Ranting Robin

This may be part of a story-seed Nathan planted a while back, or it may not.  I haven't decided yet.

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If you want someone to notice your problems, be rich.

Especially if that problem is being missing.

See, poor folk disappear all the time- run away, kidnapped, killed- but no one cares.  Well, no one but other poor folk, and obviously we don’t count, or we’d have money.  Every day, dozens of disappeared denizens of the District, and no one blinks an eye.  Can’t notice somethin’ missing if you didn’t notice it was there in the first place, right?  People starvin’ to death in the streets, and you’d think they’re just so many cobblestones placed for decorative effect.  But just one rich fattie vanishes, and suddenly the general population takes notice.

Miles Plenus didn’t know my name, but I knew his.  Everybody in the District knows his name, ‘cos one way or another, he owns at least half of it.  Bully boys breathin’ down our necks for us to pay double the rent we did last week, ‘cos Mister Plenus raised ‘em in the meantime.  And there he is on the television, talkin’ about how it’s his Christian duty to provide affordable housing to the downtrodden, desperate denizens of the District.

Only reason we’re so downtrodden is ‘cos we’re under the heel of the likes of him.  Sad thing is, his rents actually might be considered “affordable” next to what the other guys demand.  He is the proverbial lesser of evils.

Just wish it were only two.

So Plenus goes missing, and while we don’t much care, they do.  Flipping, flapping, jabbering about like so many jays, while we little brown sparrows go about our business in the dirt.