Death’s Brooch

Elli couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t tired. She stretched her back, clasping her hands behind her waist and heard the crack of joints shifting unhappily. Elli was twelve, dark brown hair falling to her shoulders, her body slender and thin. They didn’t have much to eat. They. She was one of eight kids living together in the old cottage at the edge of the forest. It was a lovely little place away from the town where they likely all came from.

See, it was customary at the time for families to abandon children who they could not feed. Times were especially hard after the war and food was scarce. As such, many families abandoned their newborns in the woods. If it hadn’t been for Dezachi, they would probably all have died.

Dezachi was the eldest of the kids, 17 years of age now, but back when he first found her, he had only been 10. She had assumed he was abandoned just like the rest of them, but he had quickly corrected her. He told them of his father’s death at the hands of Voran, an evil man who took control of the town shortly after the war ended. He also told them of his mother who, wanting the safety of her son, cast him out moments before the guards took her away to become a prisoner.

At his telling of these events Elli noted the far away look in his eyes and the note of deep sadness that entered his voice. No other time was he as cast down as when he spoke of his mother and father and Elli wanted to help him so that he would never have to feel those pains again. Being the second oldest she took it upon herself to help him raise the other kids. He had only managed to save the seven of them, for there had been many more but most were dead before he could find them.

It wasn’t entirely true that he found them. He had help. When Dezachi was abandoned he had been seven. At that age he too would certainly have died of starvation had he not found the aid of an unlikely friend. The friend that he had made and who, as far as Elli could tell, had taught him everything he knew regarding survival in the wild, was a cat. The cat and his mate lived together with Dezachi, Elli and the others and they were the ones who located and showed Dezachi where to find the abandoned children.

It was technically a good thing that the cats didn’t find more children than they had. Six children were a lot of mouths to feed and it was all Dezachi and Elli could do to provide enough food for all of them. Providing enough food for them was, quite literally, an all day job for the two…