Chapter Text
Festus eyed the crying girl in Priapus' arms, his father said that he'd be collecting his little sister today. From the district mutts who stole her, who hid her from them, the girl squirmed and thrashed as if in a bid to be free of his father's friend. She's older than he thought she'd be. Roughly nine or ten if he were being generous. And also immensely tiny, so tiny that he partly afraid Priapus is going to crush her.
She wails and screams and curses in a language he doesn't understand.
He takes it a sign of their wickedness; the district mutts who stole her from them, a sign that father in all his glory and goodness had been deceived and this was the price for their failure. They went so far as giving her a district name as if stealing her wasn't enough - they just had to mark their savagery on her too. He hates her name, the one they had called her - already he asked father if they could give her a new one, one more suited to a Creed than the one she'd been forced to bear.
Father said he could even help pick it out all on his own!
It would be hard for her to adjust to her new name, but he found his choice already ten times better than her old one. A noble thing, Antonie was after all much better than Lamina had ever been. The Avoxes are quick to guide Priapus and his still shrieking sister - half-sister - towards her new room. Father would be back soon. Back from dealing with those lonesome rebels who decidedly to foolishly take a Creed child for their own.
Then Antonie would get to meet father and all would be well.
Festus was certain of it.