Chapter 2 - a second chance

"Fabia! Franziska! Whatever your name is! L-Let me go!" The girl shouted, thrashing around in a vain attempt to break free from the rope binding her hands and legs. When her efforts yielded nothing but rope-burned wrists, the girl hunched over with a huff. "I'm sorry, okay?!" She begged, pausing to catch her breath, "Please!"

"For the hundredth time, my name is FRIDA. Get it right, thief." The slender, icy-blonde girl sneered. Her pale blue eyes squinted as she pressed the lead tip of her pencil into the paper in her hands. "And stop moving! You're only making this last longer than it has to."

Tears welled in the corner of the emaciated girl's eyes. Letting out a tiny, submissive whimper, she stopped squirming and leaned her back against the side of the oven. Keeping her head still, she glanced longingly toward the distant kitchen window, wishing she could somehow jump out and disappear into the crowded streets.

Frida rubbed her chin, glancing up from the paper. "Hmm..." A grin tugged at her lips as she tilted her head slightly, letting her twin pigtails bounce freely as she stared at the captive before her.

Looking back at Frida, the bound girl's face twisted itself into a stern grimace. "Drawing me is weird enough." She whined, "Do you have to stare at me like a creep, too?!"

"Sorry!" Frida laughed, looking back down at her sketch. "I'm trying to figure out what color your eyes are. It’s kind of hard to tell."

"Do your eyes not work right or something?" The girl seethed, "They're brown, idiot."

"Nuh-uh!" Frida argued, shaking her head. She paused for a moment to finish rendering her captive's tight jawline, no doubt a result of her unfortunate economic circumstances. "They're way more complex than just 'brown'! You've got some other weird stuff going on in there, too...”

“...If I'm being totally honest, little miss thief," the skinny blonde girl continued, leaning in for a closer look at her subject, "I'm a little jealous. They're really something to behold."

"My name is Sophie!" The bound girl replied, trying and failing to hide her blushing face. "If you're gonna make such a big deal out of YOUR stupid name, at least do the same for me, you hypocrite!"

"Well, Sophie," Frida replied with a smug smile, "If respect is what you're looking for, maybe you should've thought twice before you gorged yourself on so much of our valuable merchandise like a greedy farm hog."

Sophie's face burned even hotter as she glanced down at her old, loose-fitting dress, still splattered with the sticky evidence of last night's crime. Over the past few hours, the bulging mass of sugar and dough in her stomach had shrunk gradually in size. At the present moment, only a slight incline remained on her midsection.

**Where did all of that stuff even go?** she thought, eyes running over her figure. Though it was barely noticeable, the excess nutrients her body didn't need from her binge had, in fact, been deposited as a thin layer of pudge on her belly, hips, breasts, and thighs.

Overall, though she was still thin as a rail, the girl was now, ever so slightly, less so.

At this, Frida laughed, adding in the finishing touches to Sophie's hauntingly thin form. "Really, I'm almost impressed!" She giggled, turning her paper around to show off her work. "I never would have guessed that a walking skeleton like you could eat that much in so little time."

"I-I'm not a pig..." Sophie looked down so quickly she nearly spilled the shame she was brimming with. "I was just really hungry, okay?"

**Not a pig?** Frida thought to herself, biting her lip as she looked upon the mortified girl sitting before her, **Well, you certainly can eat like one...**

Before Frida could get another word in, a high-pitched, tinny sound rang out across the bakery.

"One moment!" Frida shouted with a smile, setting her pencil and paper down on a nearby table. Before leaving the kitchen she leaned in to whisper in her captive's ear. "This'll take a sec. Don't make any weird noises back here while I'm gone, or you'll scare away our PAYING customers."

Without even bothering to look up, the poor thief nodded slowly, not looking to get into any more trouble than she was already in.

"Guten Morgen!" Frida chirped, stepping out of the kitchen and into the main room of the bakery. The frigid air that had sneaked through the open door kissed the back of her neck. "What can I get for you?"

"Frida, it's eight o'clock." A tall old woman sighed, shutting the door behind her with a light kick. "We don't open for another hour."

"Oh! H-Hey, Mia!" Frida stuttered, dropping her rehearsed customer service voice. "You're back already?" She played with the prussian blue ribbon at the end of one of her pigtails, peering through the large window that occupied most of the building's front facade. "But where are the guards?"

"Out on some silly parade." The old woman replied, slipping off her thick coat and placing it on the antique rack by the door. "Some random Habsburg princess I've never heard of is visiting the Prince-Elector's son today. What that poor girl thinks she'll find in Dresden, I haven't the slightest."

"Hey, we're not THAT bad!" Frida responded with a sweet giggle. "But, if the guards are busy, what are we supposed to do with Sophie?"

Mia shook her head as she made her way to meet her granddaughter at the counter. "Oh, how nice, the little piglet has a name." she replied, glaring through the empty doorway behind her granddaughter.

The elder sighed. "To be honest, I have no idea. We've got work to do, and I'm not about to suffer that awful weather for a second time just to watch another frivolous parade. We can't leave her upstairs with our valuables, but we can't keep her down here where the customers can see her, can we?"

"Then what do we do?"

"The bin is full, isn't it? Just throw her out with the rest of the trash."

Frida's heart sank. "We can't do that! She'll freeze to death!"

"She's just a bum, Frida. A bum who ate hundreds of thaler worth of gourmet pastries meant for the Emperor's court!" Mia said, raising her voice loud enough for Sophie to hear from the kitchen. "The greedy little swine gets what she deserves. Why do you care?"

"I dunno..." Frida mumbled. She turned away to hide her slightly flushed cheeks. "But we can't just leave her to die in the cold."

Letting out a long sigh, Mia walked behind the counter. "Despite your mother's best efforts, you've grown up to be a kind-hearted young woman, Frida." she smiled, placing her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Maybe if Otto was still working here, we'd have an extra set of hands to deal with this ourselves. But we're already stretched thin without him as it is. We just don't have the time to deal with her."

Frida turned around to peek at Sophie through the empty doorway. She was only able to glance at the thin girl's sadness-filled eyes for a split-second before she curled up into a tight ball on the kitchen floor.

She tucked her hands behind her back. "...Then why don't we have her work for us?"

Frida could just barely hear a small gasp from the other room. Grinning, she glanced behind herself a second time, catching Sophie staring up at her like a helpless animal.

"Pardon?" Mia replied, bending over to pick up a loose silver thaler that had apparently fallen out of Sophie's bag the previous night. "You can't be serious."

"Instead of handing her over to the guards, we could make her work off the value of the stuff she ate!" Frida explained. "We need another worker around here, don't we? We wouldn't even have to pay her!"

"Bless your heart, Frida." Mia smiled as she placed the loose coin into the small chest Sophie had broken into. "As soon as we untie her, she's going to run."

At that, Frida dashed away to retrieve her sketch. "Nuh-uh!" she said, proudly showing off her impressively realistic rendering. "I drew THIS while I was gone!"

"Instead of opening the store?"

"Not the point!" Frida smiled awkwardly, "If she runs, we give this to the guards, and they'll plaster her mug across every town in Saxony!"

The young girl glanced out to the bustling street outside. Even those privileged enough to be donning thick fur coats were walking as fast as possible, eager to return indoors. "That being said, I don't think she could run even if she wanted to. It's brutal out there, and she's only got that ugly, frosting-covered sheet to wear."

"Where would she stay?"

"My bed's big enough!"

"Is this even legal?"

"Who cares?" Frida giggled, "Who's she gonna tell? The city guards?"

The floor creaked under Mia's feet as she approached Sophie. Face fixed with a disgusted frown, she glares into the girl's shimmering, hopeful eyes. "Fine." She sighed, bending down to the skeletal girl's eye level. "You heard us. What do you think about that arrangement?"

Avoiding direct eye contact with the matriarch, Sophie responded with a tiny, silent nod. "O-Okay..." she answered weakly, her defiant, snarky attitude all but replaced by quiet humility. "I-I can work for you! Don't throw me out! I'll do anything, p-p-please!"

"You promise not to run?"

"Yes! I promise!"

"Do you promise never to lay another one of your greedy little hands on my merchandise?"

Sophie cringed, feeling yet another heavy wave of shame wash over her. "Y-Yes. I promise you..."

"Hmph." The old woman huffed, standing up. "Very well."

The old woman need not look far to find her granddaughter, who had been peeking through the open doorway during the last exchange.

"So," Frida smiled, "She can stay with us?"

"She'll work here for a year. That's how long it's going to take for her to earn back the value of everything she ate."