Nimeway laughed softly as the rain fell from the sky, turning the dirt on the cobble stone path to mud. There was a tiny little covering on a stone building that Nime sat with a few of the beggars of Beggar Alley. A middle aged man, who was missing most of his hair from malnutrition, danced as Nime strummed on her harp. His children spun around him, humming along to the music as they skipped in a ring. Nime just smiled, watching the small family, who had just recently lost their mother, dance in the rain.
As Nime played, another little girl wandered from the tents and watched Nime play. The girl must have been only sixteen or seventeen, but Nime’s harp fascinated her. When Nime finished up her song, the man and his children broke out in a sweet laughter as well as Nime, who slung her harp over her back. She turned, making her way to the Mud Gate at the entrance of Beggar’s Alley.
However, before Nime could leave, the little girl called out, “Miss?”
Nime looked over her shoulder at the girl, who shyly asked Nime what was the instrument she had been playing. Nime pulled the harp off of her back and showed the girl it, saying, “This is called a harp.”
The girl smiled, gently touching the harp as if it was a golden jewel she had never imagine could exist before. Nime nodded to her, asking, “What is your name?”
“Cisses”
On her way home, Nime memorized that name, and the next day when she came back to the Beggar’s Alley, Nime brought along a small, elegant harp. She asked the middle aged man from the day before where Cisses is, and he told her. Oh, Nime was startled for what he told her.
“In the night, some man came through and took Cisses. She was found dead in one of the corners here. Happens sometimes.”
The only thing Nime could think of doing was leaving the harp with the man, the harp she had planned to give Cisses. And after that, Nime headed back to her home. Which was a warm house in the Bree-land Homesteads with her loving husband. And that could not help but make Nime feel slightly selfish. That she had a home to return to every night while there were so many people, so many children, who didn’t.
Though, there was a time Nime had lived on the streets herself, she remembered that. Nime never begged, but she did have to steal from time to time. She didn’t have much of a choice, it was steal or starve. That was all before Nime joined the Bloody Dawn, which gave her friends and family. Since then, Nime was able to make enough money to buy a home, to be able to have all the supplies she needed to heal people for free, and making it so she doesn’t need to steal. Which of course, she isn’t a thief. There is no need for her to be.
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” -Albert Einstein
