“Are you sure you want to buy all of this?” Flaminia says while reluctantly giving me one of those small bags that can hold much more than what they should be able to.
“Absolutely.”
“Joey, this is the very first money that Clodia gave you. Why do you want to spend it like this? Isn’t there anything else you’d like? I can bring you to Fulvia, and you can pick some nice clothes for yourself. Or you could start saving up for a nicer place.”
“Nah. Agostina is not that bad. I mean, she’s like most old people—dismissive. No biggie. Besides, if I don’t do this, who will?”
Now, Clodia has started paying me for the discovery of yeast. And, apparently, that came in gold. No contract as of now. But we shook on it.
“How did you even get this idea?” Flaminia sighs as she passes me several bars of soap, a couple pairs of scissors, two razor blades, two combs with different teeth widths, and a blade sharpener.”
“Well, this is one of the things I picked up while traveling. It’s not that hard of a skill unless you are trying to do something complicated.”
“You do you,” Flaminia sighs for one last time as we walk past the market and toward the park inside the Pratus.
...
It takes me a few minutes to locate the extremely tall homeless person and his genetically modified, Godzilla-sized dog.
“Hey, Stan!” I wave at the man with a big smile on my face. “How you doin’, man?!”
The old man looks at me with a frown before tentatively waving his hand.
He’s sitting at the border of the paved road that snakes between the curated grass. Damn, I wonder if [Green Mages] like Agostina take care of cutting grass as well—maybe with some crazy spell? I’ll table the question for the next time I see her.
“Joey,” he speaks my name warmly. “I hope you are having a good day.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I smile, looking back at Flaminia, who’s still shaking her head.
“What can I do for you?”
The old man slowly gets up from the ground, with the wear of the old forcing him to take his time. He exhales slightly when he’s finally up and stretching himself.
This guy is a good eight feet. DAMN. I feel like I’ve just gone back to being a child, I swear.
“What can you do for me? Friend, I’m here to do something for you. I had all this shaving stuff and soap lying around that I don’t use, and I wanted to practice my hair-cutting skills. Do you or any of your friends need a cut?”
Stan crouches forward to caress Grigio, the massive dog; however, as he does so, he doesn’t take his eyes off me for a fraction of a second.
“You want to cut our hair? With... razors?”
“Scissors, honestly. I can shave you as well if you feel comfortable with that. I can understand the caution about someone putting a blade at your neck, don’t worry. But to cut hair, I just need scissors and a comb. Plus, there’s like hundreds of you and just one of me. If you are not satisfied, you can punch the annoying Human. How does that sound?”
For the first time, Stan moves his lively eyes to Flaminia. His entire stare betrays the charisma of someone who, perhaps, could have been much more than a simple homeless person.
Is he one of those overpowered guys smurfing as a homeless person? Is this someone Lady Luck sent me to force me to learn magic or, worse, to go on a quest to save Humanity?
But all these thoughts leave me as I see something that makes my heart clench. His inquisitive gaze dims, and he looks at his dirty hands, tentatively combing one of them through his hair. But it is so matted and stuck together that he can barely go more than an inch through it.
I see the shame on his face in a matter of seconds. There’s the whole range going from shame and regret up to sadness.
When I was doing this in New York, apart from getting punched a few times by the crazies, I also had people refuse because they thought they were too filthy to be touched by a ‘normal person.’
And that’s what I see in Stan’s eyes when he stares back at me. He puts on a warm smile, takes the hand out of his hair, and shakes his head.
“Friend, I don’t think it’s worth your time to cut my hair. I can ask the others, though,” he gestures at a group of homeless people standing around in the park.
“Sure thing,” I say.
I don’t want to push. People who live on the street are more sensitive to certain things than those who have a home and a regular life. When you deal with the homeless extensively, you learn to take their refusal at face value sometimes. I mean, at least as long as it’s about hair. Sometimes, they will refuse medical treatment and just ask to be left to die; that’s really not pretty. And, even though it’s selfish, I’m happy it wasn’t me, on the other hand, to make a judgment call about that.
“Wait here,” Stan says, leaving the wooden box with his money on the road.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Huh, is that smart?
When I see the massive dog curl around it, I get my answer.
“Joey, you know that some of those people are ex-military, right? Like, several of them?”
“So?” I look back at the pink-haired Elf and flash her a wink. “Don’t they deserve a haircut?”
“They might try to stab you with the scissors.”
“If they have sisters, I’ll stab them. Not with scissors, though.”
“Joey!” Flaminia actually snorts mid-word, almost choking herself.
“Don’t worry, Flam. I got this.”
...
“You can cut my hair, Human.”
I see a belligerent Elf coming close to me. The guy has a terribly long beard and messy, curly hair. But, judging from its brown color, he’s not that old. Not that you could tell from his face since it’s completely covered in dirt.
“How you doin’,” I tell him with a smile. “I’m Joey Luciani. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. If you have a chair, this will be much, much easier.”
“You try something funny, you are dead, Human,” he says.
RIGHT! The wooden leg. This guy’s a veteran.
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” I tell the hostile Elf. Unlike Stan, he’s quite short for an Elf. Probably 6’1 or so.
“Chairs? And if you have a way to warm up water, this will be much easier.”
“Come,” he says, and I simply follow him.
However, when I see Flaminia doing the same, I stop.
“Hey, man, one second,” I tell the guy, turning to Flaminia and lowering my voice.
“Flam, if I get stabbed, I’m good with it. I take responsibility for it. But I don’t want you with me here. Go back to Happy Bakery, please.”
“Joey, I—”
“Flaminia,” I steel my voice. “I’m not bringing you with me among people who might be dangerous. Also, you are a woman. Please.”
Now, she seems to understand what I’m trying to say. This is something that several girls I worked with never really understood. Working with charities means that sometimes, you get to help very unpleasant, if not straight-up dangerous, people. And those people are often men. If you are a woman, you have to be much more careful when you are around people who don’t really have much to lose.
“Just... be careful, you idiot,” Flaminia sighs. I wave at her as she turns and walks away.
I look at the man with a wooden leg and put on my best smile.
“So, I’m Joey Luciani. I didn’t get your name.”
“Tiberius,” he says, looking between Flaminia and I with a frown. “That was a good call, Human.”
I reach him and start walking by his side.
“Yeah. I mean, if we can avoid stabbing me as well, that would be cool. But hey, I’ll take whatever the house offers.”
I hear a small chuckle before the man remembers he has to hate me and goes back to looking all stern.
“So, how about the water and the chairs?”
...
Apparently, these homeless people have more amenities than I imagined. Behind some of the trees, far from the paved roads, the city even installed a fountain that dishes out fresh water.
As I get deep into their little camp, I take a better look at their tents. They look like the military. They are brownish green, about two meters tall, and three meters in diameter. To be fair, they are fancier than what I would have pictured. But that also comes from being used to seeing smaller tents, the kind you don't want to be noticed.
I ask Tiberius about them.
“They are the tents from the Army,” he says with a smile. "When on a campaign, we use them to shield our horses and us. If you are with a recon team, you might get enchanted cloth for your tent that holds camouflaging runes and makes it almost impossible to trace you. They are big because one would usually sleep two to three people per tent."
“You all live in tents?”
"It's either this or trying our luck in the wild."
Now that I look back toward the road, I do notice that the canopy perfectly shields them from each side of the Pratus.
The inner part of this... homeless camp? What should I call it? Well, whatever this is—it’s halfway from the statues and the paved roads. With the trees around here being very thick and the park being huge, it provides great cover. I basically didn’t see anything the first time I walked through the Pratus.
“It’s a measure to keep us out of the sight of the people walking through the park,” Tiberius says with a hint of distaste in his voice. “At least we can get washed without having to pay for the public baths.”
So far, I have been washing in the bathroom available in Agostina’s building. It has a little bucket of water that warms up thanks to a rune. But honestly, I wouldn’t mind a hot, springy bath.
Sorry, shouldn’t be thinking about me right now.
I look at the fountain, attached with some wooden contraptions to pour water into different buckets that they have lying around.
What I notice, though, is the difference in how these people seem to interact with each other. Back on Earth, homeless people would mostly share distrust toward each other. Helping is a luxury that most shed on their way to homelessness.
Horror stories of stabbings, being suffocated in your sleep to get your cart, and rape were not uncommon. It was also not uncommon to find homeless people have beaten up by some thugs they tried to bother.
Violence, at least back home, was one of the staples of this condition.
Here, however, for all Elves are stinkier than how Tolkien pictured them, I see a young man helping an old guy up, moving him closer to a pot that’s over a flame. I see him spoon some food into his mouth, which he proceeds to slurp through the few teeth he has left. All of this while missing several fingers on both hands and without a leg, like Tiberius.
Another guy approaches them with a waterskin when the older homeless complains about the stew being too hot for him. There’s no disgust on the waterskin-man’s face when the old one takes a swig with his mouth; I see little selfishness.
In a way, there’s warmth here.
I don’t know if it’s because most of these people came from a [Soldier] background, but there’s more camaraderie here than you would expect in most places on Earth.
The only thing is...
They really seem to hate Humans.
“Tiberius,” I see a man with a black patch over one of his eyes running toward us.
“What the hell are you doing with this Human?” He suddenly stops in front of Tiberius and me to yell at us.
Another military veteran, I suppose.
“He says he wants to cut our hair. Let him work for free, Quintus.”
“And you trust him?!”
I see Tiberius going stiff at that and growling back, “Shut up. I could use a fucking haircut.”
Oof.
I look around and see Stan watching from a distance, now followed by the wolf in dog clothes.
“Free haircuts and shampoos for everyone, man! It’s all free, and I’m pretty good with scissors. Sure, I am better with bread. But you know, you can...”
“Human,” Quintus snarls back at me, “do not talk to me. One of you fucking worms did this to me!” He points at his eye. “I can’t fight anymore because of that! I can’t distinguish between close and far, and half my sight is gone! Damn worms! We should have gutted you all when we had the chance!”
Oof, again.
But Elves do have a terrible history with Humans. Not much I can recriminate there.
“Leave him be,” Tiberius says, stepping past Quintus.
We approach the fountain, and Tiberius takes one of the buckets, placing it on top of a stone with an inscription.
“Is that a warming rune?” I look curiously at the thing.
“An apprentice [Enchanter], Claudius, did that. Sometimes, he comes and renews the few runes we have. That Elf is green but verdant.”
I suppose that’s a compliment.
He takes a chair from one of the tents and sits, facing me.
“You can start, Human.”
“Let’s get to it, then, baby!”
“What? Did you call me ‘baby’?” Tiberius asks with a frown.
“I meant... whatever. Let’s just get to it.”