Ch.3

"Miss Brynn, won't you please tell me what's wrong?" The gelert maid looked on nervously, fiddling with her fingers.

The little kougra girl just shook her head, her red pony tails whipping around angrily. She popped up on her tip toes to stare out of the window again, her tail swishing back and forth like the pendulum on the clock.

"Miss Brynn, please. I'm starting to worry." The nursemaid peered out of the glass pane, wondering what could possibly be so enthralling about a bleak, grey day that could ever capture a little girl's attention so much that she would ignore her dinner.

"Zelda, I'm fine!" Brynn turned around in anger, little fists shaking at her sides. "I'll eat when I want to eat! I'm not hungry now!"

The maid gasped in shock, astounded that her sweet little Brynn would ever snap so harshly to anyone, especially her. Maybe she wasn't all that different from her father; the apple doesn't fall from the tree after all.

Zelda turned slowly towards the door, her steps trembling and an uneven clicking from her heels filled the suddenly empty air.

"Zelda…" The little girl held her hand out, clutching at the air. "I'm sorry."

The maid stopped for a moment and sighed heavily, hand resting on the brass door knob. "I'll be back later to tuck you in Miss Brynn." And left without another word.

Brynn could only watch the door, hoping that Zelda would come back soon.

Hanso had really never actually paid much attention to the shops in the plaza in Brightvale that didn't have food. But he found that walking around like a normal person and not sticking to the shadows was a nice change of pace.

While he walked, he took a good look at Brightvale Castle, thinking that Brynn's house was ten times better. But what did he know? He'd never even been inside the Castle.

He strolled past a wooden stand; just a plain little shop, nothing very special about it, run by an old zafara with a kindly smile. A cybunny handed some coins to the shopkeeper and handed her little daughter a doll. The little girl hugged the doll close and thanked her mother.

Brynn likes dolls, he thought.

He had grown rather accustomed to acting on a whim, so as he drifted to the stand, he thought about all of the dolls Brynn had that lined the walls of her room.

He was barely big enough to see over the counter on his tip toes, but the zafara smiled at him.

"Now, it's not very often I see a little boy here," she joked.

"My friend likes dolls," he defended weakly. "She has a whole bunch at her house." But all the dolls she had were fancy, dressed in lace and satin, with brushable hair and eyes that closed and opened; these were little rag dolls made by hand with button eyes and yarn for hair. Would she even like them?

"Does she now? And what's your friend's name?"

"Brynn," he answered, wondering vaguely what his only friend was doing now. Would she still be awake at this time of day, when the sun was setting over the horizon and the evening sky was giving away to the endless black expanse of night?

"She sounds like a nice little girl."

"You could never even guess." There was a doll in the middle of a pile, her button eyes seeming like they were actually staring at Hanso, and the small stitched smile was almost pleading to him to take her to a home with a nice little girl that would play with her. Dressed as a princess from the days of faerie tales and happy endings, it seemed like a perfect match for the girl who lived locked in a tower. If only he had the coin for it.

"Is this the one you like?" The old zafara handled the doll with care, holding it towards Hanso in the gentlest of ways, as if the doll were made of gold, not rags. "She's a very special doll, you know. She was made with the most love."

Brynn would have loved it, that voice in the back of his head was just screaming at him. "But…I don't have any coins…" He couldn't steal it, the old woman was too kind, and by the looks of it, not much better off than any old peddler on the street. Hanso was a thief, but cruel was just not in his jurisdiction.

The old woman leaned in close, a smile wrinkling up her face and narrowing her kind eyes. "I'll tell you what, why don't you take her? She's been sitting on this shelf for far too long."

"Really? You're just giving it away?" He held his hand out to the cloth, only touching for fear it would be snatched away.

"It's sad to see her sit here every day with no little girl to love her. Everyone deserves a family, don't you think?" She set the doll in Hanso's hand, waving him away with a playful look in her old coal eyes. "Now go and make a little girl happy."

"Thank you miss!" Hanso never ran faster in his life.

Tap. Tap tap.

Brynn shook off the mild stupor that had fallen on her, sliding slowly out of bed to unlock the window. A thick layer of rumbling clouds had blocked out the light of the moon, but she already knew who would be there waiting.

"Hey Hanso." She didn't wait for the blue ixi to make some sort of spectacular entrance, she wasn't in much of a mood to be entertained; she lit a candle on her table and crawled back toward her bed before the boy had even gained all of his balance on the window pane.

"Aw, Brynny, you shouldn't have," he snickered at the new name he'd invented a few nights before, knowing how much it got on her nerves. "Such a meal waiting for me, I'm touched."

"You can have whatever you want." Under her sea of covers, she curled into a ball, trying to block out the rest of the world.

If the boy noticed her mood, he didn't say anything. The clatter of plates filled the empty room, not very quiet for the thief he bragged about being. Brynn knew thieves from her story books the maids read her; they were silent, deadly, and never chivalrous. Hanso was the farthest thing from them. Brynn closed her eyes tightly, trying to remember those old stories Zelda had read. But her maid's voice seemed to accompany every one of them and the lump in Brynn's throat grew.

"Hey, did you even eat any of this?" His words were mushed, whether from hearing them through her comforter or from the food stuffed in his cheeks, she couldn't tell; probably a combination of both.

The girl tried to swallow the painful pit stuck between her vocal cords and her mouth. "No."

"Why not?"

If he was expecting an answer, he wasn't getting one; Brynn curled into a ball under the covers, wrapping her tail around her in a knot. A tiny hand clutched at the comforter, ripping away the warmth, revealing a sniffling an orange lump of fur and cloth.

"What's wrong?"

"I-I- I yelled at Zelda today. I didn't mean t-to. A-and now, s-she…" She couldn't hold back the tears anymore; she'd been stuffing them down all day, trying to deny the fact that her favorite maid and the closest thing she had to a mother within the last few months was mad and wouldn't come back. But now, in the late hours of the night, tucked in her bed haphazardly by one of the many maids in the house whose name didn't begin with a Z, the guilt was starting to eat her alive. "She hasn't come back!" she sobbed.

Hanso reached out to help the girl, hand freezing right before it touched her. He was scared; he'd never seen anyone cry, especially not a little girl, especially not a little girl who had happened to save his life. What could he possibly say to her?

His hand robotically retreated, clutching the buttons on his jacket like some sort of life vest; and he'd drown in her tears soon if he didn't find a way to cheer her up. A slight bulge in his pocket seemed to nudge him as a reminder of something very important he was supposed to be doing.

"Now go and make a little girl happy."

Brynn hadn't been sure when he'd moved, she'd only known that he was standing there at the edge of her bed with a worried/uncertain kind of look. And now there were two button eyes staring her in the face.

"W-what's this?" Brynn wiped at her eyes, sliding up on one arm; so it was a doll he'd been holding. He wouldn't look at her though, something on her wall seemed to capture his complete attention, even managed to make his cheeks burn a brilliant red.

"Just take it," he muttered.

Brynn held the delicate doll in her claw gently, studying the pink dress she'd been dressed in, her long brown yarn hair, the tiny crown that had been stitched to her head, the big black buttons that seemed to be screaming "Hello!"

Brynn sniffled once more, the tears slowing down on her cheeks. "What's this for?"

Whatever was on the wall still appeared to be much more interesting than her because his eyes wouldn't look away. "It's…a thank you. For everything you've done this last week."

Brynn decided that this doll was much more valuable than all of the porcelain ones that lined her walls in wait for play time. "T-thank you."

"What's going on here?"

The two kids jumped a little, eyes snapping wide open, flashing towards the door where a gelert in a night dress stood in the doorway with a candle held high.

"Zelda!" It took a second for Brynn to realize that right now was not the best time for a heart-felt apology and hugs. There was still a thief paralyzed in her room after all.

"Who is this?" The gelert was still far too shocked to actually do something about the vermin that had infiltrated the room, and she was only able to fling questions their way.

Hanso stared a little while longer, an ixi caught in the headlights expression in his eyes; but he wasn't stupid enough to stay like that long; he jumped onto the foot of Brynn's bed, hopped to the window sill, and dropped out of sight.

They both watched the window for a long time after, still somehow expecting the little blue face to pop up.

"You've a lot of explaining to do Miss Brynn."

Thank you so much for tolerating my stupid non-uploadness! I promise I'll try to upload more often ;~;