Slums

Alice was conflicted. She didn't want to wake Amy up after seeing her sleep with a peaceful smile on her face. But she also didn't want Amy to wake up only to see that she had disappeared.

But no matter what, she had to go out to take a look around and maybe even get her hands on something to eat. But most importantly, she had to get her hands on water.

Gale had once told her that the reason they worked so hard to maintain their large territory with so few people was to have enough to eat that they could survive for a month without any food in the worst case, especially during winter when it became much harder to find food.

But water was the opposite. During winter they could collect snow and melt it, but during the rest of the year, they had very limited possibilities besides getting it from a well and those were guarded most of the time.

Alice had been wondering once why they didn't just drink seawater and when she asked Gale had told her that it would just make you even more thirsty. It hadn't made much sense for Alice, but according to her experience, Gale was always right in those kinds of things so she was better of believing him.

On normal days, they had many ways to get access to the wells. They would wait for a change in guards or until the guard on nightshift fell asleep. And even if those didn't happen, they would use some of their stolen money to bribe the guard. But Alice had a hunch that none of those would be possible right now.

Actually, she didn't even know where the next well was located, so that was just another reason to search the surrounding area.

"Amy, wake up. Hey, Amy."

In the end, Alice couldn't help but wake up her up. Amy slowly woke up, rubbing her eyes with her little hands she looked like a cute little animal. When she saw that, Alice just couldn't help but to want to protect her.

"Hey, everything is alright, I am still here with you."

Alice saw that Amy was almost about to cry, so she tried to calm her down again, and it didn't take long to show effect.

When Amy had calmed down, Alice started explaining: "Can you stay here by yourself for a few hours? I have to go out and get us something to eat and drink, you too are hungry, right?"

When Amy started trembling again, Alice continued: "Don't worry, I will definitely come back! Stay inside and be silent, or else the bad guys might find you. I will try to be back as fast as possible, okay?"

Amy gave her a teary-eyed smile, to which Alice answered with a hug.

"I will be off then, and remember, don't make a sound! And if someone comes in, hide behind that rubble over there. Okay? Bye!"

Alice took a short look outside and left when she couldn't see any of the soldiers.

...

It had already been more than half an hour, but not even talking about finding a well, Alice had been almost caught three times already and had made almost no progress while evading the soldiers.

Even now, she was hiding behind a broken-down wall, waiting for the sounds of the armors to disappear. She knew that things couldn't continue this way, or else she wasn't even sure if she could get back safely.

Alice started to think, most of the time, it was almost too late already when she could see the soldiers. She needed some other way to locate them.

When the sounds of armor finally disappeared, Alice realized that she had been incredibly stupid to not think earlier of this.

She concentrated on her hearing just like Gale had taught her and then concentrated only on the sounds of armor.

Like that, Alice suddenly realized that she could hear the soldiers moving around in four places in her surroundings. The walls in this area were very thin and damaged in many places, they weren't very high as well, so she could hear the soldiers moving around even several streets away from her.

She could even hear that two pairs were talking with each other, although she couldn't understand what they were saying. But this must have been what had been restraining herself unconsciously, the demand to herself to be able to clearly understand what she was hearing, but there was absolutely no need for that if she was just trying to make out a specific sound.

When Alice had roughly understood where the soldiers around her were located and in which direction they were moving, she came out of hiding and started moving, evading the soldiers.

At first, she still had to stand still every now and then to concentrate and find the soldiers. Although this slowed her down immensely, she was at least able to move n the direction she wanted to instead of having to constantly change directions to evade the soldiers.

After about two hours, Alice had finally become fully accustomed to it and didn't need to stand still or close her eyes anymore to locate the soldiers. But if she started to run, her own footsteps would become too loud and she would lose her concentration, so she still could only walk slowly.

The more she moved around and the more she saw of the slums, the more she hated this place.

Although it was probably different under normal circumstances, it was eerily quiet, and there was almost no one on the streets. Most people that lived here were hiding in their houses and Alice would only rarely meet someone else on the street, at best she would see a face appearing in a window, throwing a cautious glance outside.

And if she did meet someone, they all looked at her suspiciously, either hiding some kind of weapon or even openly showing it, as if to threaten her not to come a single step closer.

Somewhere in the distance, she suddenly heard a loud scream. It wasn't the first time that had happened, it happened at least once or twice per hour. From a house on her left, Alice could hear a continuous slapping sound and muffled screams and crying.

A short distance away, shoved to the side of the street lied the dirty corpse of a dog with two of its legs and a large part of the stomach cut away. Several crows standing around it, picking at the entrails.

On one of the few spots where the road was still paved with stone, Alice could see several large, dark patches of what may or may not be dried blood.

Without a question, Alice hated the slums, she just wanted to get back to their hideout as fast as possible. But these feelings were also a confirmation, no matter how much she hated it, she could never, under no circumstances, abandon an innocent little girl like Amy in a place like this.