Silver Umbrellas

Eleven-- Hope

"Oh~ These feel vunderbar," Liechtenstein sighed while wiggling her toes inside the knee-length socks Alice had presented her with. They looked like a world map, though the continents and oceans were all stretched out of proportion as a result of being worn. Asia and North America shrank a little while Europe was pulled in too many directions.

Alice sat down in front of Lili's legs and scrutinized the map before stabbing an index finger at it. "Look, there's you, Uncle Tino!"

Lili kicked her other leg up and touched near the center of Europe before saying, "And there's me, and there's my big bruder. Hmm... There you are, Yao!"

"Yay!" he answered happily, delighting in the feeling of having clean, warm socks on his feet and calves. The cloth Chinese dragons danced all across his shins and wrapped around him like a security blanket, a little reminder of home. This was such a personally significant find, even if at first glance it didn't seem like such.

"Where's meee?" Alice wondered before spotting her state, which looked smaller than it proportionally was to the rest of the world. "Oh, there I am!"

Tino was busying himself with making a mental list of how many different types of nuts they had brought back, and how many of each kind. The silly antics of the other three gave him something to smile about as he sorted, and smile he did.

"This was definitely a good trip," he said. "We all but cleaned out that peanut stand, and the socks were a great find."

"They sure were!" Alice crowed as she flopped onto her back and stuck her legs up in the air to show off the gummy bears she now proudly sported. "I love my new socks~"

"They're adorable!" Lili agreed with a giggle. "Ve should do our best not to get them too dirty so they look this good for a longer time."

Beyond their crayon candle's weak, reddish glow, shadows danced on the inner walls of the shack like kind, introverted friends. The rain falling from above was quiet, unable to drown out their newfound happiness. Against all odds, refreshed hope had found its way into their hearts again, leaving them with the confidence that they could wait here for just one more month.

Tino finished the counting and sorting, and announced his results. "We have twelve bags of honey peanuts, ten of cashews, and fifteen of roasted almonds. This should last a good amount of time if we do our best to make them last."

"We're rich!" Alice giggled from her place on her back. Her legs were still sticking up in the air without a care in the world. Suddenly she sat up and patted around her collarbone for the new necklace she and her uncle had made together. "And we found a necklace in the mall, too! There's a bead for each of us-- lookit!'

After unclipping it, pulling it off, and then latching it again so the beads couldn't escape, she handed it to Yao to look at. "That reddish one's for you, and the green one is Lili! And mine is the blue~!"

"Which leaves the purple one for me," Tino finished with a little chuckle. "The jewelry store where we found them was looted pretty cleanly."

"Oh, that's unfortunate," Liechtenstein said softly before brightening. "But these little treasures are very vunderbar, Tino, Alice. You two did a great job today."

"Thanks!" Alice answered with a cheeky grin. "And we didn't see anybody around, so we were glad of that, too."

Yao scooted closer and crossed his thin legs before resting his elbows on his knees and putting his chin in his hands. "So... There was nobody?"

"Nope!" she replied, putting the bottoms of her socked feet together. "The mall was totally empty. Nobody saw us this time."

Yao let out a relieved sigh. "Xiètiānxièdì..." he murmured. Alice perked up proudly when she perfectly understood what he had said. (Thank goodness...)