Private Tales Dances With Thieves

[Ivy]

Ivy thought about it for a minute. Being a foreigner in the slums makes her big bait to traffickers and bad people. Not knowing the language, especially written language would make her more so. She heard how bad people would take girls like her off the streets and into the mines or other terrible places, all because they couldn’t read what these people written on these papers. She can not risk being that valnurable, not when she lives to find her way back to her home.

“I-I can try… but shouldn’t we finish cleaning first?” she responds, as her stomach growls for food.

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

"We are always cleaning," she said swiftly to the girl with a bright eyed, somewhat empty smile on her face. "Master always says that a clean room is like a clean life," she added. She had no idea what it was he meant by such a thing. Things like metaphors and turns of phrase were beyond her and probably always would be.

Reading was likely beyond her, too, but she approached it with the same dedication she did to swinging a hammer.

"It will be fine. He never is angry with me when I pick up a book," she said.