"We're just not." Harry!" The cry went up from the other side of the bank. Harry spun and dashed over to where Hermione was peering out a small gap le...t in the bottom of a window."What?" Harry skidded over. "Are they coming in?" I thought I saw someone in that house." Hermione pointed down the street. "Can you see?" Hold on..." Harry let his eye focus out through brick and plaster, then cursed. "There are three people in there. Children. They're trying to hide in the basement. They're failing.". The store in front would remain open for a time yet so customers could pick up their orders. Traffic was heavy on the way home, and we needed to stop at the grocery store on the way to pick up a number of things and not just the needed scrapple ingredients.That evening, I cooked dinner while the Sisters worked on preparing their scrapple. The recipe they were trying wasn’t overly complicated, but it turned out to require more than the advertised four hours to complete the first time. As a. For all that I had been a victim, it was nothing to leaving this child motherless. ‘Ishtar,’ I said, wishing I had called her anything else. Her name was proof of my rejection and though she may not have known it, I felt it keenly. Regret coursed through me. She reached out to brush a tear from my cheek. Her bracelets glittered in the torchlight, among them a string of clay beads I made long ago. They seemed to be from another life, a stranger’s life. ‘Oh child,’ I said, ‘for all the stars in. I’m all soft and pudgy, and I don’t want you to be turned off,” she admitted softly, looking away from my eyes.“Deedee, why would you think that? You’re not pudgy. You’re beautiful. I love that you’re soft. If I wanted hard, I’d date dudes.”With that, she giggled once again, slapping my bicep. It was easy to forget as a guy that girls have all the same insecurities we boys had, probably more so. They were not mythical creatures made of flowers and lace, they were imperfect humans just like.