Was in charity once; quit the very next day.
I came to the sick realization that some people just stopped caring.
-Letter One-
-The Orphans-
You wanna play a game? You'll get lots of candy and so many friends to play! Your friend's playing too! She's having lots of fun with Chesty's other Super-Best Friends! Won't you join her too?
-Chesty, your Super-Best Friend
Mary told us to wait...wait and wait again.
It was stupid really.
Albion was not the most charitable of places; who's ever heard of people giving out money and free food to little kids just because they were cute and dirty? No one, that's who!
Still, Mary insisted.
"Maybe someone will actually feel sorry for us and spare some coins..." she'll say. I would respond with my usual remark of:
"If anyone actually had a heart, we would be clean and fat instead of skinny and dirty." Not that we were that skinny like some poor folks.
We had just lost our home and parents a couple of months ago; we lived out of the charity and goodwill of the people and some fruit we found on the way. Water was always a blessing but for how long? Mary didn't approve of stealing but what else could we do? Sit here and starve?
"What are we waiting for, exactly?" our friend, Derek, asked. He shook his head and gave Mary a look. "Asking the people around here for some spare coins or food is like asking a dog to sprout wings and fly!" Mary gave him a look while I chuckled.
"Couldn't be more right, mate!"
"We should just keep doing things like those other guys! Stealing...better life, fuller stomachs." He went on. Mary shoot him a glare. Ah, always so sweet and pure Mary...she had the good life before that crazy thing came about and killed her friends and parents...me and Derek, not so much. She had been taught that stealing was a sin and so never stole anything nor took it by force. So, pure and sweet Mary rather die than steal...not a good thing for orphans-in-the making. She was just too nice for her own good.
"No! That's horrible! What if we get caught and get in trouble!? What then?" Our friend gave her a cheeky grin and turned towards the street.
"Umm...hello! We are starving here!" Derek yelled at the people passing by, all who ignored him. He looked back at Mary. "See? Noble approach ain't working too well." I nodded in approval.
The times were hard...who in their right mind would give out their cash to a bunch of dirty little brats, anyway?
"He's got a point, you know," I told her. "Sometimes people don't care if it isn't about them...not too much food to feed us, hooligans."
"...you're still sore about that...aren't you?" Mary asked, pouting.
"We were just asking for money and that old lady went off!" Derek said, recalling the time a lady of wealth had called us three 'hooligans' when me and Derek had asked for some gold. She actually considered calling the guards on us, too! Crazy lady thought we were gonna steal her silly! "Talk about being honest...it sucks!"
"Look, I said I was sorry about that time with that lady...but we shouldn't take her as an example for everyone around, either...we can't keep living like this either...ste—I mean, getting things that are not ours...that's just not right..." she said, glancing behind her as a town guard passed by.
"Neither is letting us starve to death," Derek retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Noble approach? Not starving...? Hmm...this is too difficult..." Mary glared at him. Derek had a point, though. I'll rather not starve.
"I say we go get some food."
"Guys..."
"Aye, mate!" Derek told me, smiling.
"Come on...you can't just—"
"Look Mary," I began. "I know you worry and all, but there's got to be a point where you gotta stop caring about them consequences. We are hungry. We gotta eat something. Stray dogs don't wait till it's over..."
"...still...we shouldn't..."
"Ah! Put a sock on it, would ya?" Derek cried, annoyed.
"But you just can't!"
"We are hungry! And surrounded by stupid adults! Who is going to feed us before we die, hmm!?"
"...look, I..."
"Hang out with those other kids if you're feeling too nice!"
Mary looked hurt then...she slowly began to walk away. She'll rather walk away rather than fight...what a little coward. We'll probably see her in a couple of days...it was always like this. Get into fights, disappear for a day, repeat.
"She really should stop being this stupid," Derek muttered as soon as she was out of sight. "She really believes nice people actually exists! What a crazy chick!"
"Hey, give her a break...she grew up with stupid people, of course she'll think everyone's nice!" I told him, shaking my head. "Besides there's some truth to her words sometimes! Look at our Queen! She beat her brother and beat some shadow thing to a bloody pulp! And she's the most charitable person in Albion...I say that counts as something!"
"Yeah...she'll be the only exception...except we're still hungry and no food over our heads, so I say she's doing a terrible job at the charity part." We sat there, silent...at least we were until our stomach's began to rumble. "I think we should head to the gardens...if we're lucky, we might actually get more apples tonight!" The garden Derek was talking about was the royal one...it had the largest apple trees around and they made for a good meal.
"And what about Mary?" I asked him as we began to walk towards the castle.
"What about her? She ain't starving that fast..."
"No, not that, idiot." I said, irritated. "If we see her are we giving her something?" Derek was silent...he had suddenly stopped walking and bent over. "Derek?"
"What's this?" He picked up something from the ground...it was an envelope. Small and dirty...the smell of it was something awful and was that blood on it, too!?
"...it's a letter."
"So it is," Derek said, turning it about, making a disgusted face. "Smells like a dead rat..."
"Does it say who it belongs to? It looks important..."
"And smells like it too," Derek said. "Doesn't have an address...just some chicken scratch all over it...some kid must have found it first by the looks of it." I took a look at the letter and he was right. The foul-smelling thing had small doodles all over it...it had a small drawing of a box next to a little head and a stick figure that seemed to be holding a child's depiction of a sword.
"...odd."
"Odd that a kid didn't smell this god awful stench or odd as in...odd?" Derek asked, sounding annoyed. "Ah! Hell with it! Let's check what's inside! If we sees who it belongs to maybe we can get something for all this trouble!"
"Lucky you, Mary ain't around," I said. He gave me an amused look as he tore the envelope open. He took out a small piece of paper and read:
Dear New Best-Friends,
You found my letter! You naughty, naughty little kids! You wanna play a game? You'll get lots of candy and so many friends to play! Your friend's playing our game too! She's having lots of fun with Chesty's other Super-Best Friends! Won't you join her too?
-Chesty, your Super-Best Friend
PS: Fun! Fun! In the castle's yard!
"The hell?"
Both of us blinked, a sudden chill passing through our bodies.
The sun wasn't up anymore but it was the middle of spring...so why did it feel so cold all of the sudden?
"What the heck was that?" I asked nervously.
"That was crazy talk, if I ever seen one before..." Derek muttered, looking around.
The street was empty; very few people were walking about and the town guard was nowhere to be seen.
"This Chesty fellow must be one of those nut-jobs from the industrial area..." he went on, throwing the letter to the ground. "Come on, let's just get those damn apples and be done with this...freaking smell...damn it..."
We walked, a little faster than usual, towards the castle gardens...the letter lay forgotten there but for some reason I couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen...
...maybe we should have just waited for Mary to come back.
Edit 8/22/15: Can't believe its been so long since I last updated this story! Man...its been years. Anyway, I decided to come back to this story...fix it a bit and add a little more...I will try to update every Saturday from now on, though...
I'll make sure this story does get updated now and then!
Sorry for the delay!
Fable doesn't belong to me, although sometimes I wish...
Please read or review, or criticize, whichever comes first. Flames are not accepted, frowned upon, and possibly deleted.
Summary: It's child's play if it doesn't kill you. Unfortunately, that's not how Chesty likes to play.