32 Amy

Alice had a really bad feeling. Not because she was lost, in the worst case she could just find the market and walk with the sea on her right side. The bad feeling was something else.

Alice sneaked to the windows one after another and took a careful look outside. What she saw outside left her in shock. Not a single one of the houses that she could see was still fully operational and they all needed extensive repairs. But that wasn't the problem, Alice had already guessed that they were somewhere in the slums. The problem was that, despite this being the slums where there should be the least amount of guards when compared to the rest of Harborton, she could see a total of four soldiers outside in the streets. Two teams of two each.

When she saw that two of them were talking with each other, Alice concentrated and tried to listen in on them.

"Ah, shit! Why the hell is it us who have patrol this dump?! This whole place stinks already like rotten fish, but this place reeks like shit on top of that!"

"It still smells better than you after training!"

"Oi!"

"Either way, someone has to do it, everyone gets a turn. Anyway, patrolling like this makes me a little nostalgic."

"Right, we first met when we both were still city guards. But I for my part, became a soldier because I didn't want to do this shit anymore. Only walking around like an idiot and not a single good fight.

Ah, that makes me angry now! I still have to do this shit for a whole week and didn't get to fight at all! Ah, right, you should tell me already why we had to come here in the first place. They only told the one who fought what's going on!"

"You are right, now that it's over it should be alright to tell you. The kingdom had received insider information. They found out about the base of one and the headquarters of another criminal organization. All the while you guys on the outside had to play hide-and-seek with the homeless brats! Hahaha!"

"Urgh, don't remind me of that, those little shits are faster than you would expect and they know the area much better than us. They aren't even dangerous, just plain annoying."

"Oh right, there were several special targets, wasn't there? How many of those got caught?"

"Ah those, I didn't run into any sadly, but I heard that out of over twenty targets only two got actually caught. Most of them weren't even found and the rest got actually away."

At that point, Alice heard movement close to her and stopped listening to those soldiers, it seemed like the girl was about to wake up.

When she finally opened her eyes, Alice gave the girl her best smile.

"Hey.", the girl sat up and tried to crawl backward, away from Alice, with a fearful expression.

"Hey, calm down, I won't do anything to you. Are you okay? Does your body hurt somewhere?"

Her father had once told Alice that you should talk in a calm voice and slowly get closer to them when dealing with a frightened animal. And although it wasn't an animal in this case, Alice didn't know what else she should do.

"You have to be careful, you cant make too much noise, okay? There are some bad guys out there and I don't know what would happen if they find us."

Finally, Alice took the little girl into her arms, she could feel her trembling violently. She wasn't sure what had happened to this girl to become this afraid but judging from her appearance it was pretty bad. Also, considering her behavior, she probably ended up on the streets only a short time ago.

Alice truly pitied her, she had to be much younger than her, and her clothes looked like they must have been really expensive, so it was no wonder that this girl was absolutely helpless, and on top of that, it was at such an unlucky time.

In the first place, what kind of people would abandon such a cute daughter?

Like that, Alice continued talking about meaningless stuff until the girl finally calmed down a bit.

"Why were all alone? Did someone leave you here? Or did you run away?"

At her last question, she could feel the girl nodding.

"Oh, you ran away on your own? That's pretty brave, but why? did they do bad things to you? Sorry, I shouldn't have made you remember."

Alice tried to find out a little more about the girl but apologized the very same moment when she felt that the girl started trembling again.

"That's right, I cant continue calling you 'you'! My name is Alice, what's yours?"

Until now, the girl had only answered by nodding or shaking her head, but now she let out a cute voice for the first time: "Am... ie..."

"Amy? That's a cute name, I think it suits you.

Listen, I know how hard it can be when you are suddenly all alone, so I want to help you if it's okay with you, okay?", Alice told her, she just couldn't bring herself to abandon Amy.

"I have a few friends here in Harborton, although we are more like a family. Now that I think about it, doesn't that mean that they are my older brothers?

Anyway, I wish we could meet up with them right now, but that won't be possible. I overheard some of the bad guys right now. They will still be all over the city for at least a week, so until they have left, we won't be able to move around much.

I can probably go outside to get some food if I'm really careful, but we won't be able to get away if the worst case happens if you are with me. That's why, let's stay here together until they are gone, okay? When that time comes I will introduce you to my brothers, okay?"

At that moment, it seemed like Amy had finally managed to calm down completely. She had stopped trembling and instead cuddled closer to Alice, even hugging her back, while Alice stroked and caressed her head.

After a while Alice started talking again, not to calm her down or because of a specific reason, she just started to talk about all the things she had wanted to talk about with someone. About the things she experienced recently, the small things she had learned about her new family, stories from her old Village.

After about half an hour, Alice realized that Amy had fallen asleep in her arms. Alice didn't know what this girl had experienced, but had probably been very exhausting. Still, Alice continued to talk about all those things for several hours until the sun stood high in the sky.