Z E R O
Author’s note:
This book is currently in a beta phase. This is not its final form.
I also wish to mention that, in my source file, handwritten writing is typed in a font different to the regular text; this differentiation is lost on Inkitt.
Any and all kind and constructive comments are warmly welcomed.
Z E R O
9E 425
Julminth 3rd
11:47pm
I don’t know what I just got myself into. I am not fit to raise a child, and yet I just dragged one back home with me. To reiterate: she is currently inside my house. How ridiculous.
The past couple of days were supposed to be a nice break from normalcy. A casual, almost relaxing job. Middin might not be the nicest or most exciting of destinations to travel to—and the heat has been brutal these last few weeks, even without heading further south—but I was still grateful for the excuse to get out of Airye Arrai.
Go to Middin, help the girl through her Awakening, and bring her back to the capital. It should have been that easy. Yet now I have adoption papers on my dresser and a young stranger sleeping in the spare room, because there was no other way to remove her from that thrice-cursed foundling home.
At least she’s well behaved. Unless, of course, that’s only because this entire ordeal has been as much a shock to her as it has been to me. Oh, stars . . . Please don’t let her turn wild once she’s more settled in. I’m stuck with housing her for the eight months between now and when she becomes an apprentice—and someone else’s problem.
I was informed that the so-called ‘caretakers’ at the foundling home dubbed her ‘Storm’ several years ago when they brought her in, and for that, I would rather call them ‘unimaginative fools’. She barely even responds to the name, which means that she either finds it as uninspiring as I do, or those people had other names of choice that they called her on a more regular basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the latter. Should I ever become any less dignified, I may return to that place with a few choice names for its headmistress in return.
All of that aside, I had Kersiila drop by to double check on the girl’s health. We found out that the child (whom I really, truly, cannot bring myself to call by her current legal name) is indeed ten, almost eleven, which might be the only thing that the foundling home had right about her.
But Kersiila was stifling laughter the entire visit. She found my predicament hilarious, and kept offering the most rudimentary parenting advice; things that were just common sense, or otherwise obvious—even to me.
I wanted to tell her that, if she thought herself to be so exceptionally good with children, she was more than welcome to take the girl off my hands. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak it in front of the child. She’s been through enough; the least I can do is not be the next person to reject her.
I’ll admit, relative to everything I’ve already experienced in my lifetime, eight months isn’t that long—though that thought is the only thing keeping my sanity intact.
