Helping on the Home Front

Ptolemy may have grown up among the upper classes, but his home had always been in the slums. Every night he would return here on his father shoulders, dust caking both of their feet but smiles on their faces as they moved through the dusty streets. But it wasn't the walk they took pleasure in, nor was it the squalor they found them selves in and it certainly wasn't those individuals they found them selves around. No, they found happiness in the simple pleasure of each others company. IT didn't matter that they walked through filth, or that those around them looked upon them with disdain since they had each other. In fact, it didn't matter that the world was bleak so long as they had each other, since that they had their family. Their home may have looked poor from the outside, and sure it had lacked material goods... But they had no need for those silly things. They had each other, plus the current fashion was tacky so that was a plus.

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Still, Ptolemy's life there he had there had not been perfect. Oh no he had his share of sickness, his share of injury and his share of neglect. But... One came to expect those things so long as they lived in the slums as he did. One took them as facts of life, as did all the generations before him and so to did the generations that came after. Of course that was no longer the case, for the slums were to be rebuilt... And turned into something that one could be proud of. A place where children didn't die from bad water or falling debris, a place were human filth didn't muddy the streets. It seemed like a long held dream come true when he heard of the renovations... And he hardly dared to believe his own ears when he had heard. But now he stood there, and he could see the work that had already been done and tears of joy threatened to come to his eyes.

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And when the snake charmer saw others working so diligently on the place that had been his home he could not help but throw him self at the task as well. He worked in a frenzy, not caring for the time, not caring for what else was going on in the world for this was a chance to better the lives of those who were like him. To take some of the beauty of the outside world and implant it there, at his cultures dark heart. First he went to the water ways, filthy and infested with animals best left to the imagination. There he waded in and with his own hand cleared the muck and grim and did away with the fouls beasts that made their home there. Next he went to the homes being raised and repaired and joined the work crews, sharing his experience with them as well as his strength. He slept with them, talked with them and joked with them tell that job had been done.

After words he made an offering to the gods, and did work on their temples and their holy places. He helped lay brick, he helped sweep the streets, and were the tiles where disheveled he dug them out and replaced them. It seemed he did the work of ten men, such was his passion and by the end of it he was tired, worked to the bone but his soul it flew and as it flew it looked down on the work he and the others had done and knew that it was good. And then finally he was at rest.

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