Oh great wizard, my one dream was to have children. But this illness has robbed me of the chance. My home is large, as is my land, what do I do now? I just want a family. Please help me? -- Anon Guest
"There's nothing that can be done to reverse catching swellneck as an adult," sighed Wraithvine. "Short of praying for a miracle, there's only one option."
"Which is?" prompted the Lady Derisdranya.
"Either adopt one of your husband's by-blows... or adopt a foundling."
The lady bit her lip. "My husband and I truly love each other. We won't stray." She thanked the Wizard Wraithvine for hir help and took her bodyguard with her as she went out into the streets around the castle she called her home. Wandering and listening, hoping... for the cries of a child with nobody else to help them.
She would not find them in amongst the polished paving stones of the upper eschelons of the city. Nor the neat cobblestones of the middle-classes. She needed to find the place where one more mouth to feed was a true burden. With the desperate and needing. Where they would rather leave a child they could not afford somewhere they might have a hope, than to mourn yet another death in their scrabbling families.
There was talk of reforms, and help for the poor. And an astonishing amount of protests regarding enacting a single one of them. It was only a brief glimpse into the tumbledowns to make her realise that she and her beloved husband should ignore all those protests. Completely.
Lady Derisdranya thought she had dressed plainly for this excursion, but walking through the tumbledowns made her feel ludicrously overdressed. She snuck silvers into baskets whenever she could.
She found her heirs in a midden. The most unwanted of the unwanted. Two devilborn. One too weary and weak to cry, and the other, who had saved their life. She hired the first women from the tumbledowns who'd be wetnurse to Hellkin.
She brought home a son and a daughter. Let the world see how proud she was of them. And ignored all the upper-class protestors against any reforms she made.
Two lives were saved, and thousands of lives changed as a direct result.
...and another realm slid away from the monetary lure of the Olikent's ideals.
[Photo by freestocks on Unsplash]
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