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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OneCrappy DM" data-source="post: 9818397" data-attributes="member: 7033788">WawaateThe children reveal themselves for what they are the moment you actually see them orphans, gutter snipe waifs with ribs showing and faces smeared with soot and city filth. Their clothes are a patchwork of rags and scavenged scraps, mismatched boots, threadbare cloaks, sleeves torn and sewn again until stitch marks outnumber fabric. And yet, despite the misery that stains everything in the area, they laugh. Real laughter. They tumble through the half melted snow as though it were treasure fallen from the heavens. One of them pauses long enough to squint up at you a sharp eyed girl no older than ten, her hair a wild tangle of copper curls. “Winter Court? Afterlife?” she snorts, flinging a snowball at a boy twice her size. “Cutter, if you were dead, some old bone-head would’ve peeled you clean by now.” The others howl with laughter, snow flying, bare feet slapping across the slush-slick cobblestones. Their joy is so incongruous with the decay around that it feels almost uncanny.Then like a gust blowing out a candle the mood shifts. The laughter dies in an instant. The children vanish into cracks and shadows with the instinct of creatures who have learned far too young when to run. Ten figures step into view, spreading out with practiced ease. Thugs, natives by the look of them. Half starved but mean, armed with clubs, jagged knives, and rust bitten metal that still kills just fine. Their eyes flick over you with the dull hunger of people who measure strangers in coin, blood, or both. One steps forward, clearly the mouth of the bunch. His hair is shaved into uneven stripes.“Well, look at this clueless,” gesturing at you with the tip of his blade. “You don’t know the chant? Jumpin’ out a window into our ward’ll cost you five jinx. Standard fee.” The others chuckle darkly behind him, forming a loose semicircle in the slush. Snow drips from their boots.</blockquote>

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