How do you determine who is family?
It's not by blood.
It's a simple thing, really.
Who are you willing to fight for, to die for, and protect?
Who makes you happy every time you see them?
Who worries of you, and holds your hand if you're in need?
Those are your family. -- Anon Guest
Charity Mudbarak never had much of a home. Nor that much of an example of parental behaviour. What he remembered was the others in the mud barracks. Other scrawny kids like himself. Some died, some left, few stayed. They needed someone on their side. So he stayed.
They depended on the kindness of strangers, which was a lot to ask of the strangers. These sorts of things simply happened to Unwelcome People in a city as large as Vingate.
What they depended on more were things like: Charity's defensive strengths, Prank's traps, Plenitude's ability to grow good food out of anything, and Trickery's light-fingered ability to find things before they were lost. They were never strong, not in the sense of changing the world, but they were strong enough to live in it.
Family is many things, most of which is not based on genetics.
Raldrol, the reader of the group and general teddy-bear for all the littles, had once said, "Family is more than who excreted you." And then had to spend several hours explaining it once all the littles had gone to sleep. They had infinite patience, for a Bugbear. Maybe that was why their tribe had dumped them on Vingate. Either way, they found the Mud Barracks and became part of the family.
Hellkin and Bugbears, Halfbreds, Orcs, and Kobolds thrown from their nests. A motley band of misfits, clinging together because they had nobody else.
When little Gid the Kobold Kid showed a talent for magic, the family got worried.
"Ze needs teaching," said Plenitude, combing her fingers through her hair out of stress. "Not just the teaching Raldrol can do. Real magic teaching."
"Can't find those sorts of books," grouched Trickery, playing something shiny between her fast fingers. "Wizards keep 'em chained down. Bastards."
"I thought we were bastards," Prank checked his bells. One by one. By accident or design, they made up a popular tune they all knew. "Legally or by default."
"Family now," said Gid. "Doesn't matter."
Raldrol had a two-day-old news sheet. The newest they could get. They waved a clawed finger over squares of advertising on the page. "I know there's some schools as will take walk-ins. There's tests and stuff. But they also make you pay for your own wizarding stuff unless you're a genius at it. Prestige," they said. "They make themselves big by helping them as was best already."
"Can't rely on tosh-hunting," mumbled Charity. "Can we do Woe Is Me on a busy corner?"
"We get in less trouble for Penny A Posy," opined Trickery.
"You mean you get in less trouble," sighed Wux, the half-orc they usually dressed up for the scam. "Why can't Syllahne do it? She's way prettier and gets more gold the legit way."
"Only 'cause people want to screw her," said Trickery. "It's gross. She's just fifteen. And she don't like people touching her."
"We could do Annoyance Squad on the school?" said Gid. "Just keep turning up if they turn us down?"
"You know what?" said Charity, nominal head of a family where not one of them had come of age. "You're worth the time in the watchhouse. Let's do it."
The Mudbarak family could make quite a force of themselves when they wanted to.
[Photo by Karen Maes on Unsplash]
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