The orphanage was located outside of the city walls. It was one of the oldest stone buildings that had been built when the city was first established as a town, almost a hundred and fifty years before Faye was born. That seemed like a long time to Faye, but she'd been told that, as for a cities go, theirs wasn't anywhere near the oldest.
The building the orphanage was made from was part of the original town but for some reason, the town had grown further west and ended up leaving the old orphanage outside of the walls. Of course, when the building had been built it wasn't an orphanage and had only been converted into one after the walls were already built.
Either way, Faye felt it was somewhat intentional to place the poorest, most unsightly, people outside of the walls. It wasn't that she usually had a pessimistic view of the world, but she knew how most people saw orphans. Most people considered them to be legal beggars.
Faye turned her head to the sky above as she allowed her mind to drift back to those memories from long ago.
She'd had to pretend she didn't hear the words people said when she accompanied Lady Valeria into town. That was the worst, pretending you couldn't hear when everyone knew you could. It felt so demeaning to have to play that game. To play pretend or else they'd cause trouble for their caretakers.
It happened more than a few times where Faye had ignored the unspoken rule and confronted those wealthy people talking down toward them. It always ended with her being made to apologize or Lady Valeria having to apologize for her. That felt even worse than when she'd heard them talking about her. It felt so...awful.
Slowly, the end of the city came and went, the wall was mostly gone, but a few large sections remained and marked the end of the city proper. The walls hadn't stood as firmly as those Faye had first found, but they could still be seen. There were large pieces of the wall within the city, as if they'd tumbled quite a distance or...well, she didn't want to jump to any conclusions as to what happened to the city just yet.
From the walls, Faye knew to follow the old road out and branch off after reaching the large oak. She'd follow north and would arrive at the orphanage within the hour. There were a number of landmarks she knew to look out for.
As Faye walked, she realized the old road was over grown. It was nowhere to be seen. That was ok, because she just needed to walk in the general direction. The next problem she came to, however, was that she'd walked far enough to see the old oak and realized it was nowhere to be found.
She'd hoped it would have been able to withstand the tests of time, but it seemed that even that old sturdy oak couldn't fight off fate. It was a bit of a long shot anyways, but to see that the tree really was gone was another blow to Faye. It was said that that old oak was a little sapling when the town was first conceived. But now, the city was gone and so was the tree that had grown with it.
She took a deep breath and began walking in the direction the orphanage should be. She couldn't afford to let her mind wander now that she knew her regular landmarks were certainly gone. She hoped she turned from the road at the right time, but many of the old landmarks, the trees and grouping of plants, that she'd used to find her way were long gone. Strangely, everything looked so serene and as if it could never change in a thousand years, but Faye knew this to be a lie. One she bought into before and was joe learning the hard way not to believe everything you see.
Nature was certainly a fickle bitch. She liked to create things that lasted centuries, but she never hesitated to take them away in the blink of an eye. An old oak tree struck by lightning and battered into the ground by a heavy storm, a river that dried up over time, leaving those that depended on it to die.
Faye made her way forward. She walked for a little over an hour without any sign of her old home. She'd just resigned herself to heading back and trying a little closer to the old city, when she spotted a large chunk of rock sticking out of the ground in the distance.
She recognized it immediately. Beside the old stone orphanage was a large boulder. It was said to be good luck, which was why the building had been built there in the first place.
As Faye picked up her speed, she saw a structure becoming clearer and clearer behind the large stone.
Excitement and anticipation filled Faye as she ran forward. This was it! This was what she was looking for!
Home.
She was finally home.