Challenge #02552-F362: Find a Family
She was small, almost dangerously thin, but fast. Her parents, addled yet again on drink and the newest designer drugs, didn't even notice as she left their quarters in search of food. She heard, as she was contemplating swiping an unattended sandwich, that one of the big havenworlder freighters was docked and was on loading cargo for their next run. Large cargo freighters usually meant larger amounts of food. This wouldn't be the first time this young human had snuck aboard freighters, swiped food, and escaped them before they left. But this time she wasn't so lucky. She was in their kitchens gathering food when the doors locked, as they routinely did when the freighter was preparing to leave a station. She was stuck there. When the havenworlder crew member discovered the kid, she was sitting on the floor hungrily devouring another sandwich. But they were now far from the station and, really, she didn't want to go back to uncaring people who hadn't even realized she was gone. -- Anon Guest
They called her Bub, when they didn't call her Move, so it seemed reasonable that Bub was her name. She had learned to be fast and had learned what foods were good and what foods were bad, and how to keep as clean as Great Korprat deemed acceptable. The big people were sleeping and all the food Bub could reach had gone bad. The big people could eat it anyway, and would, but Bub needed to find something better.
She had been out of the apartment before. The big people left magic cards lying around and Bub knew that the magic cards made doors open. She found the one with the prettiest ribbon, put on her backpack, and scuttled out into the bigger world. It was always a race in the bigger world, between feet, around movers, through doors that her magic card might not make open, but she eventually found somewhere with food to eat. There were big boxes on trolleys and Bub found a place between the boxes. She could use a screwdriver to poke holes in the cardboard until she had a hole big enough to pick the cardboard apart and extract a packet from within. Lots of times, it was good good food.
This one had a picture of a peanut on it. Peanuts were bad food and made her sick. Bub turned around and picked at another box. Cookies! Jackpot! She ate those one by one while she picked at a third box just to see what was there. Something green. The big people always said Bub needed greens, and when they got them for her, they always made sure she ate them. Well. She had greens now, so she ate them. These ones were crunchy, and salty, and smelled like fish, but they tasted okay, so Bub didn't mind. She definitely didn't notice the trolley moving until it stopped.
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