By the time she was done, her hands had as much in the way of bandages as there was exposed skin.  She flexed her fingers to make sure she could still move them, adjusted two bandages, and then returned to the kitchen.

“Progress?”

“Nearly done.  It hasn’t cooked very long, and I’m worried it’ll just taste like boiled vegetables in water, but you said people were hungry.  How do you want to get the soup out there?”

Just let it trickle off the roof and let gravity do the rest.

“There’s three spots where people are sleeping tonight.  Let’s mobilize the kids and get some food out to everyone.”

“The kids?”

“Everyone needs to contribute.  Maybe if they see seven-year-olds doing their part, the O’Daly clan will get the message.”

…I suppose.

“Sierra,” Charlotte made a pained expression as she spoke, “They’ve been through a lot.”

That’s true. So has everyone here, but the kids need special care.

“They’re using our sleeping space, they’re eating our food supplies.  We can’t hold their hands and baby them.  Everyone’s having a hard time these days.”

If there’s anyone who should be babied, it’s the kids.

Also, the contrast between this and Sierra’s attitude towards Bryce is not lost on me.

“That’s cold.”

It is. Skitter may not have made an effort to change you, Sierra, but I think the whole situation has done it anyway. Made you colder, harder.

“Maybe, but I’ve been working from sunrise to well after dark, here, and they were just sitting around, getting in the way, complaining and crying.”

“Most of their family died just a few days ago.”

I’m with Charlotte here. Sierra talks like someone who barely knows what a child is.

Sierra didn’t have a response to that.  They were still eating far too much and taking up too much room for people who hadn’t lifted a finger to help.  “Anyways, think I can use the kids?”

“Don’t push them.  Some are pretty emotionally sensitive.  But yeah.”

Use the ones who want to help.

Sierra turned around, “Hey, munchkins!  Got a job for you.  Help out and we’ll give you first dibs on the after-dinner treats!”

This is good, though: Promising a reward rather than a punishment.

Roughly half of the little ones approached her.  Six to ten years old, boys and girls, a variety of ethnicities.

“Who’s the oldest?  Raise your hand if you’re ten… okay, if you’re nine?  Eight?”

It’s like a switch was flipped when she turned around.

“Maybe soup?  I figure we need to eat these vegetables, there’s stock, and if we water it down so we can split it up more…”  Charlotte trailed off.  “I never really cooked at home.  I helped my parents cook, but that’s not the same thing.”

Yeah, when you do that, you’ve got an authority to look to, who can help you know what to do.

“It works.  Prepare some rice from the supplies, since we have more than enough of that.  Bulk it out.  We have a lot of mouths to feed.”

“Okay.”

All she wanted to do was stop.  Instead, she stepped into the living room, where makeshift beds had been arranged with piles of blankets and sleeping bags.

The momentum keeps her trucking.

Only two kids were sleeping there, both clearly brother and sister.  It was as much privacy as she was going to get.  She plucked the satellite phone from her pocket.

Oh right, I forgot they’d have phone contact with Skitter.

So when is this, exactly? Has the PRT’s jamming stopped?

This scenario wasn’t what she’d expected, on any level.  Even as Skitter had explained the job duties as being helping out, rebuilding, organizing, Sierra had maintained doubts.  She’d been waiting for that one job where Skitter tested her limits, asked her to do something a little dangerous, something morally ambiguous.

Tried to turn her into a villain…

That’s Tattletale’s MO, though, not Skitter’s.

It would be subtle, or it would have consequences she wasn’t immediately aware of, but it would set her on the road to something darker.

Or both.

If you were working for Tattletale.

Except it hadn’t happened yet.  Even the scope of what she was doing here caught her off guard.  There were innumerable dead, and yet more people forced out of their homes by the fires Burnscar had started.  It seemed like everyone was walking a narrow line between banding together as a community and killing one another.

Yikes.

Has the miasma even happened yet? Are we in the past, seeing how the miasma caused the civilians in the territory to act?

It felt strange to identify as one of the key people who were pulling for the former.  She was organizing everone, keeping in touch with the groups handling the other cleanup jobs and working tirelessly at the hardest and most unwanted jobs in the hopes of inspiring others to keep going.

You’re doing a great job.

When the smell of shit and rot that accompanied the dead got to someone, Sierra was at their side, helping calm them down, always ready to name another place where they were needed.

Taylor made some really good choices of people to hire as her right and left hands.

“It’s less like she went shopping and more like she wanted to stock this place like it was a miniature grocery store.  A little bit of everything.

Hehe.

Like me buying candy. Gotta have variety.

I’m trying to organize it by expiry date so we can prioritize eating and serving the food that’s going bad now, in case she never comes back and the food starts to get low.”

Alright, so Charlotte at least believes Skitter is alive, but doubts whether she’s coming back.

“I know it’s a bit late, but there’s a lot of us who’ve been working hard, cleaning up the mess from the attacks…”  Sierra hedged.

What are you getting at? You want extra rations for the workers?

That does seem reasonably fair.

“You want dinner?”

Sierra pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture.

This is cute. :p