Chapter Text
The night was quiet, even the wind didn't howl like it always does, giving the bare tree branches life on their own creating the shadow creatures that would always scare the kids in the Orphanage.
A lot of different kinds of children considered the spacious, old building at the end of the narrow pathway running through the forest, their home. It wasn't the best home, heaven forbid, but they haven't known any different home. After all, each one of them has been an orphan all their lives, the only company being other abandoned kids.
Well, most of them anyway. Little children of different ages hardly ever agreed on something, but there was one case that was an exception for it.
There was a Snork. Nobody knows anyone's age in the Orphanage, but the curious ones would guess he was about 10-13 years old. They couldn't be sure, though, as the Snork himself didn't know his own age, much like all children who spent most of their life in the Orphanage. Even if he knew, though, nobody would dare ask him about it as everyone rather avoided contact with him.
The Snork was quite specific. He liked having everything in perfect order and he liked to study, which was enough of a red flag for every other kid. Nobody talked to him, because he would always start speaking in a weird, very confident and not understandable manner. Nobody really bullied him, either, though, they simply let him be. There was no such thing in the Orphanage as bullying, anyway.
The Snork didn't seem to mind the lack of contact with others, though. He was always buried in his books or notebooks he snuck out of the bookshelf, not the fairy tale one that kids would sometimes take books from to read when they were bored, but the bookshelf in the hallway. The books in that one had a lot of difficult words almost none of the children understood, and the ones who did considered them very boring. The fact the Snork willingfully decided to read them in his free time was yet another red flag for the others.
The Orphanage wasn't a good place. It was led by a lady Hemulen, who just loved having everything under her control. She was incredibly strict and very rude to most of the Orphanage's inhabitants, but the children didn't know it was not the right way to behave as they never had proper homes.
Sometimes some adults would arrive. Rarely did they pick any children up and adopted them, though, as most of the adults would simply find lonely children somewhere around in the forests or try to steal something from them.
But the older children would sometimes speak of these rare adults, the one who would come to the Orphanage one day and take one of them away for good, to a new house where they would become their new parents. Other kids considered it rumors as they had never seen such a thing occurring before.
On the quietest night of the year, the Snork opened eyes and looked at the moon illuminating the sky outside of a window on the end of the bedroom. He had a dream - he wasn't entirely sure why it woken him up, it wasn't a scary dream. He was dreaming of a little girl, much smaller than him. He didn't know that girl at all. Once he woke up, though, he completely forgot the dream.
He wanted to go back to sleep, but he then heard footsteps. The Hemulen must've gotten up for whatever reason. The Snork knew it wouldn't be the best idea to follow as it could cause him trouble later, and he didn't like trouble. Curiosity was much too strong force, though, as it pushed him out of his bed and had him sneak out of the bedroom, trying to not wake the other children up, right into the hallway where he'd seen the Hemulen in a night dress walking towards the front door. Her way was illuminated by a candle she was carrying in her left paw.
She was muttering something, but the Snork didn't dare to follow close enough to make anything out of it. He was hiding behind the staircase when he felt the cool air catch him after the Hemulen opened the door. She took a step outside and stopped so suddenly that the Snork quickly jumped farther into the shadows behind the staircase. After a moment he looked back to see that she has stepped outside far enough not to be seen, leaving the door open. The Snork considered following her for a split second before he noticed she returned back inside, carrying a basket in her right paw and muttering angrily (she liked to do that).
The Snork squinted to try to make out what was in the basket as the Hemulen put it on the ground to close the door. He jumped a bit again, noticing movement in it. Something under the sheet moved. At first he thought it could be his imagination, but no, it moved again and even the Hemulen seemed to note it. She picked it up again.
The moment the Snork has realized that she was not going upstairs but was heading down the hallway, his heart dropped. He backed away and practically hugged the wall under the staircase to hide, at the same time imagining the awful punishment he would get if he were to get caught.
The Hemulen seemed to be too angry and too focused on whatever she was mumbling to notice him in the shadows, though. As she was passing by the staircase, a tiny head popped up from under the covers. It took the Snork a moment to realize it was a child. It looked like a troll creature, too.
That was enough to peek up his curiosity. He knew the reasonable thing to do would be to run back to the bedroom and pretend none of this has ever happened, but he wanted to know about this new child so much. He wasn't even sure why. He wasn't stupid enough to actually follow the Hemulen to the Wash Room as there was no place to hide around there, so he just ran back into the bedroom and hid behind the doorstep, keeping a close watch to the hallway.
It felt like hours before the Hemulen left again. She wasn't carrying the basket anymore, though. She was leading a little child by hand. It was visible that it was struggling to walk by itself and that the Hemulen was pretty much pulling her alongside, probably too impatient to wait for it.
The child had pale fur in purplish hue, it looked afraid and it probably didn't know what was going on. The Snork kind of forgot about hiding for a second, therefore he didn't realize the Hemulen was heading to the bedroom. When he finally did, it was too late to run to his bed - in despair he ran behind the door, hoping the Hemulen wouldn't notice him on the way out.
They entered the room, swinging the door open, which hit poor Snork in the nose. It was clear the Hemulen didn't care if the children would be woken up by her presence - even if they were, they would be too afraid of a punishment to get up and see what was going on.
The Snork groaned quietly, pushing the door a bit so he had more space to move around. Then he peeked from behind the door to see the Hemulen letting the child go in the middle of the room, or rather pushing her towards it. Her words were a bit louder than her mumbling, therefore the Snork was actually able to catch them.
"Choose a free bed and go to sleep," she said in an aggressive manner, turning around. The Snork quickly hid again. Then everything went weirdly quiet.
Then the unbearable silence has been interrupted by the door cracking, slowly closing. The Snork was about to sigh with relief when something grabbed his arm and pulled him out of his hiding place so forcefully he fell on his stomach with a yelp. He looked up immediately, his terrified eyes meeting those of the Hemulen that were burning with fury.
"What are you doing here, you unbearable, ungrateful little brat?!" She yelled with a squeaky, hostile voice. "Get to bed right this instant, 21(as she addressed all children with assigned to them numbers), and I'll think of a punishment for you tomorrow! But for now you can be sure you are not getting breakfast!" With that she left, slamming the door behind her as she walked. Her steps were heard all the way upstairs.
When it went quiet again, the Snork was still staring at the ground (which he did when the Hemulen began yelling at him), waiting for another what felt like forever just to be safe nothing else would happen.
At last, when he slowly began getting up, his arm hurting as it was pulled so suddenly, he noticed some eyes were peeking up from the beds to look at him. Among these eyes were the eyes of the little child, that now seemed to… have a different fur color?
The Snork knew only one species of this looks that could change colors, and he was sure it wasn't just made up by his brain, as the child was clearly pale purple before, and now it was green. Its face was also terrified.
The Snork got up from the ground and for a second forgot what just happened, just approaching the child curiously, but then he began thinking of the awful punishment the Hemulen was about to make up for him in the morning and he imagined how much worse it would be if she found him wandering about like that, not in bed yet (although right now it was pretty much impossible as the Hemulen was already in her own bed and didn't intend on going downstairs even if there was a fire in the house). In one moment he rushed back to bed, hiding under the covers from the eyes of everyone, who hasn't decided to go back to sleep yet.
He fell right onto his hurt arm, too, which caused him to whine and forced tears out of his eyes. He changed his position and sobbed, replaying the situation with Hemulen that just happened in his head. He didn't like trouble. And now he was in big trouble.
He sat like this under the covers and would probably pass out eventually if he hasn't felt a pull on the sheets. He tried to ignore it at first, but it kept disturbing him, so, after wiping off the remains of tears from his own cheeks and nose, he threw the sheets off of him with one movement and looked for the source with kind of annoyed expression.
It was the new child. A little Snork. It stepped back a bit after seeing that the Snork reacted. It looked flustered. The Snork's expression softened a little.
"...I…" the child squeaked. "I can't… get on…" it pointed the bed right next to the Snork's. The Snork understood what it meant and decided to slide off of his bed. He then wondered what exactly he's supposed to do, so he simply attempted to push the child up as it tried to get onto the bed. The Snork decided to put the blanket on the child as well, just in case. He didn't want to get up again if it wanted any more help.
The child smiled to him, its green color slowly beginning to shift into more yellowish hue. There was no doubt, it was another Snork. The Snork never met another one of his kind, so when it reminded him what it was, he felt some warmth inside of himself. The two of them were of kin, more or less! And that's the closest thing to family he's ever had.
"You're sad" the child suddenly pointed out. The Snork looked at himself and noticed he was blue, a color he must've changed to under the sheets or before. He didn't know how to react to that, so he just softly nodded.
"A little" he said afterwards. Then he got off the bed (which he sat on before, when he pulled the blanket over the small Snork child) and headed to his own bed.
"Who are you?" He heard a quiet, squeaky voice after he sat on his own bed.
"...Snork" he whispered. He began putting his own sheet around himself, getting ready to sleep.
"Goodnight, Snork" the voice squeaked through the darkness.
The Snork got a bit surprised. Nobody has ever wished him goodnight before. Sure, he heard some other kids wish it to each other, but it was never addressed to him. He looked back at the tiny child that was sitting in a large bed under the covers. It was barely visible there.
"... Thanks. Goodnight, little Snork Maiden."