It was 2 lollipops, the strawberry flavor for Claude and coke for Charlotte. Her face lit up as I gave it to her, and Claude gave me a big hug when I gave it to him. They had to give it back to me to unwrap, but it was nice seeing them be so happy.

“Got one for me too?” Jane jokingly said.

I shrugged and pointed at Claude and Charlotte. “You’ll have to ask these two, since the lollipops are theirs.”

Jane nodded and turned towards Claude and Charlotte. “Can I have a lollipop please?” Jane asked, and they both nodded.

We spent some time playing, and me or Jane occasionally restocked the house, making sure the flame was going strong. I soon got bored, and went to the kitchen to see how Sam was doing.

“Want me to set the table?” I inquired as I watched Sam work. He was cooking pasta, and was just opening the tomato sauce can.

He turned to me and looked at the pasta before turning back. “Yeah sure, and when you’re done could you go tell them dinner’s ready?”

I nodded, and grabbed the plates and set them on the table before grabbing the cups. When I finished, I noticed Sam was draining the water, and quickly went to call the others. “Guys?” I stood at the doorway, looking at them.

“Is it dinner already?” Charlotte asked, and I nodded. “Yes! I’m starving, let’s go Claude!” I watched as she grabbed Claude’s hand and rushed out of the play room, running to the kitchen.

“Thank goodness. I’m starving, and you must be too.” Jane smiled, and she pulled my hand along too. When we arrived, Charlotte and Claude were already seated at the table, staring down Sam’s hands as he served them their dinner.

As he finally set the plates down, Sam jokingly spoke. “Geez, I got it. If looks could kill I’d have no hands right now.” Charlotte glared at him, before ignoring him and starting to dig into her food, while Claude was way ahead of her.

Me and Jane took seats while Sam gave us our servings, and I quickly thanked him before starting to eat. The spWhen we finish, Jane washes the dishes and Sam helps Claude shower while Charlotte does it alone, which leaves me with some free time.

I go to our storage room, which is the place where we dump everything we’ve collected there, since me and Jane were hoarders, and occasionally we organized things and found some use from them.

The storage room was in a room under the stairs, like the movie of that wizard boy who lived with his uncle’s family under the stairs, as the room was exactly like that, but bigger.

I noticed that everything was organized differently than what I had done a few weeks ago, so it seemed that Jane had come here to work, as the place looked a little bit less dusty than it usually was.

I grabbed a sewing kit out of the few that Jane had gotten before, and tried to remember what my mother taught me. If I could, I would most likely never like to think about her again, otherwise I might lose my sanity, but there was no doubt that she had quite a lot of useful skills, such as sewing.

I didn’t learn much, since before the war I didn’t feel the need to learn sewing, and knew I could always learn it later if my passion for it grew and blossomed, but it was also because I wanted to spend as little time with her as possible.

Anyways, I still learnt something since she forced me, but it was a few years ago, so my memory of it has deteriorated. I thought about what I could use to practice, when I noticed a box full of what seems to be cloth off to the side.

I remembered that there was always a high amount of cloth in the others’ bin, since we never knew if we needed it in the future, but left alone because we couldn’t use it for anything yet.

I sifted through the box, and chose a worn out rag that we could use for cleaning, and one that was in tatters. I didn’t want to waste anymore time since Jane would soon be done with the dishes and after that would be Claude and Sam and then Charlotte.

I cut out pieces of fabric from the tattered rag and used it to cover the holes in the worn out rag, and although I struggled a bit in the beginning, it was turning out quite ok. Of course, the color clashed with each other and you could clearly tell it was patched together, but my sewing was decent and the thread wasn’t easily detached.

I admired my handiwork. Of course, the whole thing wasn’t patched up yet, but I felt proud that I was able to patch it up firmly, even though it was probably really easy to do. Just as I got started on the next hole, I heard Jane call for me.

I put everything in the sewing kit, got up, closed the door to the storage room, before going to the living room, where I heard Jane’s voice. “Yeah?” I answered back, looking at Jane curiously. “What happened?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t disappear on us or something,” Jane responded, looking at me happily as she patted the seat next to her, encouraging me to sit. “Of course, I also wanted to make sure you weren’t taking a piss.” She added on happily.

I took one look at her before starting to edge back to the storage room, concerned. My batshit best friend has relapsed into her habit again. How is she still a follower of god with this kind of character?

“Wait! El, don’t leave me! I was just kidding, you know it. El! I love you.” Jane shouted, causing me to edge backwards faster.

“Well that’s unfortunate, but I don’t love you! Goodbye!” I was about to turn tail to the storage room when Jane called out again.

“Ok fine! I’ll promise that I won’t say the words piss, pee, poop and whatever.” Jane promised, but I still looked at her warily.

“You promised me that last time too, you know. Yet the next day you sent me poop gifs, and a while after that you told me about the not at all wonderful tales of your adventure to the toilet for number 2.”

Jane shrugged. “Hey, how about you? You always promise your brother that you’d never tease him, but why do I always see him get angry at you every month for teasing him, hmm?” I nodded, it was indeed true.

I sighed, and came back into the living room. “Just don’t relapse into your old habit until we’re in a better place, you bum.” Jane laughed as I sat next to her, and we chatted as I continued sewing.

It was a very normal conversation, about things we usually liked and how we thought about the people we knew, and how well they were doing, and sometimes complaining about the chores we had to do.

It was a normal conversation, but something that me and Jane haven’t had in a while. Although we’ve been in this house for about 3 months now, the feeling of no adult to guide us was quite harsh on the 3 of us, and with all of us constantly running around to either get food for us to survive or fixing the floor, there wasn’t much time to talk.

Even after that, there was still a little bit of tension, where we would get into small fights over little things like if we would allow the kids to draw on the wall and what not. Other times we wouldn’t feel like it, and we eventually drifted apart from each other. It was just some small chatter, but it felt like we were close again.

“Ugh, I’m tired.” Sam spoke as soon as he came in, with Claude trailing behind him, already wearing his pjs and a small towel around his head. Sam came over to us, and laid his head on my lap before sprawling his legs all over the couch, taking up about half the space.

I snorted and tried pushing his head off, but he was too heavy. “Get off me and sit properly Sam.” I complained.

“Then go get me my pillow from my room.” I looked at him in exasperation. If he was the second laziest person in the house, I was the first. I waved at Claude to come closer, and then requested for him to go get it.

“Claude, could you go get Sammy’s pillow? Just take one from his room please,” I held his hand, and he nodded. Jane looked at me and sighed, shaking her head. I shrugged in response.

A while later, I could hear Claude coming down the stairs and thanked him for getting the pillow for me. “Thank you baby.” I kissed the top of his head and gave him a hug, before shoving Sam’s pillow in his face.

“Now get off me, you big chungus!” I berated him, I pushed Sam off, and he begrudgingly got off and went to the other side of the couch. After a while, I was almost done with finishing patching up the rag. There were only small holes now, but my fingers were pretty tired.

As I put them away, Charlotte came into the living room. “Charlotte!” I called out excitedly, and gestured to her to come to me. Sam saw that action, and pointed at me accusingly.

“Wow, you don’t like me, but you like my younger sister? That’s so biased of you, El!” He jokingly said, and in the next second a pillow was chucked directly in his face. I ignored him as he complained, and instead started to dry Charlotte’s hair and talk to her.