At long last, the warning array was installed, the bell hung near the stairs in the front hall in hopes that it would be audible throughout the building, and Jonathan had extracted a promise from Mr. Geiller that he would start teaching the kids the next day.

Jonathan was completely exhausted, and rather than accomplish anything that evening he simply fell into bed shortly after the kids went down.

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The next morning saw Jonathan trying desperately to catch up on the dishes he'd ignored the night before, along with the dishes that breakfast had made. When Mr. Geiller showed up shortly after lunch, Jonathan foisted the kids off on him and headed into the woods.

As much as he wanted to stay and watch the fireworks—and possibly be on hand to help put out any resulting fires—now that the warning array was installed he wanted to finish up the fallback in the forest. Without having any of the kids with him, he would be unable to accomplish anything with magic, but at least the new shovel was going to be helpful for digging up the last of the brambles that were lingering in the interior of the surrounding thornbushes.

By the time he headed back to the orphanage, Jonathan had successfully finished clearing out the worst of the remaining underbrush and dug out a flat space where he was planning to setup some sort of shelter. If conjuring tents ended up being out of reach at the moment, he was betting he could conjure enough pieces of treated canvas that he could basically construct something similar.

After practically falling asleep over a game of Uno with the children that evening, however, Jonathan ended up going to bed early yet again.

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The next morning saw Jonathan glumly surveying the build-up of dishes that had accumulated over the past three meals. Although he'd woken up in good spirits over the alarm array and emergency fallback, he had to admit that on the domestic front he was floundering badly. He needed help and there simply wasn't anyone to provide it. Aside from the ongoing frustration of dish-doing, he was also falling behind on washing the children's clothes which were looking particularly in need of laundering after the last few days' worth of outside play, digging, and helping out in the woods.

Abigail wandered into the kitchen while Jonathan was glowering at the dishes, and paused. "You alright there, Jonathan?"

He dragged a hand down his face and tried to emotionally regroup. "Mostly, yeah. I'm just getting more and more behind on stuff like dishes and laundry and other cleaning, and I feel like I've barely been able to give you kids any attention the last few days."

Abigail looked uncomfortable. "Well…that's true. It would be nice if you had more time for us. Mr. Geiller is good at magic, but, uh…not much else. And Ethan tries, but—" She trailed off.

"That's right, I didn't get a chance to ask: how did the lesson go yesterday?"

Abigail grimaced. "Mr. Geiller was Mr. Geiller. He made Yanni cry."

Jonathan gave her a sharp look. "That's not alright. If he's going to serve as an interim docent, then he's here to teach you kids, not verbally abuse you."

"Well, Yanni and Bethany were kind of messing around and not paying attention very well, but they're such little kids."

Jonathan looked at Abigail in amusement. They were what, three years younger than her at most? "I guess maybe they'd seem that way since you're such a bastion of maturity."

"Jonathan!" Abigail stamped her foot. "They are a lot younger than me! And they've never had any schooling before!"

"That's actually a good point. I'm guessing Mr. Geiller was just lecturing the whole time?"

Abigail settled down. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Hm." Jonathan crossed his arms and drummed his fingers on his upper arm. "That's definitely not ideal. Maybe I can take them aside for some or all of the lesson and work on reading and such instead. Ugh, although I have too much to do right now as it is…"

"Do you need help with anything?"

"No, no, I wasn't trying to…well, actually, yeah I should come up with some chores that you kids can help me with, maybe make a chart and rotate through it. That would be a pretty big deal, actually. Why didn't I think of that before?"

Abigail shrugged and smiled. "We never did anything like that in the orphanage before it was shut down, but it sounds like a good idea if you're having trouble keeping up with everything."

"Yeah, yeah this could work. Maybe I'll have Bethany and Yanni help me make the chart during Mr. Geiller's class this afternoon. I was thinking about sitting in, anyway, to get a feeling for how that's working, so that would be two birds with one stone. Thanks, Abigail, talking to you was a big help."

She looked away to the side, evidently feeling shy. "Good. I'm glad."

"Did you need anything before I start doing these dang dishes?"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"No, no, I just wanted to talk to you. I feel like I've barely had a chance to do that recently."

Jonthan frowned. "Yeah, there's just been so much to do ever since those thugs attacked us." On an impulse, he walked over and gave Abigail a hug. "I'll try to do better, okay? Once we've got the fallback setup so you kids have a safe place to run to if needed, I'll try to spend a bit more time with you."

"Thanks, Jonathan," Abigail mumbled into his stomach.

He patted her back, gave her a final little squeeze, and let her go. "Alright, you should probably go play with the other kids. I need to get these dishes under control, and we don't have that chore chart just yet."

"Okay!" Abigail headed back into the orphanage, and Jonathan turned his attention back to the dishes. Now the only question was what chores would the kids actually be of help with?

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Mr. Geiller arrived shortly after lunch, and Jonathan followed the children as they trudged into the dining room.

"Jonathan? What are you doing here, boy?" asked Mr. Geiller.

"Well, I figured I could use a little more knowledge about magic myself, plus I have a task that I need Bethany and Yanni to help me out with."

Mr. Geiller scowled but waved to the far end of the table. "Fine, but keep things quiet. You three can go over there."

"Thanks." Jonathan steered Bethany and Yanni over to the end of the table that mostly went unused, since there simply weren't enough people living in the orphanage to take advantage of its absurd length. The rest of the kids sat along the sides of the table where they normally ate and Mr. Geiller stood at the head of the table. No wonder the lesson hadn't gone well yesterday; aside from Mr. Geiller's personality, this room wasn't very well suited for learning. The room with the contract ritual chalked on its floor would have worked better as far as space went, but there was nowhere to sit. Maybe he'd need to try his hand at conjuring some chairs. He wasn't sure what he could do about desks, but maybe if he conjured a saw and a few other tools he might be able to make something by hand. Wouldn't be pretty—he was certainly no carpenter—but how hard could a flat surface and a few basic legs be?

Bethany interrupted his ruminations. "What are we doing, Jonathan?"

"Ah, right." Mr. Geiller shot him a glare, and he dropped the volume of his voice. "Well, I'm going to make a chart for chores since I need some help keeping things clean, and I need you and Yanni to help me draw and illustrate it."

"I've never drawn anything before," said Yanni softly, and Bethany shook her head to indicate it was the same for her.

"You've never—" Jonathan cut himself off. Of course they hadn't drawn anything. They were living on the streets. Heck, for all he knew there was no compulsory public education at all. "Don't you worry, you're going to do great. Drawing is lots of fun, and you don't need to draw anything realistic; we're just going to be illustrating the chart to make it look better. Give the thing a little color. Now, I know you haven't drawn before, but do you think you might want to try?"

Yanni nodded seriously, with Bethany a beat behind him.

"Alright, in that case I need you to focus on how you want to draw so I can conjure the stuff we'll need."

Jonathan enlivened his magic and took a quick critical look at the smoke that faded into being around Yanni and Bethany. If he didn't miss his guess, Bethany's felt more like hunger than any sort of desire for activity. Come to think, she had eaten less at lunch than normal. Maybe the specter of the upcoming lesson had put her off. Yanni's desire was a little more focused, although still pretty diffuse compared to a lot of the desires Jonathan had experienced. Probably a side effect of not actually knowing much about drawing. But that was fine, Jonathan knew exactly what he needed, and when he reached out to the Infernal Abyss he was able to guide magic into conjuring a big box of crayons and a decent stack of construction paper. Although he hadn't specifically pictured a particular type of paper, for whatever reason he'd ended up with a packet containing several sheets in a variety of different colors. It was a regular rainbow.

Bethany and Yanni's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their heads. "What is that?!" said Bethany.

Jonathan braced himself against the table for a moment to let the wave of weakness that he still felt after using magic pass, then picked up the box of crayons and opened it up.

"These are crayons and this is construction paper. How about to start you take a piece of paper—pick any color you like—and just draw some shapes or something? Get used to how the crayons feel."

"What is a crayon?" asked Yanni, while Bethany practically lunged for the construction paper beside him and started rifling through it.

"These are crayons," said Jonathan, pulling out a red crayon. "See, you draw with the pointed end and it makes colored lines." He snagged a light pink sheet of construction paper from the mess that Bethany was rapidly spreading across the table as she went digging for the perfect sheet, and quickly drew a sun shape in the upper left corner. "Here, now you try."

Yanni took the crayon like it was made out of crystal and gently dragged it on the paper, making a wobbly shape the Jonathan supposed was supposed to be another circle. He stuck his tongue out between his teeth, and drew some equally wobbly lines outward. "It doesn't look anything like yours," he said, deep disappointment evident in his voice.

"That's fine, Yanni," said Jonathan. "I've been using crayons for years—" well, he had used crayons extensively years ago, like any good elementary-age student "—and you picked one up for the first time today. You can draw whatever you want, or just make a pretty shape with different colors. There's no right or wrong way to do it."

"Jonathan, Jonathan, show me next, show me next!" Bethany was practically bouncing out of her chair, waving a dark blue piece of construction paper that she'd evidently settled on.

"Okay, okay, calm down!" Jonathan said with a laugh in his voice. "That paper is pretty dark, so you're going to have a hard time seeing anything but the lighter colors. Here, let's try this peach color out."

Bethany all but snatched the peach crayon out of his hand and began making fast, hard swipes with it across the paper.

"Jonathan, what are Bethany and Yanni doing?"

Jonathan turned in place to find all six of the other kids clustered behind his chair with a scowling Mr. Geiller just beyond them.

"Uh, they're coloring with crayons."

"Can we do that, too?" Jamilah gazed longingly at him, and Jonathan could almost swear she had actual stars in her eyes."

"Um, yeah, I guess." Jonathan shot a glance at Mr. Geiller, but the old man didn't protest. "Sorry, Mr. Geiller, I guess I hijacked your class."

Mr. Geiller grunted. "Fine by me. I'll be back tomorrow." And without further ado, he stumped out of the room.

Jonathan didn't have a chance to worry about him, however, because Kylus was tugging at his shirt. "Jonathan, can we really choose whatever color of paper we want to use? I've never seen paper like this. It's so thick and colorful!"

Jonathan had to laugh. "Yeah, go for it. But if you could focus for a moment here, I think we're going to need more crayons…"