Work, lots and lots of work. That’s all Moira ever did now, dishes, sweeping, scrubbing. It had taken her a little while to learn to do it all and it would have helped if the brooms and mops and floors hadn’t all been so big! She groaned, her first day in Brunnhold, her first day as a passive, had hurt. They had taken away her pretty, and thrown a blue dress and a washrag at it. Her fingers hurt, they had been in this water for longer then she could remember.

She missed her mother, she missed her father, and she missed her house. The walls here were so dark, the rooms cold, and the people were mean. No one had talked to her yet, besides to yell an insult or more instructions, and she was lonely.

Moira scrubbed some sauce off of a porcelain plate, and then rinsed it and set it on top of the stack of other plates. Her back hurt now, too. She wanted to sit down, but they would yell at her. Why, why were they yelling at her?! No one had ever done that when she was at home, why did they have to be so mean here?

She dropped the bowl she was holding back into the dishwater, it splashed and then gently clunked against the metal of the sink. She pressed her arms onto the counter to hold herself up, soaked dishrag wrapping itself around her arm. Water ran down the cabinets into a small pool around her feet, she would have to clean it up before anyone saw it.

They were all mean now; they had been so nice when she first walked in on her birthday, why had they turned mean?

Her eyes watered up and she pressed her face down into her arms, and bit her lip as she sobbed, the dishrag soaking into her hair and dress. She was trying to be quiet; the matrons never liked it when she started crying.

Aurelie had spent most of the morning bustling about the kitchen in an efficient if mindless manner. It was a relief, really, to be able to do something so simple and repetitive as cleaning the ovens. She'd been here so long, almost half her life now had been spent between the heavy stone walls of Brunnhold. Doing these familiar things in this familiar setting was nice, really. She barely remembered a life that was any other way.

But she was reminded very vividly of a time when this hadn't been so when she saw the little girl slumped over the sink. They were always like this, the new ones, soft and lonely, not quite understanding just how different their life was going to be from now on. She'd seen this one before, she thought-- they didn't get that many new girls in at once, but it was her first time being on shift with the little thing.

She was pathetic, the filthy, soapy water soaking into those pretty curls and that dress that Aurelie remembered vividly would feel itchy and stiff and horrible, until the washings wore it soft. Aurelie's heart broke. It always did, over these little ones. Without even thinking about it, she moved to stand at the child's side, kneeling down with her own cleaning rag to sop up the puddle on the floor.

"Would you like some help?" She tried to say it as gently as possible, to not startle the girl.

She almost jumped when she heard Aurelie, but the woman’s voice was so sweet. It was the nicest voice she had heard since she came here, the first time someone had offered her help. She whined something unintelligible into her arms, before groaning and standing straight.
She watched Aurelie clean up, not realizing she should be helping, and pouted. She wanted a hug. She wanted her mother to hug her. Where was her mother?

She wiped her arm across her face, cleaning off snot and tears, and then wiped her arm off on her apron. She noticed the rag was still dripping onto the floor, making Aurelie's job just that much harder. Moira wrung the rag out into the sink, and then got down on all fours so she could start scrubbing.

"I... Thank you." her voice broke, and she sniffed. "I didn’t mean to make such a mess..." She turned away and shoved her soaked curls behind her ear. She wanted to ask a question that she had been asking whenever she got the chance, one others wouldn’t answer. They seemed to laugh at her for asking, some even yelled at her. This woman seemed nice enough though, maybe... just maybe she wouldn’t get mad at her for asking. She grimaced, she didn’t want to ask, but she wanted to know the answer.

The girl turned back to Aurelie, her lip sticking out, and her eyes big and watery.

"Can... Ma'am, do you... Why am I here?"

Aura froze in the middle of her scrubbing. How did she answer a question like that? She'd wondered the same thing when she'd first come-- what was so broken about her that her parents didn't want her anymore? (Still she wondered this, deep into lonely nights while she listened to the sound of Triston's breathing.) She knew, intellectually-- after all, they'd all grown up hearing it. They'd just never imagined it could happen to them.

Hesitantly Aurelie reached out a hand to brush at tears that threatened to slip down her face. "Aura, you can call me Aura." She bit her lip. She wanted to answer this girl, she really did. She wanted to answer all of them. She wanted to say 'because your mother and father love you very much and want what's best for you-- they don't know any better'.

But she didn't believe that.

"Because you're special," she said at last. "We all are. Some people--" Again she struggled for words. "They're just afraid," she said simply, with a smile she hoped was comforting. Those first few months were the hardest. After that it got easier, in a way.

"What's your name?" A change of subject might be best.

"Special?" that wasn’t what she had been told. She had been made to think that she was broken, that she was dangerous. She had believed it too. Why would anyone be afraid of her? She had never given them reason to be scared.

At least, she thought she hadn’t.

Moira wasn’t sure how special she wanted to be, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be broken, either. She soaked up the rest of the water, and threw the rag back into the sink. She needed a moment to think. The girl rocked back on her heels, and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her chin went right on top of her knees, and she held that pose for a few moments.

She had been alone when she came here, which she did because she was either special or wrong. People had been mean, she had had to do chores, she had had to wear the wrong clothes, and she had had to listen to anything anyone said.

But now she wasn’t alone, she had this nice woman, Aura, helping her. She was being sweet to her, talking nicely. And she hadn’t told her to do anything so much as once. So was she bad, broken? Was she doing something wrong, did people have a reason to fear her? Would this Aura be so kind to someone like that? It only made sense that she was special; she couldn’t be broken, because if she was, she wouldn’t have a friend right now.

Moira smiled a little, and sniffed one last time. For now. She stood and rinsed out the dishrag she had tossed into the sink earlier.

"I, my name is Moira, but my--", Parents.... she didn’t want to say it, she missed them so much. She swallowed and started again, "but my parents always called me kitty. I think they did it because my second name is Catriona." She gave a weak smile. At least she was feeling better, that was reason to be happy... Right?

The little hesitation before Moira said "parents" wasn't lost on her. She wondered if they had been very happy, before. It occurred to her that she didn't know what she wished for more-- that Moira's parents had been distant and cold, so that the separation from them would be easier, or that they had been closer than close, a memory to hold on to for the rest of her life.

"Moira Catriona is a very pretty name," Aura said sincerely. The girl had smiled! This was good enough for Aurelie. If she could smile already, she would be all right in the long run. So she hoped and so she believed. "I think Kitty suits just fine, too."

Her knees protested as she got up from the floor, ringing out her dishrag into the sink alongside of Moira. The dishwater had probably gone cold by now. It would be hard for a girl so new to doing, well, anything for herself to continue like this. She had to, of course, and there wasn't a whole lot Aurelie could do for that. If she did Moira's chores for her, she'd never settle in. It still didn't quite sit with her to just leave the little girl to it.

"Kitty," she said, after shaking out the rag one more time. "If you finish all these dishes and come find me, I'll have something for you." It was a stupid thing to promise, but she couldn't help it. Someday, someone would probably put a stop to her habit of handing out snacks to stray that crossed her path. That day had yet to come; what harm could being nice to a little girl do, anyway?

She spun around to face Aurelie, curls whipping out behind her. Have something for her? Really? What would it be, a toy? A new dress? A book? Maybe some candy!

She smiled and nodded. "Oh ill do it, I’ll get it done!" She blurted out. She had always loved gifts ever since the first one her father had brought from his travels.

Her teeth bit her lip, and her eyes blinked when she realized she didn’t know where to go. "Um. Where can I find you?" She asked.

There, that was the reaction Aurelie had been hoping for. A burst of excitement, a bit of childhood in a place where there wasn't much of that to be had. If she couldn't change the way the world outside saw them, she could at least do her best to make it easier for the children trapped in here.

She smiled down at Moira, a little too indulgently. "Ask for me, I won't leave this kitchen." A hand ran absently over Moira's curls, still damp and a little dirty, but well-kept. She had been a loved child. Gently she nudged the girl towards her chores, and left to finish her own.

"Alright!" she would remember, treats were on the line! She was still sad, and she still didn’t want to do these dishes, but she could now. Now she could ignore the pain, since she had something to focus on.

She ran thoughts of what her treat might be through her head, and dove into the dishes more furiously then before. They clanked around and against each other, but she was at least getting them done. And if she didn’t break any, she would finish them soon!

She smiled a little as she worked, she had a friend now, and that friend had said she was special... She had to be special, right?

Moira thought hard, and decided that she wasn’t allowed to not be special. Moira was no longer allowed to be broken.