The Ogre's behavior had been more than just erratic. The Collector was no longer able to live in her own home, because he'd trashed the place with discarded tinctures and smashed potion bottles. It was overgrown with weeds, the food was let to rot, and the curtains were torn to shreds. My grandparents were more than reluctant to let anyone reside in their work-in-progress, but The Collector's children were of far greater concern to The Rationner than her husband's miserable grumbling. And they had nowhere else to turn. Like with guests, I carried their luggage to and fro, until their carriages were emptied and all lay inside that basement, a place they'd have to call home for the time thereafter.
After they'd settled in, I was carted over to the ruined house for a grim task: discarding the refuse, and recovering any valuables which could be sold. His entire lineage was present, apparently, but I recalled not one of their faces. My great uncle, a Prosaic, made a comment about keeping something, and was met with ire. He was an old, marble-haired poet with a firm unibrow, sharp face, and skinny body – yet hard-edged from his work building stone walls for the villagers. He was always smoking, and jabbering on about 'bloody foreigners'. I found him annoying at times, but at the very least, genuine. He seemed unaware of his own speckled origins when he spoke, which I always found odd. Or blind, perhaps. Regardless, his comments embarrassed me, including the one he'd just made in the ruined house. To be fair, they were all a bit stuck-up – none seemed ready to admit The Ogre was as much a product of their own tree's blood, as he was of his drugs and potions. Carts were loaded up, and we left in separate ways from where we came.

Back at the house, I kept busy maintaining the yards on all sides, and harvesting the freshly-grown garden. It was hours of plucking weed roots from dirt and wooden chips, then mowing grass with a strange rolling contraption. A spiraled blade, with two wheels, and a handlebar to push it forward. I'd never seen anything like it in my life, and wondered how it would measure up to a scythe. Compared to threshing, however, I find in retrospect that it's quite inefficient; more often than not, it's just a mess of tangled fibers to pick through, and a gigantic waste of time. But with children on the green who refused to be swayed elsewhere, a sickle or scythe just wasn't safe. If their pants had gotten caught in the rolling shears, I wonder if they'd have even screamed, or just giggled at their own predicament. The way both grass and weeds grew, it was an endless war against God's green earth. But the food was worth it, and after I'd stopped drinking cow's milk and eating meat, I was always more sated by my own meals anyway. The Collector bought her own food, despite her parents' wealth, for they refused to help her unless they had spare rations. That was odd to me, considering who was more in-need, but my abstention left plenty for them to borrow. The recurrence of pantry-rot ceased, as the food miraculously vanished before it could turn powdery blue. We shared steamed carrots, scores of baked gourds, cucumbers, berries, peas, and radishes; buried in the very same soil I'd helped till not two seasons prior. My stomach had shrunk, my appetite dried, and I felt thankful for less each month. It felt like every part of me was levvy, and the presence of small children (though loud, slobbery, and annoying) brightened the home. They were, however, a rowdy flock, and took poorly to listening. My grandfather lost his temper with them more than once, and while he had their eyes, he'd stand his grandest; he decided he was going to be their role model. But I was worried that, just as to me, he wouldn't be a very good one.

Everyone was gathered again, joyful in mirth, contented with steaks and tarts; pies and pastas. I was amazed how global their palettes were. The Collector, blonde with freckles and blue-eyed with a curiously catlike glint, was a strange mix of nice to your face and mean behind everyone's back – and yet she meant both honestly, and took her fair share of judgment from others in turn. By her old home, she'd worked her dream selling 'mystical stones' like amethysts and emeralds to lucky travelers, promising them luck and good favor with the Gods. Travel is a perilous venture indeed, and any small comfort is worth its weight – even a superstitious one. But she'd been forced to hand off the store to her successor, who pawned the whole place off and ran with the funds – leaving her without a cent of her own initial investment. She'd been utterly cheated, left only with a vague promise on a writ that she'd 'receive monthly interest'. Last we'd heard, her storefront had become a sausage stand – and I doubt the man there grinding meats was aware of the arrangement. Distraught, but not defeated, she became a woman of medicine here in Fogborn – something just as magical for herself to pursue, but more vital. The Plague had been 'round, and the people who remained were scared for their very lives. She'd drop water in their eyes, rub their hands together with oil, and speak incantations – they always left feeling better, even if they'd been certain of their own demise the moment they walked in. I admired her for that – unlike the rest of the Beckenovs, she'd been absolutely ruined, and still yet took her pride in the assistance of others before herself – even sometimes to her own detriment. I was finally able to trust someone, and we shared our favourite stories as easily as a pot of tea. The Collector was, despite her angry streak, a truly respectful human being worthy of esteem.
Her children, on the other hand, are the punchline to a setup I didn't know was supposed to be a joke. They were rowdy and sweet, but ever-so-gently insane – just like the rest of 'em. Left by their father for potion, they demanded I marry their mother (my own aunt) and become their new 'dad'. For a while, I thought them sad and tried to play along, but it gave me an awful discomfort. I figured the least I could do was teach them some basic life lessons, but more fairly as their cousin than as their 'dad'. I'd be telling them about why the sky is blue (because it's an ocean of air, so they say), and how money can be earned fairly through good ideas and hard work. Things my grandparents had taught me, now passed down with my own understanding to add to them. But I would not let them call me 'dad', nor 'da', nor 'cousinfather'; that last one, I could tell, was an attempt to get me irate. And because it irritated me, they circled around me and shouted it.
So I snapped, and said with some growl, "I'm not your dad, I'm your cousin. I don't know where my father is, let alone yours."
They looked alarmed, and took a step back. Then they stopped speaking to me for the rest of the day, and I took it as peace. It was a hard thing for a child to hear, I imagine, but it was worth breaking them back into reality from the wherever they'd been living. But I felt bad, for having to say it.

Now, from here-on out, I'm going to call The Rationner something shorter: The Rationner. This is because she's always had a habit of staunch appraisal, and guessing the worth of others within her periphery. A useful skill for her work, and a terrifying ray of pass-through judgment to everyone else for miles. She often used it to make the children feel transparent, and when she wasn't gushing joyfully about their little achievements (or their brave little crafts), she was whispering menace to them before bed. Tucking them in with violent threats, which I'd only managed to interrupt once – the look on her face was shock, and the old woman has been wary of me ever since. I was no longer the junior farmhand in her loving care, but now a harsh, critical voice that could dissent. She decided the smaller ones' ears were easier targets for her venomous mandibles, so she left me alone... but only until she could assess another flaw. While The Rationner and Barreler were yelling and punishing the children for their various misdeeds and squabbles, I was attempting to reach their little hearts and minds through kindness and understanding. It didn't take long for them to start to gravitate to me for it – they weren't used to being listened to by anyone aside from their mother. However, it wasn't always so effective, and I found myself greatly frustrated by the task – it was more than a teenager could handle alone, and their mother took every excuse to dissociate. She'd simply yawn, look the other way, and indulge herself in some red wine, and fine reading. She collected books the same way she did stones, and had quite a library for herself to peruse at any given time. I supposed that was well-earned, for a single mother of three, and shrugged it off. It was a noble challenge to lighten her burdens, and I'd already cut my teeth landscaping. How hard could it be?

The children, nine at the oldest and four at the youngest, took to following me around the yard while I worked – asking me questions about how things were, why they were that way, and what kinds of jobs they could have when they were older. A job was a title, a job was a name, a job was a life.
The eldest, a girl I called The Sheller, was boyish and outgoing, and had a way of making others react according to her pretty little whims. I say this in jest, of course – I was none too convinced by her curls and charms, and saw her too closely to myself by reflection to be fooled. That, and I'd heard the story of her adventures into cupboards to spill bags of sugar to play in. She was obviously a sweet-tooth and a sweet-talker, not someone to be often believed. She'd been a very popular infant, and took to star-lighting in crowds with cute dancing; embarrassing her mother, but not herself one bit. The Sheller reminded me a lot of myself. I called her that because she was a seashell hobbyist, and adored the waters yonder. She always needed to see the waves from the shores and feel sand between her toes.
Her younger brother, The Clamper, liked to look for oysters instead. He hung around the local fishermen expectantly, dreaming of a glistening pearl. His father had once told him if he'd found one, he'd become gloriously rich. For all that talk of lofty money, I think The Clamper was raised to be welpish and spoiled. When he wasn't collecting coins from the roads, he was constantly looking for a fight, locking me out of the house for a laugh, and running to his mother for pardon the instant he was caught. And he'd pay her what he'd found, those little coins, as forgiveness. Bless her as a mother, she was charmed by it, but I couldn't help thinking this was a poor lesson to teach a little man. Then she scolded me instead, and told me I was 'deranged' for instigating, or at least for reacting. I've only aggressed the wee bastard a few times, by my count: once, I'd held him upside down while he was shouting and misbehaving, having spilled red food and stolen purple wine all over a fine new carpet by sheer carelessness. He only laughed, having gotten what he really wanted: attention. Something money couldn't buy until he was older. Then another time, I'd set him on the balcony railing to see the sunrise – and he took that as a threat of murder by falling, despite my arms at his sides. It was his wriggling that scared me, so I brought him down before he could be proven right. That time, I had definitely made a mistake. Another time, he'd run away with his mother's wallet just as she was late to a doctor's appointment – for him, because he'd caught a vicious flu. For all his mother knew, it could've been the plague. I caught him on the lawn, tackled him down, and gave him the most reserved sock to the gut I possibly could, just to make him drop the thing. I was so sullen, so determined not to hurt him and to show him nothing but peace, and yet so, so incredibly angry. His ungratefulness and self-destruction was like a drunken cabby crashing his carriage for a lark, sending the whole damned thing and its helpless horse over a cliff and into the gaping sea. I chocked it up to fever, and left him there to get up on his own. He whined.
I said, "I don't feel bad for you, you little shit. Your mother's only trying to help you, and so am I."
Then I went back and helped him up, because I felt bad again. The flames had died back down to embers, and I was seeing the smoke for what it was. Just a damn show. The scolding I caught for that was just as bad, but between her and the lecturing of The Rationner and the browbeating of The Barreler, I was already growing numb to it all. But when I thought back, I heard from my voice my grandfather's words. It made me feel somber for the rest of the afternoon.
The Clamper was sore for a while, but more than that, he was quietly livid. Every single incident seemed to sour his temper a little more – he was not the forgiving type, but a competitive spoil-sport who'd found himself enraged at a recent losing streak. He, apparently having been promised the entire golden world on a silver platter, by his now-absent father. He was always crying, yet never actually sad, except when he stopped and remembered that his dad was gone. Not dead, just... off somewhere. Feeling responsible, while I played cards with his sister, I would promise to teach him when could tell me what they said. He always sat and watched, complaining, but when I last saw him, he still couldn't read them. Despite everything, it made me sad that I couldn't uphold that promise. The Clamper stuck to his younger brother from then on, whom he could more easily impress and direct.
The youngest child in question was the calmest of the three, but had a shorter fuse than any of them. I called him The Tantrum. Though we had the most in common, I was unable to deny: his unmanageable episodes made him, at times, the least reasonable of them all. Stubborn and defiant, like I'd hope a child to be, but for all the wrong reasons. One week I was caring for him while he had the flu, and another I was snatching keys from his hands before he could scratch the walls with them. We were, after all, still trying to sell the house. I was starting to feel like a five-foot six-year-old myself for all the time I'd spent with them, yet stuck on permanent caretaking duties like an old crone. For all I did, I must have saved them a nanny's wages.