Autumn

Alice had now been for quite some time with the vultures, and summer started to turn to autumn. At first, Alice didn't even notice the changes. There weren't any trees whose leaves would change their color and it had been windy all the time before as well, but when the weather wasn't unbearably hot during the day anymore and the nights became cool enough that Gale caught a cold, she finally saw the hints that showed that the summer was about to end.

Since the time they first met, things had already calmed down considerably, now, meeting a guard had become so rare that they could use the streets like normal people and didn't have to run over the roofs. Even though Alice had fallen in love with the feeling of running freely through the city while jumping and climbing over any obstacle and every now and then looking down on the heads of people who lived confined between the walls of the concept called streets, alleys and paths, Alice still knew that she couldn't do what she wanted.

In these past weeks, she had learned quite a bit about what it actually meant to survive in the middle of the city. They couldn't just steal as much as they wanted and run over the roofs all day. If they wanted to live a good life, they had to maintain a certain balance while maintaining a monopoly on their territory. If they cause too many disturbances, people would start to complain which increases the number of guards in the area, and if they stole too much, people would become more wary, making it harder for them to steal more.

Of course, it wasn't enough to only look at themselves, they also had to make sure to throw out any individual that proved harmfull for their territory. That didn't only mean other children that came into their territory, but sometimes even adults who came into their territory, homeless, beggars and once even a group of thugs trying to rob people.

At first, Alice had been a little reluctant to do so, everyone only tried to survive after all. But she wasn't stupid and soon understood, it was exactly because they only tried to survive that you couldn't easily trust people in this new environment and different than in her little village people would think first about themselves and only rarely about others.

Only after realizing this to the fullest was it that she learned to truly appreciate her newfound family.

After the case with the foxes was closed, they had done their best to not leave the hideout as much as possible for about a week. During that time, two things had happened. First, the number of guards in the territory had gone down quite a bit, and second, Alice cracked shoulder had healed completely and only her arm was still a little painful.

After they could finally leave again, things had become very hectic again. They had to start getting their own food again and drive out several 'invaders'. Although by far not as troublesome as Dick, some of them started fights and not one of them was a particularly beautiful sight. Ironically, while adults would always try to intimidate the children, they would always run away when driven into a corner, when the opponent was another child, on the other hand, they would often become pretty savage, often using glass shards or broken bottles as weapons.

During that time, Alice was most of the time together with Jayden. After Gardos had shown her the basics, it had become his job to teach Alice everything from tricks to sneak up on someone and pickpocket them without being seen to all the different whistles and signals the group was using to communicate.

Right now it was late in the evening and Alice was sitting in one of her favorite spots that she had discovered some time ago. It was a certain spot on a roof close to the bears' territory were she could perfectly see the sea and harbor while it was almost impossible to see her. Since she found this place, it had become a habit of hers to watch the sunset from there.

At that moment, she suddenly got a strange feeling. Turning her head, she looked in a certain direction in the middle of the foxes territory. It wasn't the first time that she felt this, it had happened every few days since that day that she had been in the foxes territory.

Thanks to Alex, they had led her to the dealer who had bought her staff. The 'shop', if one could call it so, was in a small back-alley and didn't have any obvious signs and didn't look different than a normal house even if you entered. Only after they were led through a secret hatch in the floor did they enter the real 'shop'.

What Alice saw there, were countless more or less valuable items that definitely didn't belong in this crudely dug out basement. When she saw it, Alice could guess that these items were all stolen goods, and between them was her staff. At first, Alice had thought about stealing the staff back, but as soon as she saw the dealer, a man covered in scars, her instincts told her that that was impossible. And even if she had done that, she would have been forced to leave harborton, but after leaving the old grandma, Alice didn't want to be forced to leave again.

When she asked if she could get the staff back, the dealer started laughing out loud, then telling her to leave. Only after she begged him to give it back to her, he told her that he would think about it if she could pay him one gold coin before shooing her away. In the end, Alice could only leave dejectedly. But ever since then, she could always tell the exact direction of where that place had been, and sometimes she would get this strangely disgusting feeling, almost as if someone was touching her.

Back in her village, they had almost never had any use for money, so Alice didn't really know the worth of a gold coin, so when she came back to their territory, she asked the boys if they knew about it, it was then that she realized that any hope of getting her staff back like that was useless. A single loaf of bread was already worth two copper coins after that came the big copper which was worth ten copper coins. Above that was the silver coin which was worth a hundred copper coins with its half and big variations, and at last the gold coin, again, worth a hundred silver coins.

For Alice who could barely count to ten, those numbers were inconceivable, she only understood after Alex told her that she could buy enough food for over five years from a single gold coin. It was something completely impossible for her to get a cold coin, and even if she got one, she had the feeling that the dealer would simply take it without giving her staff back, it was clear, she had to think of something else.