immediately I set to my purpose. The wonderful man and his wife who saved me owned a small stand that they located on the outside ring on the marketplace circle. The most important and well known vendors were given priority by being placed toward the center and the traffic seldom wondered to the outskirts. It was long work but it was worth the effort. My presence as the stall maid gave them a chance to source materials and products for their stall as well as create things to be ready in the morning for the next days customers.

Any time they were having trouble keeping up with the demand of that days customers to replenish the stock of the store, I would stay late at night in their kitchen to help them make some of the next day’s products. I was lucky to have a job. The more that I could do to ensure their success, the more I could guarantee that I would have the money to continue staying in my room at “The Witch’s Backdoor”. 

This led me down the long road to their door. To set up the stall I needed to collect the items for sale that day and cart them into the marketplace. I had to leave early enough in the morning to get there in time for the market day but still give me the distance I sought for my own feeling of safety. 

Every morning I would walk the city the same way to get to their home. This day, there was a slight bit of rain and chill, and I wore my travelers cloak to keep me dry. It was one my father passed down to me during our travels in the outskirts. Some days I think I could smell him and it always gave me the comfort of his presence.

The smell of the city always had the scent of expired milk mixed with meat left out too long in the sun, it wasn’t a pleasant place to live. With recent events happening at the royal capital, more and more people were sitting along the outer walls of the city, making it more difficult to travel. 

The light of the day was just beginning to peak over the stone wall that lined my path and began waking some of the newly homeless that lay next to me as I passed.

“Do you have some change?” An elderly woman next to me asked as she coughed into her hand.

“Not today, I’m sorry.” I replied, quickening my pace.

My father always told me that trying to help others before helping yourself was always folly because it would put you both in the same situation. And I chose to follow his wisdom. The last time I tried to give someone a small bit of my earnings to help, more and more came asking for help. The struggle of trying to just survive became my priority. I never carried too much to draw attention and chose to never wear anything i wasn’t willing to lose if provided no options.

Larion, was changing and my bosses wife and I spoke about it quite often. She would tell me news of the city I was too afraid to ask for myself. On a daily basis she would express plans of trying to convince her husband that with the most recent restrictions on apples was the doorway to making their livelihood almost impossible. 

“Harold, disagrees with me of course.” She would tell me some nights. “He’s very much bullheaded and thinks that this will all blow over. I don’t know why I married him.”

She joked about this just about every night i would stay late helping them. She had become the mother figure I’d always wanted. My father never spoke much about my actual mother. It was hard to believe that she would be any different than this woman who sneakily gave me bread for my walk home. I always respected her for the tough decisions she would take care of without her husband hearing a whisper about them. It made me believe in the best of times to come and that humanity could not have been the monsters my father described them as.

It was my fault, I would purposely try and think his disappearance was anything other than some brutal kidnapping but more-so I would smile. It felt like the biggest portrayal of them all. To smile in the face of the people who killed my grandparents. That was the end result and I found myself hating the humans again. It made me angry to not be able to be like these people, dancing, talking and laughing. I would try and bury these feelings to try and move with a certain level of distrust in those around me.

I stepped into the pathway leading up to my bosses home to start my day and I was ready to take on what this day had to bring.