Speaking of support… I could use some myself. The middle of the month is a slow period for sponsorships compared to the end/beginning, and I do have bills that fall due around this time. Please consider creating a sponsorship or making a one-time payment. Thank you!

The house of Hearts of Clay stood almost as solidly in Two’s mind as it did on the physical plane, its aged furnishings and fading wallpaper recreated exactly in every detail as she and her meditation partner stood in the middle of an upstairs hallway.

“Your mind is an exceedingly well-ordered place,” Dee said. “Your memories, they are built much more literally than most people’s are. It is not usually such an easy thing to walk through a memory, as they often must be reconstructed as one goes.”

“Thank you,” Two said. Few people would know what to say to such a thing, but she inferred from Dee’s tone that it was a compliment, and she knew what to do with those.

“If your dreamscape is as solid as this, it should be an easy matter for me to enter your sleeping mind and assist you in making sense of things,” Dee said.

“I really just would like to get rid of the ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two said. “Stupid my friend Hazel, telling me it would be a good thing to dream about. I’m not calling her stupid, though. I’m just thinking it.”

“I understand,” Dee said. “I truly believe you would not express such a sentiment outside your own head. But in fairness to your friend Hazel, I must ask if you really think she intended for you to take her example as a literal suggestion, or if she could have predicted the personality you would give to the dream figment?”

“I don’t think it came from me,” Two said. “The ridiculous owl turtle thing is very rude.”

“But you are yourself a bit ruder inside your head than you would be outside it,” Dee said.

“I still don’t think it came from me.”

“Where do you imagine she came from, then?” Dee asked.

“I don’t know,” Two said. “Somewhere else.”

“Well… I can investigate that possibility, if I come across the figment in your dream,” Dee said. “But I count it as unlikely at best.” She looked around the memory of the hallway. “This was your home?”

“It was where I stayed,” Two said.

“And others of your kind stayed here with you,” Dee said.

“Other golems,” Two said. “Many kinds of them.”

“I would like to see them,” Dee said. “Would you mind remembering them for me?”

There was only a little hesitation, and then Two said, “No, I would not mind.”

Her face screwed up in thought, and the hallway came to life. A sylph made of spun glass danced down the hall, leaping through the pair of astral bodies as she dusted small bits of statuary and other ornaments that cluttered the hallway. A clay figure in the form of a human woman pushed a carpet cleaner across the thin rug. A pair of identical man-shaped golems, beefy and composed of quickened flesh, moved purposely past their less realistically detailed sisters, heading from end of the hallway to the other.

“Twins?” Dee asked. “I suppose that only applies to born beings… a matched set?”

“A mass produced model,” Two said. “There were seven of them who came through the house while I was there.”

“Independently of each other?”

“Yes,” Two said. “Four of them moved on, but the other three were still there when I left.”

“I see,” Dee said.

“They are a popular model.”

“Dick! Rod!” a woman’s voice called from downstairs, and the two male golems stopped, looking not so much guilty at being caught out as frustrated. “Don’t think I don’t see you heading for the ladies’ dormitory! You know the rules.”

“Yeah,” one of them said quietly to the other. “We do know the rules.”

They turned to face more or less the spot where Dee and Two were standing. The memory was from Two’s vantage point at the time in which it had happened, but she herself was not an external presence in the memory.

“Hey,” one of the boy golems said to the absent Two. He pointed to the other one. “Say yes to what he asks you.”

“Okay,” Two’s voice said, sounding in Dee’s mind as well as in her own in the way one’s voice sounds in one’s own ears.

“And also say yes to what he asks,” the other one said.

“Okay,” Two’s memory said again.

“Please, stop this memory,” Dee said. “I do not wish to see any more.”

“Okay,” Two said, and the golems vanished. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dee said. “Why did you pick that memory, of all the ones you have of this hallway?”

“I do not think I picked it on purpose,” Two said. “It jumped out at me.”

“Tell me, then, who was the glass dancer?”

“That was Constance Present,” Two said.

“Constant… what?”

“Constance Present. I think it’s supposed to be clever,” Two said.

“Does she have a mind like you?” Dee asked.

“She has a mind,” Two said.

“I mean, consciousness and will and desire?”

“Consciousness,” Two said. “I don’t know if she has any will or desires. Her runes are hidden in the whorls of her hair. She does what she’s told but I don’t know if she likes to or if she has to.”

“I see,” Dee said. She sat down, approximately in the same way she would have sat on a chair. There was no chair there, of course, but since she herself wasn’t actually there, either, it hardly mattered. “It’s easier to animate a figure without a mind, isn’t it, than to imbue one with actual life and consciousness?”

“Much easier,” Two said. “My owner made dancing puppets, and toy dogs that barked and chased their tails, and baby dolls that cried and crawled and fell asleep, and only a few of them were alive. Those cost a lot of money because they took a lot of work.”

“It is amazing to me… even given how cheap existing life can be treated… that people of the surface would use magic to create life for games and toys. A dancer made of glass is a beautiful and wondrous thing. Any artisan should be proud of her skill at creating such a delicate and intricately detailed statue, to say nothing of the feats of enchantment that must be necessary to make it move and dance. What further benefit is there in granting life and thought to the result?”

“I was told that her maker wanted her to be charming and witty,” Two said. “Though I don’t know how witty she is.”

“Those… men… who were bothering you. Their original purpose is clear enough. To what end are they given self-directed willpower and their own desires? Is it really strictly necessary that a sexual aid have a sexual drive? Would it not be less cruel to all involved if they were a mindless construct directed to play the part of an enthusiastic paramour upon demand?”

“I think the people who buy them like them that way,” Two said. “They’re a popular model because they make people feel wanted. That’s what they’re for. But they still keep on wanting even when they get thrown away.”

Dee shook her head. She started to rock a little.

“Goddess… the world is a complex place, and I am certain that there are parts of this all that I simply do not know about, but I can’t begin to comprehend the casual attitude that is displayed towards magical creations,” Dee said. “In my world, much consideration is made before any new life is brought about, and the life of all intelligent beings is treasured.” She sighed. “What kind of a life could anyone have in a place like this?”

“I think it could have been a good life,” Two said. “I think I could have been happy here if I had been allowed to do what I wanted and left alone by the boy golems.”

“But you only wanted to do what you were told,” Dee said.

“Yes,” Two said.

“Leaving aside the question of quality of life for the moment… you weren’t allowed to do that?”

“It is the policy of Hearts of Clay to encourage freed beings to show initiative in their own lives in order that they may transition to a more independent mode of living,” Two recited.

“And so I take it that you were subjected to repeated clarifications that what you were being told was nothing more than a series of suggestions,” Dee said. “And that you were frequently given choices that you did not care to make for yourself.”

“Yes,” Two said, nodding.

“The maid of clay,” Dee said. “She did not have a will rune on her forehead. Was she given suggestions?”

“She was given orders,” Two said. “But I have a circle of will so I was given suggestions and choices. It was empowering.”

“I suppose for many golems it would have been,” Dee said. She shuddered. “Was no attempt made to understand your individual situation?”

“No,” Two said. “They have policies.”

“And on the subject of those policies, I suppose all of the ones you continue to adhere to… were they presented to you as orders or suggestions?”

“There was no clarification given,” Two said.

Dee closed her eyes.

“I must tell myself that the intricacies of fate brought you from this place to somewhere where you are able to grow and prosper and experience love,” she said. “But I find myself bearing what can only be described as hatred for the people who have been in charge of your well-being, who were responsible for your plight… even your existence. How can anyone have the right to create a living, thinking being for their own benefit?”

“It is a reasonably free republic. People have the right to use magic for personal gain so long as it does not infringe on the rights of the Imperium or anybody else.”

“And I suppose the created golem herself isn’t ‘anybody else’,” Dee said bitterly.

“Yes,” Two said, nodding. “A created golem isn’t anybody.”

“Two…”

“Yes?”

“Never mind,” Dee said, shaking her head. “Does it bother you to speak of this place?”

“No, it doesn’t bother me,” Two said. “But any questions about the policies of…”

“Please, no more disclaimers,” Dee said. “Please interpret any question you find yourself incapable of answering without conflicting with those standing orders as being idle speech, for the duration of this conversation.”

“Okay,” Two said.

“Who was in charge of this place?”

“Miss Ruth,” Two said.

“Would you mind showing her to me?”

“No,” Two said, and then they were in an office. There was no sense of shimmering or shifting, no transition at all. Dee understood from an underlying sense of “placefulness” that the office was in the same building as the hallway. There was a wide oak desk, and behind that was a broad-shouldered old woman with handsome features and hair in a bun so tight it might have been molded that way… and in fact, it had been. She had a pair of runes on her forehead: the tree of life and the circle of will subverted. She sat at the desk, filling out a form by hand. The tiny glass dancer was pirouetting in a corner.

“Does she ever stop dancing?” Dee asked Two.

“No,” Two said.

“Does she sleep?”

“No. Only living flesh golems have to sleep.”

“Are there unliving flesh golems?” Dee asked.

“Yes,” Two said. “You can make a golem out of parts of a body, the same as you would use other materials, and then it is a construct of inanimate material animated.”

“An undead thing.”

“No, just a thing made out of things that are dead,” Two said. “Like a wooden golem is made out of dead trees.”

“I grant that a wooden golem is not an undead thing, but I am not certain I see the distinction between a corpse that is made to walk around through enchantment and one that is made to do so through necromancy.”

“One is a golem and one is a zombie.”

“Of course,” Dee said. “We are in front of the desk… did she not know you were here, during this encounter?”

“She knew,” Two said. “This is what she did, when someone was in trouble. She’d call you to her office and then tell you to stand here and wait while she wrote out a form. It always took exactly ten minutes.”

“So she was ignoring you on purpose,” Dee said.

“Yes.”

“To what end?”

“I don’t know,” Two said. “I didn’t mind. For ten minutes I knew exactly what to do.”

“What are you in trouble for in this memory?”

“Doing sex things on the staircase,” Two said. “This is really the same memory as before.”

“The ‘boys’ were not blamed for that?”

“We were all blamed equally because I said yes,” Two said. “But we always had to come into the office one at a time. When Miss Ruth finishes writing her form, she will tell me that I don’t have to let boys do that and that I should know better, and then she’ll send me to Miss Cook.”

“Miss Cook?”

“Miss Cook runs the kitchen,’ Two said. “She’s a cast iron golem. I like her. She never says anything to me that’s not an order. ‘Two, wash those plates.’ ‘Okay, Miss Cook.’ ‘Two, scrub that floor.’ ‘Okay, Miss Cook’.”

“You were sent to her for punishment?”

“Yes,” Two said. “Later Miss Ruth decided I liked it too much and I wasn’t sent to the kitchen any more. I was told that if I wanted to work in the kitchen I could sign up for it.”

“It is a little strange to me that Miss Ruth would be perceptive and flexible enough to alter her punishments based on your personality when she would not do the same for other policies,” Dee said.

“I think Miss Ruth had a personal policy that punishments weren’t punishments if you enjoyed them,” Two said. “She learned that in her first life as a nanny.”

“It feels a little less than charitable for me to judge someone for being the way she was created, but it seems to me that she may have been made with the heart of a small-minded bureaucrat,” Dee said. “Perhaps it would be instructive for me if I could take a walk inside her mind… but I do not believe I would care to.”

“I think… I think she did the best she could,” Two said. “And that she does help a lot of golems. Most of the golems who were living flesh and free-willed only stayed a few months to a year.”

“You are a very charitable person, Two,” Dee said.

“Yes, I know,” Two said. “It’s how I stay friends with so many people.”

Dee laughed.

“I apologize… I only intended to do a small ‘test run’ while your mind was awake,” she said. “I did not mean for us to traipse about your memories like this. I am simply curious about your life. About many things, actually. Did you know, this great house is the only large surface building I have seen the inside of that was not originally designed for institutional purposes? I’ve never been inside a person’s house before.”

“I was in the basement of my maker’s house for most of my life.” Two said. “I only saw the upstairs once, on my way to the door.”

“Did… did your maker…”

“What, Dee?”

“I’m sorry,” Dee said, looking away from Two. “I should not pry.”

“I don’t mind,” Two said. “I would not like to talk about him but I think about him a lot, and since we are thinking I don’t mind.”

“I can’t help but wonder… did he use you inappropriately?”

“No,” Two said, shaking her head. “That would not have been possible. Unless you mean in the commission of a crime.”

“I meant sexually.”

“No,” Two said. “I wasn’t made for that. Though it wouldn’t have been inappropriate. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I don’t believe that,” Dee said. “I have felt your revulsion to sexual violation, your indifference to sexual attention.”

“No, I really wouldn’t have minded and it wouldn’t have been a violation,” Two said. “I didn’t think about what I liked. I didn’t have to. I just liked doing what I was told.”

“I can’t believe that would have extended so far as to encompass such a violation,” Dee said. “But I suppose it is a question that will never be settled, and I accept that you believe you wouldn’t have minded.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Two said.

“In any event, I think I have seen more than I need to of this,” Dee said. “I will withdraw from your mind now, and we can resume our conversation face to face.”

“Okay,” Two said.

“Thank you for sharing this with me.”

“You’re welcome,” Two said.

“And, for the record,” Dee said, “I have to say that on the balance, I do appreciate that you were created.”

“Thank you,” Two said. “I appreciate that you were created, too.”

Discuss this story.

She had been created old, with a solid, matronly body and a strong, stern face. She had reared several generations of Caldwell children from infancy until finally there were no more left to be raised, and she had not aged a day in all that time, inwardly or outwardly.

Mindful golems… as she thought of those like herself… could learn things, but by and large they were not changed by them as the born kind were.

She’d watched with a kind of detached superiority as each of the Caldwell children grew and changed, not just on the outside but on the inside… each new thing they learned left a mark, it seemed, nudging them this way or that. Little Jenny hadn’t eaten meat after she learned what happened to the lambs. What a queer idea. She’d liked it well enough before.

Miss Ruth’s sense of superiority was not learned. It was an unforeseen and unnoticed side effect of her design specifications. She had been created to believe in the rightness of her being, in the fitness of her creation. She was as she was meant to be, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Her creators could have designed her to have as high an opinion of her owners as she did of herself… or higher, even… but they hadn’t actually cared about her opinions, so long as she was properly deferential, represented their interests above hers, and did her job well. So, with nothing to go on but the utter certainty that she had the right way of things about herself, Miss Ruth came to see her charges and their families as hopelessly and ridiculously flawed.

When the Caldwell line dried up and Miss Ruth found herself at Hearts of Clay, she’d been considerably happier from the beginning. Her new charges varied in how much they were like her and how much they were like the Caldwells, but in general they tended more towards being the proper sort.

When they came to the home, she learned what they were capable of, mentally and physically, and then she was able to help most of them, most of the time.

She didn’t fret too much about those she couldn’t help. She couldn’t do magic and she couldn’t fly, either, and those things didn’t bother her. Everybody was created with different capabilities.

For instance, her assistant Constance Present wasn’t capable of much in the way of physical labor. Even with the magical tempering her maker had given her, her delicate limbs of spun glass weren’t as strong or durable as clay and stone, nor as resilient as flesh. The diminutive four-armed figure had been created in imitation of a forest creature that had once captured her former master’s imagination, and he’d had her created to dance and to make polite conversation at parties.

Miss Ruth had no need of a dancer, but she did need somebody who could be polite and charming, and it was no bother to her if that somebody leapt and twirled everywhere instead of walking, so long as they didn’t get in the way.

Constance was very good at staying out of the way.

“Pardon me, Miss Ruth, but the William Barker representative would very much like to reschedule for next Tuesday,” she said, spinning into Miss Ruth’s office with a stack of letters. She placed the mail on Miss Ruth’s desk with a flourish.

“Thank you, Miss Constance,” Miss Ruth said, beginning to sort the pile automatically into letters, solicitations, and bills. The humans she dealt with were always rescheduling, adjusting, amending… they could never be satisfied with leaving things how they were. Hearts of Clay depended upon endowments from a variety of charitable foundations, most of them run by humans. Miss Ruth couldn’t deny that, but it frustrated her to no end that she had to put up with their mercurial outlooks and their whims. “Did he say why?”

“His mother has passed away,” Constance said, dancing in place with herself.

“Send him our condolences,” Miss Ruth said, as this was the proper thing to do. Bornfolk needed to grieve when another one of them died. It was just one of those things they did, no matter what the schedule said.

“Yes, Miss Ruth,” Constance said, incorporating a curtsy into her steps, and then away she went.

Because of her unique design and expert craftsmanship, Constance Present was the most valuable golem in the Hearts of Clay program. Miss Ruth had a file that kept track of this. In earlier eras, the administrators would occasionally find it necessary to “ask” one of their charges to sell themselves back into service, to fund the good works that they did.

This kind of contingency planning was no longer necessary. In point of fact, profiting from the sale of residents was now expressly against the organization’s rules, but no one had yet told Miss Ruth to stop the appraisals. She preferred it that way. The humans had changed the rules so many times already and it was almost certain they would change them again. She was just keeping herself ready for when that happened.

Sometimes it was hard for her to credit that the humans who oversaw Hearts of Clay even knew what the rules were. Part of the problem was that they changed personnel so often while Miss Ruth remained, a constant presence of her own. Each time she encountered a regime change above her, the new management was inevitably shocked to find her still filling out forms that hadn’t been required for years and adhering to company regulations that aped laws that had long since been repealed or replaced.

It would have been a very simple matter for her to just follow the current laws without any further specific guidance, but Miss Ruth appreciated the greater continuity and stability the collection of outdated rules gave to her establishment. There was no longer any serious worry that Hearts of Clay’s houses could be used as illegal brothels, but the restrictions that had been placed upon them during the age in which this was a common occurrence appealed to her ingrained sense of propriety.

No bornfolk were allowed in the dormitories, nor in the buildings outside of approved visiting hours or without a chaperone. No residents could accept payment outside the course of their approved employments, nor valuable gifts.

No hanky, no panky. Not even the appearance of it. She kept the golems who’d been intended for sexual uses on the inside, employing them as housekeepers or placing them in the Hearts of Clay workshops. She did her best to prevent hanky-panky among her charges, as well, but that was her own increated sense of propriety at work… there had never been scandal or investigations brought about by that, so there were no rules or laws pertaining to it.

The bornfolk in general and humans in particular weren’t terribly bothered by what other kinds of people did to and among themselves.

Miss Ruth took care of the bills and then moved on to the letters. She read the ones from her golems first. Hearts of Clay members who were no longer residents were encouraged to write regularly. Miss Ruth had come to realize that those who did so without fail were the ones most apt to end up back in the dorms… those who could make the adjustment to living on their own outside the structured environment didn’t cling to every little suggestion as a lifeline.

When somebody like Miss Two stopped writing, for example, it meant they’d fell into a new situation with an owner or they’d taken elven leave, as the bornfolk used to say. More often the latter than the former, because Hearts of Clay did everything they could to discourage freed golems from falling back into propertyhood. It was a very rare golem who could overcome that sort of pressure but also felt a need to belong that couldn’t be fulfilled by their affiliation with Hearts of Clay or whatever outside employment or enrollment they’d found.

Miss Two hadn’t stopped writing yet. In fact, her letters had grown longer and stranger with each week she spent at university, full of stories of ludicrous chimerical dream creatures and demon summoning and outré sexual perversions. Miss Ruth knew that Miss Two hadn’t managed to pick up an imagination somewhere… she just wasn’t that kind of a golem… which meant that somebody was telling her to write these ridiculous, impossible things. Knowing this, she had written Miss Two back and suggested she ignore what anybody else thinks or says when she writes her letters and just write her own thoughts in her own words.

The letters had only gotten stranger from that point on, which meant that whoever was influencing Miss Two had most likely read the replies as well, and responded by giving the poor confused girl an order. Miss Ruth didn’t give Miss Two orders. That wasn’t how Hearts of Clay operated. She knew that Miss Two interpreted the things she was told as orders, and she didn’t mind that, because it made things easier for everybody, but Miss Ruth would not tell her in so many words “this is an order and you will obey it”, which gave whoever it was that was prevailing upon her a huge advantage.

This frustrated Miss Ruth because it made it harder for her to get an accurate picture of Miss Two’s progress towards any end, but it still didn’t bother her much. The important thing was that Miss Two, against all the odds, had gone out into the world, where she’d either die or find an owner.

The owners of Hearts of Clay would count either outcome a tragic failure, but Miss Ruth saw them as happy endings for the poor miscreated girl. In an earlier age, a hopeless case like Miss Two would have been pressed into selling herself and the money would have been put to use helping golems who had a chance of making something of themselves. It was the best that could be hoped for, under the circumstances.

But now…

Dear Miss Ruth,

How are you? I am well. My friends threw me a party, which they called a Two’s Day Party because it was my day and also because it was a Tuesday. Isn’t that funny? You probably won’t know but if you happen to find out, please tell me. I think it is.

Miss Ruth didn’t find it funny. She didn’t find anything funny, but she had an ingrained heuristic from her years of nannying which told her that if somebody was comparing a person’s name to another word it sounded like, they were most likely being mean, and that wasn’t funny at all. These so-called friends of Miss Two’s were probably the same ones who gave her the wild stories to put in her letters.

The rest of the letter was full of her now typical nonsense, but Miss Ruth only registered it at a perfunctory level. She needed to address the teasing referenced in the first paragraph. She got out her pen and a clean sheet of her letterhead paper and had begun to compose her reply when her desk mirror began to ripple. The crest of Magisterius University appeared, and the source was identified as the Harlowe Hall Fifth Floor Women’s Dormitory.

Well, that was convenient.

“Hello, Miss Two,” she said to the mirror. “How do you do?”

“Miss Ruth?” a strange voice said, and an unfamiliar image rippled into view… a girl, apparently of the born kind, and naked except for a pair of old-fashioned seeing glasses.

“Child, clothe yourself,” Miss Ruth said. “You’re indecent.”

“What?” the girl said. “Oh, no! I’m not actually, I’m a nymph.”

“You are,” Miss Ruth said. “I don’t know about nymphs, but I won’t speak to you in such a state. Goodbye.”

She waved the image away. Those college students… Miss Ruth’d had an idea what sorts of things went on in those dorms, but the sheer brazenness of that girl took her breath away.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. Miss Ruth only took in breath to speak.

The hussy reflected back twice more and tried to blurt out some nonsense about divine edicts before Miss Ruth waved her away. Miss Ruth had probably spent more time sitting with the children in temple services than that girl had been alive. There were no divine edicts about nakedness… or if there were, they weren’t in favor of it.

Finally, a good forty minutes later, the girl came back wearing exactly the sort of immodest garment that Miss Two had been equipped with a preference for. Miss Ruth didn’t exactly approve, but the girl was clad and she had the good sense to look mortified at the way her womanhood was exposed.

“There now,” Miss Ruth said. She was pleased that the child was being reasonable, because she welcomed the chance to speak with one of Two’s neighbors or peers. “What can I help you with?”

“I… I-I…” the girl spluttered and stammered.

“Speak, child,” Miss Ruth said.

“Two,” she said, her face burning bright red.

“Yes, what about Miss Two?”

The girl said nothing else, just ran out of frame. Miss Ruth gave her half a minute to see if she’d return, before she waved the image away. There was just no accounting for the foibles of bornfolk.

A few minutes later, the girl was back, naked but draped in a towel.

“Child, I won’t speak to you if you’re naked,” Miss Ruth reminded her.

“But the towel covers more than the nighty did!” the girl protested.

“I have a responsibility to my institution,” Miss Ruth said, and she waved the image away. A number of purely arbitrary things could bring scandal and ruin upon Hearts of Clay. Speaking to or associating with naked children was one of them.

The next time, the girl was wearing a bathrobe. Miss Ruth vacillated inwardly on whether this was clothed or not. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for going out and probably wasn’t appropriate for speaking on a full-length mirror to a stranger, but unlike the towel it was definitely a garment. She decided to accept that as enough, on the chance that the girl had something useful to relate.

“That’s better,” Miss Ruth said. “Now, you were saying something about Miss Two?”

“Yes, um…” the girl said. “My name is Amaranth, and I’m one of Two’s friends. I’m actually… well, I guess you’d say I’m dating her roommate.”

“They boarded her with a boy?” Miss Ruth asked.

“What? Oh, no,” the girl said. “A girl. My girlfriend.”

Aha. So that was the game… Miss Two’s letters had been full of garbage about girls with penises and girls courting each other.

“Child, I get enough of your nonsense in Miss Two’s letters,” Miss Ruth said. “If you’re just here to speak more of it, I’m going to refuse your reflections.”

“What? It’s not… okay, look,” the girl said. “One of Two’s friends would like to give her a gift of some jewelry that she doesn’t need herself.”

“That’s nice, but Miss Two doesn’t need jewelry,” Miss Ruth said.

“Well, nobody needs jewelry, but if she’s going to grow as a person…”

“Ms. Ranth, it would take more than some expensive trinkets to make Miss Two into what you think of as a person,” Miss Ruth said.

“It’s ‘Miss Amaranth’, actually,” the girl said. “I’m a nymph, not a human… though, um, really, I think I’d prefer Ms. Amaranth.”

“Don’t try to draw me into speaking nonsense, Miss Amaranth,” Miss Ruth said. “Miss Two is not able to accept gifts of greater than five silver pieces in value. If your friend would like to give her jewelry, she should simply make certain it is less than that.”

“Why can’t she have something more valuable?” Miss Amaranth asked.

“Because that is the rule.”

“Why?”

That took Miss Ruth back. Human children… and apparently nymph children, as well… were never satisfied, once they started asking “why?” Whatever Miss Ruth said, they would answer back with the same question, or a variation of it. She’d have to shut the line of questioning down now, or she’d spend all day on it.

“Because.”

“That’s not even an answer!” Miss Amaranth complained. Yes, nymph children were a lot like human children, no matter how much more physically developed they seemed to be.

That was fine. Miss Ruth could deal with children.

“Well, how about I ask you why?” Miss Ruth asked. “Why do you want to give Miss Two something she doesn’t need and can’t appreciate, so somebody can come along and take it from her? If you want to do something nice for her,” she said, though she was far from sure that this was the case, “you should sell the jewelry and donate the money to Hearts of Clay. If you have the money to spend on jewelry, then you might consider buying some more clothes, seeing as they seem to be in such short supply.”

Miss Amaranth turned bright red and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly before she once again fled the frame. Miss Ruth didn’t wait for her to come back this time; she simply blanked the image.

The immodest child didn’t bother her any further that day.

Discuss this story.