Loamhedge Orphanage

The dining hall makes it glaringly obvious that the orphanage building was not always an orphanage. The seating takes the form of stone benches -- or rather, pews -- facing rows of wooden tables. There are windows of stained glass on either side, and a large round window at the end of the hall. There are two doors at this end which let out onto the grounds, and two doors at the back end which lead to the main hall of the orphanage.

Food is not sumptuous or grand or even widely varied-- it is, however, usually adequate.

Kiro strolled into the dining hall confidently at first, but upon taking a few steps slowed down to an awkward amble. He had been in here a few times outside of dinner time, but he never felt comfortable. There was just something about the sheer amount of seating in here that made the room feel ominous when empty. Like walking into an unused church.

Looking around nervously as his bare feet slapped softly against the ground whilst he walked, filling the quiet emptiness with a subtle noise that felt more like it was as loud as a blacksmith's hammer striking an anvil within the eerie atmosphere; Kiro made his way to one of the pews and sat on the end. He did not sit on the pew properly, but rather lifted his legs up so that his knees were held against his chest. Gripping the edge of the seat tightly with his toes in tenseness, he tried to clear his mind of the discomfort and get to work preparing his study materials.

Thumb-like big toes drumming idly against the stone furniture, Kiro set about searching his notes for his list of troublesome words. Upon finding the list, he turned it over so that the phonetic spelling side of the parchment faced upward, whilst the real spellings were hidden from view to prevent cheating. Coupled with Kiro's rather poor handwriting, various instances of words being scratched out with a knife and replaced with new words made the already untidy list look all the more unpresentable. Still, it was good enough to serve its purpose.

Kiro then readied the slate and chalk he had brought with him and started trying to guess the correct spellings. The first word emerging from his untidy left-handed chalk scrawlings: 'Grammer'.

More words then followed; a mixture of correct and incorrect ones. 'Knowledge', 'Wrighting', 'Tutelage', 'Because', 'Thogh'...

A faint noise suddenly caught Kiro's attention. It sounded like a thud or something coming from one of the dormitories. After the commotion he had heard come from the common room after he had left, Kiro just assumed it was an extension of that... if he wasn't hearing things. After all, the large, quiet dining room was getting a little unnerving and Kiro wouldn't be surprised if his mind started making up noises to fill the gap. Well... Kiro wasn't exactly a people person, so he felt it beyond him to sort it out. Besides, he had spellings to finish. 'Sentence', 'paragraph', 'synonim'...

Kiro sighed. He just couldn't get comfortable. It just felt... wrong to be in this room alone. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable sat on his bed in the boys' dorm. Standing up and gathering his study materials, he headed out of the room and back to the dormitory. He considered the common room for a moment, but figured it'd probably still be quite crowded, with it being winter.

Linwood walked in, carrying one child piggyback and a second in tow. It didn't seem like dinner had been started yet, and the whole room was quiet and empty, made even more drastic by the style of the room. Having arrived at their destination, and once the door was shut, he crouched down to let Gimbold off of his back.

"I wonder where everyone's at?" he thought out loud. It was a bit early yet, he admitted, but chores and goofing around outside had made him a bit famished. "I suppose I could make us something, but I should really ask a caretaker first..."

Raven follows behind lin, running to the nearest table and sitting on the top. She crosses her legs and watches as lin sets gim down. Raven nods in agreement as she looks around.

"Maybe...they're all in the kitchen getting ready to start dinner??"

She says sighing and putting her head in her hands.

Gimbold hopped off and looked around.

"Maybe we can get cooking. I can start the fire," she offered. She was good at that kind of thing anyway. Benefits of not being able to get burned after all.

There was a long bit of silence. "Do we keep the cookies at the top shelves? I can get them... Me Ma used to have them up there until she realised I learned to get them. Then she had to give me a good spanking."

Lin was too distracted walking through the room to the kitchen doors to catch anything but the tail end of what Gimbold was saying, and only because she was loud enough to catch his attention. Cookies?

He peaked his head into the kitchen and spied a few rather suspicious looking boxes on the top shelves, mixed in with various pots and pans. The idea was rather tempting.

"I really don't think taking the cookies would be and good idea," Lin spoke to the two, sticking his head back into the dining room, though he didn't even sound convincing to himself.

"So there are cookies back there?!"

Raven says happily while she swings her feet. She was excited and she really wanted some. But one thing stood in the forefront of her mind...marle. she knew that marle didn't appreciate it when children snuck food. Raven shakes her head and looks at lin.

"Yeah....if we did take the cookies, marle would probably scold us..."

Gimmy flicked her ears as she stared at the two of them. "But I'm really fucking hungry... and it's dinner, and no one is around!" The volume level of her whine started increasing. The idea that there might be cookies was too tempting.

"No one's gonna miss three cookies... can we pleaseeee?" she asked whining and stamping her foot some. She really could get cranky when she was hungry and looking at the suspicious boxes didn't help!

It wouldn't be that hard for her to get up. She could see some foot and hand holds along the way.

"Well, I don't know for certain..." he told Raven. That was a straight lie; he helped out with the cooking often enough to know exactly which box contained the sweetened biscuits. This gave him a level of trust amongst the caretakers, and being older, he was also conscious that the orphanage was having money troubles, though he didn't know the cause. In other words, no more cookie money.

Listening to the two kids was like listening to a devil and an angel perched on his shoulders, except the angel also sort of wanted what the devil wanted. It didn't help that they had all probably been thieves at one point.

"Long as Marle doesn't find out..." Lin thought out loud to himself.

Raven turns to Lin wide eyed. It seemed that Lin ultimately held the decision since he was older than both gim and herself. So when he said that, it genuinely shocked her. Raven couldn't help but Crack a small smile.

"Does that mean we can?!"

She says excitedly. But before he could give an answer she runs off into the kitchen.

Not one to miss out, when Raven shot off to the kitchen, she did so too, though she was fairly careful on where she placed her footing. She didn't want to disturb anything and leave traces.

Her mother always taught her to move without being noticed and she was using her skills!

"If you're trying to steal something, don't get caught." Sound advice from her parent in her opinion.

Linwood settled for the bystander position of watching the door. Sure, he was a teenager, but he was still young and even a bit childish for his age, though most of all he didn't want to upset Raven and Gimbold. Plus he was hungry.

"Be careful... Don't wreck anything..." he would voice a warning every so often, though he kept his eyes out in the dining hall, just in case someone were to join them.

Raven turned to Lin and nodded, before climbing up onto the counter and standing up. Gim was better at climbing than she was, but it didn't she top her from standing on her tiptoes and trying to reach the jar. After so long of stretching, she sighs and gives up.

"I can't reach it....lin, can you grab the cookie jar from the top if the shelf?"

Gimbold watched Raven try and when the girl called out for Lin to help them, she shot up the wall, near parallel like how squirrels climbed a tree and took the jar down in an instance. It was a rather sad amount of cookies though and Gim looked at it.

"Um... maybe we shouldn't take it." Three was definitely going to be missed.

"Maybe we could take one and share if?"

Raven smiled as gim grabbed the cookies and landed on the ground, opening up the cookie jar. However she was puzzled as gim looked inside the jar and suggested splitting one cookie.

"What? Why?"

She says taking the cookie jar to get a look at the inside. Upon seeing the sad amount of cookies her eyes widened slightly and her brow furrowed.

"We're usually stocked on food....I don't understand...we've never had problems getting things we needed before..."

She says with a heavy sigh and raking one last look in the cookie Jar before placing the lid back on and no climbing back on top of the counter. She gets back on her tip toes and just barley gets the jar to slide back onto the shelf they got it off of before hoping down.

"We probably shouldn't take it...maybe someone else will want them later..."

Lin had looked over to see the two had gotten the jar down, but instead of immediately removing the cookies, they seemed upset at what they saw. He knew this whole thing was a bad idea; why'd he have to lead on those poor kids with all those hopes of frees cookies?

Lin checked on the two again after glancing back into the dining hall. He couldn't understand a word they were saying at that distance, but they still looked upset, and Raven put the jar back a moment later, no cookies to be had. He pressed the heel of his hand against one side of his head, where there would have been an ear, and pulled his hand away with a small spot of blood. He closed his fingers over it.

"Sorry," Lin mumbled apologetically.

Now Gim wasn't aware of the financial problems but she was aware the orphanage wasn't as well run as some places were. But it suited her fine. Her own home had been in a similar state.

The little girl's ears flattened against her head as Raven replaced the cookie jar. Her stomach growled hungrily and being that close to the cookies was bad enough, not having it was even worse.

"Um..." A glance was given to Lin when he apologised and the girl walked over to give him a hug around the waist or legs. "It's okay Lin, it's not your fault. We're just low on cookies right now. It'll come back up again. Winter's like that. Me Ma always said we should stock up well but spring will come again if we don't have enough. As long as we have each other... we'll be warm," she said.

"I hope me Ma's warm..."

As she spoke the last sentence, the girl looked out the window of the kitchen, her voice a little distant and soft.

Then she turned her face back to Lin's pants and buried her face in it. She hadn't been at the orphanage long after all, a month at most.

Raven just looked between them sadly. She had started noticing that gim always talked about his mother, and the way he talked about her made it seem like she was the type of parent every orphan wanted. But then the question rose as to how he ended up in the orphanage with someone as caring as that as a parent. However she knew better than to pry. Heck, she wished her childhood had been as good as gims seemed to be...

Her attention then turned over to lin, as she raised an eyebrow in suspicion. She noticed that he was covering his ear. She hoped of the counter and walked over to uim, grabbing his wrist and slowly bringin it away from the spot he held it on. Her eyes widened as she noticed the blood before quickly looking up to see the spot where his ear should be.

"Oh my gosh! Do you need to go to the infirmary?!"

"I'm sure things will get better," Lin consoled her as he gently ruffled Gimbold's hair with his free hand. He knew she'd get over the tears, being so new to the orphanage, but he couldn't help but empathize, of course.

Raven quickly distracted him, however, as she was pulling at his other hand. He'd pulled the headband strip of cloth from over it when he found it'd started, thinking that it'd be easier to wash the blood from the backs of his fingers than the white cloth. There wasn't a lot, but he flinched when he felt a thin trickle start to run.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," he insisted.

Raven just stared at him as he said he was ok. She let go of his wrist before sighing and grabbing the hem of her dress, tearing a small part of it off and handing it to him.

"Press that against your wound then. It'll at least stop the blood from ruining your clothes."