The desert wind howled as it battered against the cloth covering the kitchen hole. Such a flimsy stopgap wouldn’t last long, but at least it’d keep the dirt out. Ferda threw strips of goarse meat onto the tiny stove and hissed along with the fat as the hot iron of the pan scorched their fingers. Ferda wasn’t great at this domestic stuff, but hopefully the rare smell of meat would put Abba and Papa in a good mood for the conversation to come.

Ferda had receipts for when their fathers asked where they’d gotten the meat. Goarse was cheap enough to be food and transportation, since they bread like their predecessors, the goats. Ferda had also nicked an onion off that fuckhead Azar’s cart on their way home, but no one should ask any questions about something so small. Abba insisted that onion improved the tase of everything.

A thunder of feet cascading down the stairs outside distracted Ferda from slicing the vegetable into haphazard ribbons. Their eyebrow twitched as the door to the tiny Giso flat burst open. Great, Ferda thought. They buried the tip of their knife in the onion and reached over to close the threadbare bead curtain that separated the kitchenette from the rest of the flat. The kids are here. They’re not supposed to come until fifteenth bell. Did I lose track of time? A quick glance at the sundial Abba had made told Ferda that the crotch-goblins were indeed early. Papa lost track of time a lot, and that was one trait Ferda had no interest in sharing with the man.

Ferda had been trying to catch Abba before the lesson started, since the old squirow always got damn fussy around company. Not to mention how the scent of meat—Ferda flipped over the mutton and threw in the part of the onion that had been chopped, the rest could be saved for a couple days—would draw the heard of street children that had just invaded.

As expected, the bead curtain clacked as a tiny, grubby hand slithered its way toward a nearby cupboard. “Beat it, Skrada.” Ferda grabbed a nearby cooking spoon and swatted the intruder. “This ain’t for you.” The child whined—more in frustration than pain, since Ferda’d made sure not to bruise any fingers—and the hand pulled back.

A round of snickers came from beyond the curtain. Another hand tried to make its way through. “If yer so big, why don’t ya come out here and make us?”

“Yeah,” yelled another kid. “Teacher says sharing is caring.” If Abba wasn’t being paid under the table to take care of these little gremlins, Ferda wouldn’t have tolerated them.

“You don’t want me coming out there.” The kids went quiet as they heard the warning in Ferda’s voice. The vana let it rest, then took a breath and relaxed into their normal joking tone. “Don’t act like you little shits actually listen to the old man.” Ferda delivered a sharp smack to the new hand. “You’ll get your snacks later. Abba’ll be up in a bit.” Several groans and whines followed, but the kids tramped to the other side of the flat to chatter away.

A few minutes later, Abba’s light footsteps, sluggish from climbing the many stairs to the building’s top floor, tapped their way through the door. A grunt of surprise followed as Abba saw that the kids had beaten him home. “Give me a moment to put these down, Children.” The old man murmured. “Then we’ll begin.”

Ferda clicked their tongue. Abba still thought the kids actually came to learn. Really, the box of Matzo crackers he’d put aside for his pupils was a bigger draw. At least Abba had figured out to start packaging history lessons as stories and arithmetic as riddles with prizes for solving them. Thing was, these kids already pretty much knew where they were going. Nowhere fast, and probably not up. Abba was smart, too damn smart for his own good in this place, but he was still locked in dreams that long should’ve died.

Or maybe it was just boredom.

Those new Bio-lit detectors that his royal shittiness had installed—was that a year ago now—had kicked Abba out of his old job as an actual school teacher. Wouldn’t want an evil shapeshifter teaching good little Shenaise boys and girls about the possibilities of foreign magic. It might give them ideas outside the class structure that Shenait’s founder had set out for them, beyond the false binaries of their world.

Though, Ferda was pretty sure Abba had been bored in that job too. He’d gone on and on about how much he missed the university he’d lectured at in Woromir’s Central cluster. At least Papa’s construction gig didn’t give a fuck if their workers had a little extra magical muscle on ‘em. If Ferda was stuck inside the way Abba was, they’d have already gone—

A hint of smoke wafted past Ferda’s nose and they whirled to find the edges of the mutton turning black. “Shattered hell!” Ferda grabbed towel, lifted the pan off the stove and scraped the contents into a bowl with a knife. They’d planned to pour the juices onto a piece of flat bread to soak up every last drop of food, but the meat was a little past that.

Abba’s warm voice drifted in from the main room. “As always, I want to start by taking any questions you might have gained about the world since we saw each other last week.” This question session was the most objectively useful bit of Abba’s lessons for these kids. The man would give straight answers to things that no other adult would.

“Why was Jakob’s shop looted?” One kid asked, making Abba cough like an insectoid had crawled down his throat. Ferda winced in sympathy. Good luck with that one, old man.