Dagny was thankful for the thin material of her dress because it was sweltering outside. She could feel tiny beads of sweat forming on her forehead and as she reached to wipe it off with the back of hand, she longed for a cold drink. Just as she imagined how she would tilt, her head back once she found a cool class of water a different source of relief entered her line of sight. Ice-Sickles. Dark red, likely pomegranate flavored, Ice-Sickles. Dagny smiled in spite of herself. It had been so long since she had tasted one. She remembered the last time her father had been healthy and how he had purchased one for her and Della during their stay in Asgard. They had been purple, however. If I had one of these, she thought to herself, and let the little lines of syrup run down my face as I had then I would look more akin to a cannibalistic murderer than a child tasting the sweet ice for the first time.

Dagny had a rather morbid sense of humor at times and at other times, when not in the presence of her sister it was mostly non-existence, so you will have to excuse her. Either way she walked briskly past the young man with smiling eyes who was selling them rather that indulge him with the coins in her purse. She continued down the hard cobblestone path and further away from the oncoming parade until she was in a now quiet part of the city. Along with being quiet it was also very much run down and if you had watched her carefully enough you would have noticed the sureness in her steps. One, whom was paying very close attention, could have guessed that she could walk these humble streets in the dark and find exactly what she needed to. In addition, if that single person continued to pay attention to this girl, who walked with her shoulders back and her head held high in the air as if she were royalty, he would have easily concluded the rather pathetic truth she lived here. She had grown up here. Also, that ever since her father died she truly despised the place.

Perhaps, she loathed her home even before then, or was it just that she wanted out. She hated being stuck here. She wanted to see the worlds. Yet, she had rarely been outside the city lines and only to Asgard once. Fate was cruel; she had decided when she was barely twelve. Dagny had been outside playing on the sidewalk while their mother was at work. They had been told to stay inside that day because of the heat but it was unbearable. She had just finished her new book and Della had just put together the same puzzle for the eighth time that day so they decided, "What's a little step onto the front porch?"

That however soon turned into, "Well, the fountain -" which is not really a fountain just a tiny pond that happened to form during the monsoon season and someone managed to find a way to erect a statue in the center of it - "is only a few feet from the porch." Somehow, that lead to them running up and down the sidewalk with the other dirty, little slum children. Then it happened. A driver lost control of his horses as Della, careless little Della, was running across the street. It was then that she used up the last of her family's luck by managing not to be trampled by the two horses that drew the carriage. She was however caught underneath the front wheel before the driver jerked his ride to a halt. Dagny still remembered how then everything had seemed to move so slowly. The people were slow getting to Della and her. She didn't remember how she had gotten to her sister's side or even that she had drug out from underneath the carriage, thrown her over her shoulder, and carried her to their front porch where she had lain her down. The blood had seemed brown as it seeped onto the light green fabric of her play clothes and poor Della's tears had shined brightly against her colorless face.

The adults that surrounded them by then had tried to pull Dagny away so that they may see Della's injury but the older sister had slapped one of them hard across the cheek the moment he sought to move Dagny from her little duck's side. So, instead of trying to move her they had simply handed her a cloth to press against the gash on her clavicle until the rickshaw had arrived to take them both to the nearest healer. Della had cried out when her older sibling touched the bone that had been protruding from her skin and had done so repeatedly until she passed out from pain at the Medicine Hall.

The official diagnosis was major fracture to the collarbone. An ugly scar and lump was left when it finally healed. Then the day came soon when the healers had to finally collect their payment. Over half of their savings were gone and that meant that for the first time in her life Dagny went to bed hungry because the other half was used to pay rent. From that day on it seemed few good things ever happened to the Bergljot family.

"I used up all of our luck didn't I?" asked an eleven year old Della when she woke up her sister in the middle of the night. "I was lucky. I broke my collar and lived and used it all up, didn't I?" she sputtered as tears slipped out of her eyes and her entire body shook like a leaf. Dagny had sat up and sleepily shook her head. Then she pulled her little duck close to her and patted her back before pulling her into the bed as well.

"Of course not," she had whispered.

"B-but I did! You're hungry now too because of me-" she shouted before Dagny put a hand over her mouth.

"Do you want to wake up Mama?!" she had scolded but that only made her cry harder. Dagny kept a hand over her mouth to muffle her wails as she continued to talk to her, even though snot was beginning to drip onto her fingers. "It's not your fault, little duck," she whispered into her ear with an exasperated and affectionate tone. "Luck doesn't decide the fate of the world. Luck is . . . luck is just a tiny gift from the gods when they feel like bestowing it. It does not mean anything; it cannot even be kept for long. It comes as quickly as it goes when the heavens decide."

"Does that mean the gods,-" hiccup "- hate us then?"

"No," Dagny said. "All that this downward spiral in our existence means is that fate is cruel." Yes, fate is cruel because time and time again, something happened and the dice would roll against their favor. This usually left Nuri with two jobs and Dagny picking up where she left off sewing in the middle of the night to earn her keep. Her childhood had been robbed from her. Nevertheless, Dagny did not consider herself a martyr and new that thinking of such sadness only made her weak.

As Dagny reached her destination, she drew herself out of her detour down memory lane and knocked on the wooden door in front of her. A voice was heard from the other side. "Who seeks to drink from the tortoise-shell?"

"A thirsty tiger seeking the companionship of an inquisitive cricket," Dagny answered impatiently. It was not ten minutes before the parade was set to begin and Mama would be waiting for them underneath the clock tower. Stupid opening hours, she thought to herself. She heard a click and thought that the door was about to open and stepped back. Instead, a small peephole was drawn back and a pair of thin lips greeted her.

"The tiger must stay thirsty and alone then for we have neither water nor time for stupid crickets," the ugly lips said. Oh no. They have turned us down, Dagny thought. And they threw out Della.

Useless! The lot of them, useless! Della screamed inside her head. She had perfect reason to be angry just as Dagny had perfect reason to be worried when she finally found her waiting outside the Erikson's teashop/ headquarters. Honestly, what good are gangsters if they cannot forge you the documents you need to board a ship.

"Tell me again," Dagny pleaded exasperatedly, "What exactly did they say when they denied you?" Della stopped in her tracks and turned around abruptly to face her sister.

"I have told you twice already! Are you so incompetent that you cannot remember the substance of a three minute long conversation!" she shouted at her older sister. "Or have you simply gone deaf?"

Della regretted it immediately. Dagny rarely got angry; no, she was too patient to be truly overwhelmed by such a demanding emotion. Instead, she became quiet and she grew cold. Her grey eyes turned into steel daggers as they zoned in on her little duck. She arched an eyebrow and with a scoff said, "This coming from the girl who once tried to cook a rabbit without skinning it or cleaning it? We hungry that night because of your incompetence, mind you."

Ouch, Della thought. Dagny leaned in very close to her and crossed her arms. "Don't talk to me about inability. You sew pretty dresses occasionally. I work everyday with et fivyman forging weapons. Remember that?" Della looked down at her shoes somewhat ashamed (and otherwise annoyed). Really the victim card?

Either way she need not be annoyed or ashamed for long because after six long seconds of glaring at Della Dagny came back to herself. She lifted up her sister's chin with her index finger and locked her in the eye. The two of them were the same height however; Della had a tendency to shrink down whenever she felt threatened. How quickly it seemed that she had went from seething with anger to feeling small and ready crawl beneath a rock.

Dagny offered the tiniest of smiles and straightened Della's red dress before saying, "We need to know why, little duck, so that we can try again."

"Why? They will just keep turning us away," Della argued. Well, she meant for it to be an argument statement but it came out more as a whine. Dagny did not reply but instead gave her a half-pleading half-demanding look. Therefore, she repeated, for the third time, the exact events that took place in the Erikson home.

"I did exactly what you said to," Della began and she did. She walked down to the well to see if her flag had been moved from beside it in order to let them know that she wanted to do business. The flag had been taken away and in its place was a small tortoise shell with a dead cricket inside. So, the next day she went to their home, knocked three times and when asked who wished to drink from the tortoise's shell she replied, "A cricket seeking knowledge!"

Then she was ushered into the house and put in front of a large fat man with dusky skin and eyes the color of whiskey. "Speak,"he had told her in a gruff voice. Therefore, she told the man why she needed his family's services. "My sister and I seek voyage to the Capital City of Jör. However we do not have passports."

"So go get passports," he rudely replied.

"We have not the money or the time for legal passports," Della told the ugly man with his pug nose.

"If you do not have money for the legal ones why do you think you have money for mine?" he interrupted again.

"We don't. However, we are willing to offer something else," Della, said. When the chubby man did not respond, she continued. "My sister is an apprentice at a blacksmith's forge, my mother is a seamstress. Both are jobs with very little income. My uncle on the other hand is treasurer to Bjorg Åsdisbørg, the Executive Manager of the Royal Asgardian Depository. That job does make quite a lot of money. Money which my Uncle Mats would be happy to pay with upon our safe arrival."

The ugly, fat man rubbed his beard and thought for a moment. He took out a pouch from his shirt pocket and pulled a nut out. He popped it into his mouth and with a distinctive crack began to eat it, shell and all. Five nuts later, after he was seemingly done with his snack, he spoke again. "If your Uncle is so rich why won't he pay for your passports now? Certainly he could pull a few strings and even then time would no longer be an issue."

"You are right," Della had said, "And normally he would have except with the king and his sons visiting not many people are willing to do much off color dealing."

With a humph he stood up from his table which looked like it took much effort because he leaded every which way to move and balance himself. "Then neither will I," he said before leaving the room. Della called after him several times and even begged him to reconsider, as his men were busy throwing her onto the street.

"See," Della, said to Dagny finishing her story. "He just decided not to. No reasoning, no nothing really. I do not understand why he would be worried about the law seeing as how nearly all of his business comes from breaking it!"

Dagny groaned and ran her hands over her face. "Your right," she said. "There is no point." She started nibbling on her thumb as she paced in front of Della who leaned against a wall beside her.

"What are we going to do?" she asked her sister grimly "Our deadline is the day after tomorrow. Mama leaves tomorrow morning. What's going to happen to us?"

Dagny stopped pacing and she stopped nibbling. She looked to her little duck, which was called that because of the softness of her long dark hair that greatly resembled the feeling of a duckling's down, and saw the lost look in her eyes. Oh, those sweet cocoa brown eyes. You could see everything about her in those warm eyes. Della rubbed the lump on her clavicle over the collar of her tunic, which she often did when she was nervous. Dagny was about to move to comfort her younger sibling when the left side of her mouth quirked up to form a smile. "Perhaps Uncle Mats really will send us something," she said with a giggle.

Dagny smiled at her sister's humorous quip. Uncle Mats. That was a road that the family rarely traveled on. It was true that he made a fairly larger amount of money that their mother, which was why they sought his help now. The downside was that he had a horrible personality. And yes, I say personality because when you have been angry for nearly three millenniums it has officially become a significant character trait. Uncle Mats the Constant Sufferer he had been dubbed by their mother when Papa was still alive. He had chastised her for say so about his own brother but Dagny still remembered how her had tried to hide his snickering as Mama kept cooking. Although they hated it, they needed his help now more than ever.