Orphans

Before I had that meet and greet, I had talked it through with the women, Didier and Tom. Nothing I had said, was not agreed upon beforehand, but we would take our coming out in the open slow. Perception is everything, the affections I would give or receive by them in public needed to be kept to a minimum. We couldn’t let the villagers think I was a horny tyrant, demanding sex of every woman in exchange for help.

“But at least one of us can be your official girlfriend?” Kylie asked.

“Sure, and since you are the oldest, you will be my official one. In public I mean. In private, I would like to stay your boyfriend to all of you...?”

“Like you need to ask” Kate responded.

“Like I don’t want to do more with you,” Kara purred while hugging me closely.

“He can be quite sexy if he takes up his leadership mantle, isn’t it?” Kylie naughtily smiled to Kate and Kara.

“Oh yes...” Kate said dreamingly: “We’ll have to keep watch if not too many women in the villages ask him for indecent proposals...”

“Cut it out, we have work to do, preparing lessons to teach them, hunting, extra digging, better camouflage, set up an extra perimeter, recon, news gathering, etcetera.” I fended them off with a fake serious tone.

Must have been quite the village counsel they had, but they had managed to keep the next meeting with a minimum of extra people into the circle.

“You had said organization would be easy, but we found that we lack some organizational skills.” Marie sighed.

“I assume some of you brought paper and pencil?” I asked.

“We all did.” A bit more relieved, she replied.

“Okay, let’s start.”

And with that the meeting started. Summing up all the problems, potential issues and dangers they hadn’t thought of yet. Solutions were brought up and organizational structures were set up.

And the end of the meeting, like she was ashamed, Marie brought up the issue of the orphans.

“Orphans?” I asked.

“Children without any parents or family left in the villages. They all went to the war, or just fled, or they are still trapped in the countries they were in before all traffic stopped.”

“I am sure you can divide the children amongst the families still present.”

“We did at first. But then the hunger started to set in, and some families were first thinking of their own and...”

“They left the kids to fend for their own... Fuck, that is bad business.”

“The younger ones are still with the families, but the older ones...”

“How many of them are still on their own?”

“Not more than ten of them, most of them girls, younger women, a few boys. None of them siblings, ranging fourteen to twenty. The older ones just left after a while.”

“We can’t have them wander around, or worse, starve.” I stated.

“How many can you take in?” I asked Marie.

She grimaced, but resolved to saying: “Maximum two.”

“Right, well... take the youngest two then.”

“That would be the two boys then. Fourteen and fifteen.”

“Good, gather the rest of them, we’ll adopt them, and we’ll train them to take care of themselves. Bring them tomorrow morning, before you start the practical lessons with the selection you’ll choose to be taught by Tom and Didier, here present.”

I continued, I couldn’t help myself, angry of the state they had left things at the villages:

“Let’s hope we can turn those orphans into more responsible people for the villagers than the chances they were given by those same villagers...” Giving those present a stern look, before I turned my back to them and left via a detour for ‘home’.

“You adopted eight girls?” Kylie asked me after I returned and explained her. “What are we going to do with eight girls?”

“Turn them into a section, I don’t know, I couldn’t just let them starve.”

Kylie mumbled something inaudible before she left to tell the others.

“Perhaps they will have taken in some of them after Alex gave them ‘the glare’,” Tom said at the fire after he returned and joined the discussion.

“He gave them the glare?” Kylie asked her brother.

“Just before he left, he did. A parting gift for abandoning the orphans. You should have seen the looks on their faces. They almost literally disappeared into the earth beneath them out of shame.” Tom said with a smile.

“What glare? I just gave them a stern look. I was angry at them. Leaving the kids to fend for themselves...”

“You don’t know about your famous glare?” Kate asked me. “It was your most fearsome weapon to humble us into submission. The whole platoon feared it. We would do anything you asked of us to avoid that look.”

“Anything?” I asked Kate with a wicked smile.

“Eh... well, that is to say... eh...” She started stumbling with her words, becoming red at her cheeks, before muttering herself into silence.

The others had to laugh at my teasing, making Kate blush even more.

“It’s okay, Kate, I wouldn’t ask anything of you, that you wouldn’t want yourself from me.” I teased her more with her fantasies.

“Perhaps...” I added a moment later.

“Well, look at you, it seems Kara is not the only one to have become more confident.” Kylie grinningly said to me. “Perhaps we could experiment further with this new-found brazen manners of yours, in the cave.”

I recoiled at that. “Sadly I must admit I don’t have the stomach for that kind of experiments tonight, and I have to preserve my energy for tomorrow.”

“Oh... too bad,” Kara faked her whining.

Time for me to return to safer grounds...

“Now, about the orphans, we will need to set them at their own place, not too far away from us, but still far enough to not deplete the hunting grounds or let them feel too dependent on us. Tom, do you know a place like that?” I resumed the meeting that went long into the night.

In the early morning, Kate and Kylie would take out the orphans on a walk, learning them to do it silently, without disturbing the forest, without being seen by others. They would end up at their new camping place, awaited by Kara and I. After a few hours I saw them gather at their new circle.

“Only six of them, I thought there were eight?” I asked Kylie after counting them.

“The two youngest girls were at the last moment taken in by some other families.” She answered.

Hmm... perhaps Tom and Kate were right after all, with the assumption that my so-called glare could humble the villagers into shame and submission.

That left six young women. Girls actually. No skills whatsoever, very unconfident, helpless and terribly hurt, having been more or less shunned by the villagers, they had known all their lives. Suddenly they were thrust in the hands of self-confident, skilled, commanding figures having seen the horrors of war and somehow surviving in the forests as a tight-nit group on their own.

They must be scared shitless by me. Me, the commander of the section, with a stern frown looking at them.

I tried so soften my expression, but I couldn’t, still thinking about the outrage I felt at the villagers abandoning them. Even after I gave them the food I had prepared for them, they could barely utter a word of thanks, eyes downcast, let alone ask in full sentences what was expected of them.

They needed a leader of their own, but without knowing their social skills, their individual courage or their adaptive skills, it was too early to see who would fit the bill the best.

“Right, then... come on, sit down, eat your food, lots of things to do before you can go to sleep.” I ordered them.

“Kara, can you give them the laydown of the camp they will need to dig?”

Kara nodded and I proceeded with asking Kate to teach them how to fish, make a fire and prepare their food, and then I asked Kylie to continue the lessons with a first rundown how to handle guns.

"I’ll be here starting with setting up the first digging of their camp." I ended.

Perhaps they would get more used to me, just being silent at work.

Digging is dirty work. While the girls were still there I undid my jacket, sweater and shirt. I had become leaner, more toned in my muscles these past weeks.

Still not like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme but those guys are in their sixties or older, so I had still plenty of time to get there. Damn, I am even telling stupid jokes to myself these days...

I heard some of the girls giggle when they saw me gathering my materials in naked upper-torso, but I didn’t pay attention to them, as they were leaving with Kara to gather materials in the empty houses to set up camp, all the while explaining what was needed to be done, to stay hidden and safe.

Kate was leaving to set up preparations for the fishing lessons, which left Kylie with me.

“Poor girls...” She said.

“Yes.” I sighed.

“Have you heard them giggle?”

“I did, they are still girls after all... I mean... eh... not that I didn’t hear you three giggle before... I mean. Fuck... I better shut up and listen now, right?”

“Yes. You better.” She said with narrowed eyes, while cleaning the guns.

“You must know they are very intimidated by you. Kate and I find it very sexy, but we can handle that quite well. Those girls however will in the end try to vie for your attention, wanting to be praised by you and so, and some of them might become very fond of you...”

“I know that is the risk. They’ll get over it.”

“Like we did?”

“Fuck, should have kept my mouth shut...”

“You’ll learn when to listen to your women. I’ll let it slide for now.” She mocked me.

My women...

“And when they learn about you having three women as girlfriends... because they will figure it out eventually, perhaps even sooner than later... one might even want to join...”

I looked up at her and said sincerely:

“It is not my intention, it never would be my intention to use their developing feelings, if any of those would have, as a way of getting to sleep with them.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Alex.” She said. “It’s not like you are wearing us out to begin with...” She grumbled, but just loud enough to be heard by me.

Uh-oh... sexual frustration is already setting in. Careful, Alex, careful... She’s still cleaning the guns...

“Am I to understand I made the wrong decision with adopting the orphans?”

“Of course you didn’t!”

“Am I then to understand that you don’t want me to be involved in training the orphans?”

“No, you have to be there for them. Give them the feeling they are not abandoned, but meant for something greater in their lives.”

“So, you don’t want anyone else to join our arrangement? Because if that’s the case, I will not. You women have always decided for me in that regard.”

“We did indeed. We simply didn’t give you a choice, except that you felt something more than care, attraction and respect for us.”

“So?”

“No, we wouldn’t interfere, we would even welcome others.”

“Why on earth would you do that? You just said I can barely keep up as it is now, failing at giving you enough attention and intimacy.”

“You’re not failing. I was teasing you. Sure, some of us, well... perhaps all of us have fantasies that we want to see fulfilled, but we know you are not ready for that. As for attention, we are very lucky to have you in our lives. We know you love us. And because we love you, we limit ourselves in demanding everything at once to make us happy. If we would **** you to do everything we wanted, you would get hurt.”

“Then why bring in others?”

“Because we are so happy to have you in our lives. And we are not selfish enough to forbid others to not love you too, or to be loved by you. Just like we gave Kara a chance.”

“Huh. True.”

“But why speculate on the feelings the orphans might develop or not, or speculate on the feelings I might develop for them?” I continued.

“Because we know you, Alex. You give away your love freely. You already cared for these orphans even before you met them. I saw your angry look at them. You weren’t angry at them, you were angry about the causes for their abandonment, like you said yesterday, explaining the reason for your ’stern look’.”

“Huh. True again.”

“So if you can care for people even before you meet them, what’s to say you wouldn’t develop other feelings for some of them? It is not so far-fetched as you would think at first.”

“So? You want me to develop feelings? I don’t see...”

“Not like that. Feelings can’t be **** because we tell you to. You know that, you even told me the first time we had a real conversation, in the foxhole...”

“Huh. True again and again.”

She certainly has developed a habit of being right all the times...

“All I want to say is, knowing you, chances are that you could develop feelings for one or more of them, and if those feelings are returned in a good way, we don’t want you to **** yourself not to feel. Certainly not because of us. On the contrary, we would just welcome them.”

With that understanding of me, her confession of loving me, right there and then, I could not help myself to drop my shovel, walk towards her and hug her, giving her a kiss.

“Just because I love you, you know me, and still love me for it.”

“Bah, get away, you’re dirty and stink of sweat and mud.” But she smiled brightly, when I returned to pick up my shovel again.