Episode 1: The New Arrivals
Two figures struggled down the road, still covered by the shadow of the buildings, despite the wideness of the street. It seemed this precaution was at the insistence of the taller of the two.
"But Mother!" It said, as the shorter figure made a huffing noise and scurried out into the light. She turned out to be a short, plump, rather dowdy woman, with her hair piled up in a huge bun, and a very disgusting dress on. She was holding a bag on her back around the same size as her body, and another in her arms.
"Don't you "but mother" me, my girl." The voice was high, nasal, and immediately annoying. And loud. The taller figure, still hidden, winced audibly. "And don't you go pulling faces at me either, you young upstart! You come out here where I can keep an eye on you and where we can see where we're putting our feet!" She tutted. "I swear I stepped in some dog's doin's back their."
The taller figure sighed, sounding very teenage.
"Mother, I told you before, the darkness is our friend, it shields us from prying eyes that would-"
"And I told you to stop putting on airs and bringing all your snobbery home with you!"
She reached into the darkness and pulled, by her black clad arm, a tall, skinny, teenage girl out into the lamplight. She was much better dressed than her mother, and would have been very pretty, were it not for her nose. It turned up alarmingly at the end, giving the impression she'd run into a wall at a young age. Repeatedly.
"Mother, you know, were it not for the fact that I'd need someone here to pay me to do it, since I can't pay myself, I'd have long since inhumed you by now."
She received a slap across the ear for this.
"Mother!"
"You were getting snippy again! I can't stand it when you're snippy!"
They continued on there way in silence after this, the girl rubbing her ear with an affronted expression.
This exchange was watched from the window of Number 24 by the inhabitants of Number 17, and from the windows of Numbers 3, 9 and 30 by the inhabitants of 24, 12 and 64. They'd got used to the odd view now. You got used to a lot of odd things when you lived in a house designed by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson. They wouldn't have blinked if it started raining chickens.
In silence, they continued to watch, wondering which door the newcomers would head for.
"Right…" said the Mother. "Says 'ere, we've got to go through the front door of Number 2. Sounds daft if you ask me, but who'm I to argue? The lawyer said it, he said it very clearly he did." She paused, as if expecting argument. When none ensued, she continued her litany. "And he was a nice enough chap, even though he was dead, but I know a lot of folks are these days, so who'm I to hold it against him? Most expensive lawyer in the city, too, and me talking to 'im! I'd've never expected your Aunty Doreen to have so much money on her, what with being daft as brush, bless her soul." She carried on like this for some time, followed by her very moody looking daughter.
They reached a gate, and the hidden watchers grinned. This was going to be amusing.
"Right… says 'ere… says 'ere…" She pulled a pair of glasses out of a pocket and tried again. "Says 'ere, we've got to go through the front garden of Number 12, this one, and it'll have the front door to Number 2, which'll let us in to ours, which is Number 57." She shook her head. "Absolutely barmy."
They followed the instructions, and the watchers sighed, deprived of the amusement of new, confused neighbours. It was no fun when they'd already been told the answers.
Unaware of this disappointment, the old woman called out to her daughter, now some way away.
"Come on Melaniarissa!"
With a muffled curse about mothers, dreadful names and the rules of the Assassin's Guild, the girl followed. The doors closed, and the street was quiet once more, except for the odd cry of a startled cat as it discovered it had jumped into the wrong garden.