A/N: First real chapter of the first "book" in a three book series. I
know it's short, but I'm going to try to put out one little chapter a day.
See previous page for disclaimer, and if you didn't know RHPS was written
by Ritz, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE??
My first memory as a child was not of my brother, though I have many of them, but of the death of my grandmother, a woman of whom I knew next to nothing about. The only thing I can remember about her is her money. Every month she would send a substantial amount of money to my mother and her family, being me, Riff, and Mother's husband, Imipromene. We never visited her, she lived to far away, and mother couldn't take off of work. We all assumed she was filthy rich, no, she told us, in one of her monthly letters, that she had acquired this money from a previous (now dead) husband of hers. Was it wrong of us to believe her? Did we deserve to be punished so?
The day after grandmother's death, they came to the door, in their light yellow capes, a yellow so pale, it seemed to foresee our scant, anemic future in the years to come. They told us we were sole heir to her finances. Our ecstasy lasted less then a minute when we were shown exactly what her finances consisted of. Apparently, she was so deeply in debt, she had to pawn off her cemetery plot and ended up being dumped into the murky river that ran by the castle. The money she had so generously given to us had been made from objects embezzled from her employer, the Queen's, palace. The Queen, it seemed, had found out, and now we were in her debt.
We were now in quite a bit of trouble. I was the only one in the family not working, and yet we still could barely make ends meet with Grandmother's help, now she was dead, and we were in a deeper hole than ever before. All the faces in the family turned to me, Mother either unsympathetic or masking her feelings very well, Imipromene, perhaps a little guilty to be sending a 12 year old off to work, and Riff, who's eyes were closed, whose reaction was kept from me. It was clear I was to be a sort of sacrificial peace offering.
My first memory as a child was not of my brother, though I have many of them, but of the death of my grandmother, a woman of whom I knew next to nothing about. The only thing I can remember about her is her money. Every month she would send a substantial amount of money to my mother and her family, being me, Riff, and Mother's husband, Imipromene. We never visited her, she lived to far away, and mother couldn't take off of work. We all assumed she was filthy rich, no, she told us, in one of her monthly letters, that she had acquired this money from a previous (now dead) husband of hers. Was it wrong of us to believe her? Did we deserve to be punished so?
The day after grandmother's death, they came to the door, in their light yellow capes, a yellow so pale, it seemed to foresee our scant, anemic future in the years to come. They told us we were sole heir to her finances. Our ecstasy lasted less then a minute when we were shown exactly what her finances consisted of. Apparently, she was so deeply in debt, she had to pawn off her cemetery plot and ended up being dumped into the murky river that ran by the castle. The money she had so generously given to us had been made from objects embezzled from her employer, the Queen's, palace. The Queen, it seemed, had found out, and now we were in her debt.
We were now in quite a bit of trouble. I was the only one in the family not working, and yet we still could barely make ends meet with Grandmother's help, now she was dead, and we were in a deeper hole than ever before. All the faces in the family turned to me, Mother either unsympathetic or masking her feelings very well, Imipromene, perhaps a little guilty to be sending a 12 year old off to work, and Riff, who's eyes were closed, whose reaction was kept from me. It was clear I was to be a sort of sacrificial peace offering.
