"Charity! Please spare some iron for a crippled child! The Virtues smile upon those who give!"

Nina hated this. She was sitting on the paved ground with her back against one of the thousands of exactly similar appartment buildings that were built and maintained by the order of Growth. The only kind of building you saw in the Districts, save for a few exceptions. She'd gotten quite a bit thinner in the two weeks that had passed since she'd gotten caught in the Charib square market. Beggars ate a lot less well than thieves, she'd found out, and a lot less often. Yet another reminder of the fate of the powerless, the girl mused.

She looked down from the thin flow of passerbys to the bowl that she'd set in front of her stretched out legs. She could be holding it to solicitate people more agressively but it still hurt her hands a bit to do so. She gazed at her palms, the sting was imperceptible these days as the burns were almost done scarring. She'd been washing them in the Kwilla river every day to avoid them getting infected.

It annoyed her that she had to do it late at night in the dark to make sure people didn't see her tending to her wounds. It was blasphemous after all to interfere in any way with wounds from a repentance and you REALLY did not want to be convicted of blasphemy by either of the three cults serving the Virtues. It bore much more severe consequences than the mild burns that a repentance would get you. Worse thing was, if they did get infected you couldn't get any help from the clergy. They'd say it was a trial from the divinity and that it could not be interfered with under penalty of blasphemy. They used that word a lot. They'd even deny you the pyre if you sought to end your suffering and seek forgiveness in death. She scoffed internally, nasty fuckers.

It amazed her sometimes how quickly she'd grown to despise them after having to struggle on her own on the streets. Before, when she'd... when she'd been living with her mother, she'd thought of them as benevolent. She'd been taught that they protected everyone from the Calamities, she'd even been schooled by a Growth monk for a year along with a dozen other children from the area when she'd been younger.

Flaming virtues but it all felt like so long ago already. She'd only been on the streets for what? Two months? Three? And it felt like an entire lifetime had gone by. She'd matured more in those few months spent on the streets than she had in her last five years at the Haze. She'd had to, she'd be fucking dead if she hadn't and she knew it. That was another thing that had changed rather quickly, her language. Her vocabulary had swiftly expanded in directions her mother would have found... unsuitable to say the least.

Eh, fuck that bitch. It was all her fault anyways. Maybe if she'd brought her daughter up properly then Nina wouldn't be in this fucked up situation. That was certainly one thing Doros had been right about. Ah, there was a name that brought up some painful memories. Although in the light of recent events it was almost comical that she'd ever been afraid of the man. Her definition of a proper beating had certainly been another thing that had evolved rather rapidly since then.

She sneezed and shivered when the pain of the multitude of bruises that covered her body was awakened by the sudden movement. With her leg broken she'd had to find new ways to avoid getting caught up in Order monks 'peacekeeping operations' since her old tactic of 'running the fuck away' wasn't exactly a viable option for her these days. The first few days had been pretty brutal. At least whenever she'd been specifically targeted they'd gone easy on her which had allowed her to avoid any major damage, still hurt a lot though.

Another unforeseen consquence of being able to move only one leg had been the cold. She couldn't exactly climb the face of the standardized stone buildings of the Districts to find shelter in the space under their roofs anymore. It had made rainy nights difficult, she'd made do by building a crude tent with rags and flotsam she'd nabbed from the river but even then it didn't stop the ground she slept on from being drenched and she'd had to just deal. Good news was that spring was nearing its end and summers in the Eternal City tended to be rather dry so she'd be rid of that particular problem soon enough. It was something to look forward to, along with her leg getting better.

A wealthy looking couple passed her by and her head rose to beg them with a pleading voice and teary eyes. They splendidly ignored her flawless acting and even upped their pace to get further away from her. Assholes. Ah but she hated this, she really did. The abject weakness and helplessness, being forced to depend on other people for survival. Having to pay for her food! Amusingly enough, that was the thing that pissed her off the most. Stealing food had been the single most freeing thing she'd ever done. The first and only way she'd found to exert some form of power, of control over her surroundings. And it had been taken from her so easily, almost casually. She didn't want to think about it, she still flinched whenever she remembered the pain of it all. The intense mind-rending agony that had went on and on and... Yup! Not thinking about it! Change of subject! What was she thinking about?

Oh yeah, begging! Begging was horribly boring, you just sat there and hoped for money to fall from the sky. Watching Growth monk repave a street was more interesting and that was saying something. She missed the rush of running away laughing with a bundle of apples in her arms and a bumbling moron clumsily chasing her through a dense crowd. Taunting them as she swam in the current of people, navigating the flow of the crowd with ease while her pursuer powerlessly tried to push against it in the vain hope of catching her. Ah but it was so freeing to torment these adults who all thought they were so much better than her. It had been so much fun until that one asshole had recognized her and had... had...

A commotion to her left dragged her out of her thoughts. A couple dozen meters from her, the couple that had so briskly ignored her was being pestered by another young girl. She was wearing much better clothes than Nina did, her multicoloured dress bright and clean as opposed to Nina's grey linen one that looked more like a rag with every new day that it survived. Nina's way of life certainly was not kind to her clothing.

The other kid was now loudly telling the arrogant pair something about how she'd lost the copper her mother had given her to go buy candy at the market and how she didn't know what to do now. Ha, the poor naive young thing was in for a rude awakening. She'd be lucky if she got away from those dickheads with only a slap.

Or so Nina thought, until the woman of the two pulled a copper coin from her purse before handing it to the girl and gently ruffling her short black hair. Wait... what? Were these two fucks for real? Did they just completely ignore a crippled, mildly starving child asking for a single iron only to give a whole fucking COPPER to that... that... that spoiled little shit? That brainless brat who knew fuck all of the harshness of the real world? She simmered angrily as the girl profusely thanked the couple before skipping away.

Nina watched in disgust as the stupid kid stopped her carefree hopping the second the couple was out of view and instantly beamed towards a man dressed in wealthy looking clothes. And her eyes widened as the girl repeated the exact same number, she sat there utterly floored as the stupid adult listened to the girl and gave her a couple of iron while apologizing he could only spare this much. She couldn't believe her ears, had this fucker just APOLOGIZED to a kid for not being able to give her MORE free money? Calamities damn her where had the arrogant and uncaring populace of the Districts gone? Had they all suddenly been sent to the virtuous pyre and been replaced by naive and gentle morons?

Nina was completely flabbergasted and she stayed that way as the girl suckered away not one, not two, but five more coppers out of the passerbys over the course of the next two hours. It was all she could do to stop her jaw from hanging there stupidly in shock as she saw a kid who couldn't be more than two or three years older than her make a dockworker's wage in a sixth of the time and a fraction of the effort. She followed her with her gaze, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar as she skipped away in the direction of the nearby market. But she wasn't at the end of her surprise as the kid came back not five minutes later with a mashed apple bread in hand and sat next to her. She bit into her recently bought food with a glee that made Nina frown. Was this hustling little shit mocking her?

"You're a real shit beggar aren't you?" Oh she was going to punch her right in the mouth. Unfortunately the girl was a meter away from her and that meant she'd have to grab her crutch and get up if she actually wanted to hit her. And she didn't want to hit the idiot quite that badly. Yet. She decided instead to answer in a diplomatic and measured fashion.

"Screw you."

"I mean your number ain't bad, crippled child works well enough with the right crowd, but this ain't it kid." Now THAT was rich considering the other child looked barely older than Nina was. She gave the girl a murderous glare at the condescending words while she continued her tirade unabated.

"You got to read people you know? We're right next to an Enclave, the only folks coming by are those who all think they're too good for the Districts for one reason or another. They want nothing more than to show how different and superior they are from the rest of us worthless. Of course they're going to ignore someone who reeks of poverty from a mile away."

"I don't reek! I wash every night!" Nina interrupted indingnantly, who in the Calamities names did this girl think she was? But the girl in question just rolled her eyes and continued her lecture as though the interruption had never occurred.

"On the other hand you've got a kid like me: decent clothes, an actual mother, asking for a copper so obviously rich enough to not understand the value of money... In other words: one of their own particular breed of pricks. To them that means that if they throw some money at me I just might mention the name of the benevolent person who helped me to my obviously rich mom and give them an in with her." However infuriated Nina was by the deceiving brat that was tauntingly eating right next to her famished self, she could see the logic of what the girl had just said. She hadn't even considered you could think so hard about begging for money on the street.

"How do you even know that stuff?" Her curiosity had been piqued now. In her mind, begging had been a simple thing. You teared up a little, asked for money with a sad voice and hoped that against all odds someone would be dumb enough to give you free money. Now it seemed obvious in hindsight that there was much more to it than that.

"Easy, I watch people, put myself in their shoes, try to think how they think. That's what you have to do, what you'll need to do if you want to make any money from being a beggar."

"I'm not a beggar though." The girl glanced at the bowl in front of Nina where the faint glint of a few iron coins could be glimpsed with a sceptical look on her face.

"Yeah right, and my mother's a hamster." A frustrated groan came out of Nina's mouth.

"I'm a thief! I'm only doing this to be able to eat while my leg heals." The self-proclaimed expert on begging skeptically looked at Nina's obviously burned palm and then at the splint holding her damaged leg still.

"You seem like a pretty shit thief too." Okay. Forget punching her, she was going to club her. She was certain that if she leaned over she could hit her stupid face with the crutch. She answered with her best come back instead.

"Fuck you." There was a beat of silence between them then, only disturbed by the other kid's munching and the sounds of the busy street they were sitting at the edge of.

"So if you're a thief then... why aren't you just stealing shit?" It was Nina's turn to roll her eyes at her interlocutor's lack of common sense. I mean, sure she was a beggar and not a thief but how could someone be so smart about their own hustle and so dumb about someone else's?

"Are you blind? My leg's broken!"

"So?"

"Well I can't run away if I get caught! Are you stupid or something?"

"You're the one that's stupid! If you can't run away then you just need to not get caught."

"Well of course I need to not..." She stopped arguing mid answer. The other girl was right! She just needed to not get caught! She knew she could steal things without alerting anyone, she'd done it before! Multiple times even! She just needed to pull that off every single time. It was a little daunting but she was vonfident she could do it. She'd been sloppy before because she knew no adult could catch her in a chase amidst a crowd, that was the main reason she'd chosen the market as her hunting grounds. Well, that and the lack of competition compared to other markets deeper in the Districts.

But she didn't have to be sloppy, she could be more cautious and only steal when she was certain that nobody would notice it. Now that she thought about it, it would also prevent her from getting noticed by someone like that asshole monk. She turned to look at the other kid who'd been biting into what little was left of her food while she had been lost in thought.

"Uh... You're right, I just need to not get caught."

"See? Good for you that I'm super smart." She finished the last of the kebab bread and licked the boiled apple clinging to her fingers before continuing. "What's your name?"

"Nina." She answered with a slight smile. Despite herself, she was starting to like the slightly older girl. Even though she was super arrogant and condescending. It's not like she couldn't back it up anyways, she'd more than proven that she could walk the walk earlier.

"Well Nina the really shit thief, I'm Quilla the incredibly amazing beggar, nice to meet you." Nina ticked at that, mildly annoyed. And she'd been this close from actually liking her too. Her smile became visibly strained.

"Nice to meet you too Quilla. Are you going?" The older girl had gotten up and walked a couple step to stand right next to where Nina sat.

"Oh don't be too sad, I've got one last lesson for you." Suddenly she kicked Nina's crutch away lunged for her begging bowl and grabbed as many of the meagre amount of the iron coins inside as she could in her fist. "You really shouldn't keep your money out in the open if you can't catch up to thieves."

"YOU BITCH!" She hopped away from the stumbling Nina while cackling mockingly as the little thief crawled towards her crutch.

"Consider it as a teaching fee for all my amazing advice. It's not like it's free you know."

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!."

"Yeah right, you're gonna have to catch me first. And that's not gonna happen with that..." She waved at Nina's splinted leg. "Situation you got going on. Anyways I'm going now, be seeing you Nina." And with those words she just took off running.

"COME BACK HERE YOU ASS! THIEF! SHE JUST STOLE FROM A BEGGAR!" Quilla just kept running away as Nina shouted more imprecation at her, her mocking cackle fading away as she disappeared in the crowd. Nina could only clumsily and slowly stumble after her, fuming as the distance between the two of them grew until that stupid thieving beggar vanished around the street corner.

Nina stopped once the other girl was out of view, knowing she couldn't catch up no matter how hard she tried. She angrily clopped back to her bowl and angrily struck it with her crutch, sending it bowling over and spilling the two small iron coins that had escaped Quilla's grasp on the ground. She looked at them for a full minute, waiting until she wasn't furious but only angry instead before looking away from them to gaze at the evening sun.

Once her breathing had calmed and her shoulders had lost some of their tension, the small girl made up her mind and turned to face the opposite end of the street. Towards the market where she'd been caught stealing not three weeks before. With a determined look on her face, she started heading towards it without giving a second glance at the bowl and the coins laying on the ground, free for anyone to pick up. She did not need the meagre amount of money, not anymore.

And she had a dinner to steal.