Diane headed over to a desk and started talking to the lady behind it. Diane was going to get me a name tag. I spelled my name for them and told them that June 30th was my birthday when they asked. The lady was typing on the computer in front of her. She asked Diane, The lady looked at me, "Shall I put your name on the tag as her guardian?"

Diane thought about it, "Yes, we can do that for now. We can always change it later if we need to."

I inhaled in surprise. Guardian? As in guardian angel? Surely this could not be coincidence. And she was going to be my guardian! I wasn't too sure what she meant by they could change it later if they needed to. Perhaps it had been like when Auntie had lent me her guardian angel.

The lady behind the desk nodded, "Easily done, just let us know if it changes. I will have that ready in a few moments." She clicked a few buttons on her mouse and I heard a printer kicking in. Shortly afterwards she held out a white object out to me, "Here you go dear. Welcome to the Wainwright Fort."

I slowly came forward to take it. I looked at it, it was a white name tag in a plastic holder. It had my name in the middle in big printing, underneath that it read "Guardian: Forager Diane (Matthew's Group)" and some small numbers in the corner. I wasn't sure what some of the words meant, but it was quite clear that Diane was now my guardian. It was an amazing feeling.

Diane gently took the name tag from my hands and knelt down in front of me to pin it on my shirt. She grinned at me, "There we go, now you have a name tag just like everyone else has."

I glanced at her shirt, she had a tree green badge with her name on it. I realized that everyone I had seen had some sort of name tag. The ones on the bus had been green, Nancy's was been pink, the lady behind the desk had a pale yellow color. My eyes went back to my white paper name tag and back to Diane's metal green one, "Why does yours look different?"

She smiled at me, "Mine used to be white like yours. I got a green metal badge when I graduated from my training last year."

Training? Could I get training like she had? I looked at her with growing excitement, "Can I have training too?"

She chuckled, "Yes, there are different classes to choose from. If you like, I can show you some of the classes later on and you can talk with the trainers if they are around."

I nodded enthusiastically. I wondered what kind of training she had taken in the past. Was there training to be a guardian angel?

She turned to start walking again, "Let's go get you some more clothes and a winter jacket, okay?"

I nodded and eagerly followed, "Okay."

A kind old lady in a big room full of clothing guided us to things that would fit me. I got two jackets, some shirts, pants, and underthings. I also got gloves, boots and other outdoor clothing.

We left there and Diane looked at me, "Let's see if we can get a bunk bed. Perhaps we can see if there is a spare dresser for your clothes as well."

I nodded enthusiastically. She led me down another hallway. A lot of people must live here, we passed dozens of them in the hallways. Now that I was looking, I could see everyone had a name tag of some sort. Diane said that the fancy metal ones were called badges. I saw lots of badges and also quite a few paper ones like I had.

We entered an area that had all sorts of furniture stacked up in towers. Diane managed to find someone who worked here and he led us down a veritable maze of furniture until we reached a section that had dressers of various sizes. The man looked at me, "You can pick out any of the smaller ones. Go take a look."

I glanced at Diane for permission and she nodded. I wandered between the stacked up dressers. The blue one was nice, but it wasn't a small one. I didn't like the trim on the white one. I looked up, perhaps there were more dressers stacked up higher. A glimpse of purple caught my eye.

I wandered around the one stack of dressers to get a better look at it. It was a darker purple with small white and yellow butterflies on the sides. I loved it. For some reason it was in the rafters instead of being stacked up with the rest of the dressers.

I glanced at the Diane and the man who were talking with one another while watching me. I pointed to the dresser, "Can I have that purple one please?"

They walked forward so they could see the dresser around the stacks of desks and dressers. The man blinked as he saw it and grinned at me, "I am surprised that you spotted that. It isn't going to be easy to get it down. Are you sure you don't want one of the others?"

There must have been a reason it was in the rafters. I looked sadly at Diane, not wanting to be rude to the man. I had really wanted that dresser, I loved purple and it was the only purple one here. Diane crouched down and motioned me to come over. I came forward and she slipped two Kitkat bars into my hands. I blinked in confusion, she knew I didn't really like candy. She motioned towards the man.

I caught on and spun around with a grin to hold the candy bars out to him. He stared at the candy for a moment and started to chuckle, "Well, you sure have some strong bargaining items in your hands. If you want that dresser I can trade those two chocolate bars to get it down and put it in your room."

He held out his hand sideways, I looked at Diane in confusion. She smiled, "If you want to do the trade shake his hand to seal the deal."

Oh, I now remembered my Dad doing that when he bought a car once. I whirled around and shook his hand, passing him the chocolate bars. He stood and pocketed them with a grin, "I haven't had a chocolate bar since summer." Diane just chuckled, as if she had known exactly how he would react when presented with candy.

We moved to the area with the beds. Diane and the man discussed which bunk bed might fit into the room she had. Her room was quite small and the roof sloped down at an odd angle that prevented most bunk beds from fitting. They finally found one that might work. I looked around while they discussed what they had to do to it for it to fit. I saw her pass him a box of smarties as a trade.

Diane and I left the man so he could go about his work. We came into a huge room that smelled of cooking food. I wasn't particularly hungry, but my mouth started watering with the smell of fresh bread and roasting meat. It smelled much better than stale crackers.

Diane led me over to the tables that had big trays of food on them. She showed me how to grab a plate and dish up whatever I wanted to try. There were so many different things and I wanted to try a bit of almost everything. We took a seat at an empty table. There were only a few people in the room, but there were lots of tables so there were probably a lot of people who ate here.

Most of it tasted delicious. I forgot how good scrambled eggs had tasted. The fried onion tasted terrible though, Diane said that I could just put it on the side of my plate since I had tried it. She showed me where to put our dirty dishes before we headed off down the hallway again.

I was beginning to feel hopelessly lost in this place as we went up one corridor and down another hallway. This place was huge and I doubted I had been down any of these hallways yet. I just followed Diane and tried to memorize the path we were taking for the future. She eventually opened up a door and went into a room. No one else was here. The room had a book shelf, toys, and an exercise bike in the corner.

Diane turned to me, "I have to work out for a bit, so I am going to ride that bike and you can look through the books and play with the toys okay? We can also talk about anything you want to."

I wandered over to the toys as she shut the door. She put a few books on a low table and got on the bike and started pedalling. None of the toys interested me in the least. I pulled a book off of the book shelf and opened it. It had pretty pictures of plants. I recognized the one from my salad earlier. A few other pictures showed some pretty flowers. I murmured, "Are these edible?"

Diane glanced over and replied, "Why don't you bring that chair beside me and we can look through it together?" I blinked in surprise, how had she heard me? I had been mostly talking to myself. I had barely even heard my faint whisper, I had no clue how she heard me from across the room over the bicycle.

Still, doing something together? I really liked that idea. I quickly pulled the chair beside her and held the book up. As I turned the pages she told me if the plant was edible, or which parts were edible, as well as where it grew and how to collect it. It was really interesting and I tried to remember everything. I recognized several from the salads earlier and tried to tie their appearance and name to what I could recall of the taste. It was actually fun and I really enjoyed talking with her.

Eventually we left the room and Diane spoke to several people in blue uniforms in the hallway before heading off down the hallway. She stopped at a room with an older lady and two kids and knocked on the open door. Diane introduced me to the lady, apparently her name was Agatha and she was a teacher. Agatha smiled at me and spoke to the two children, "Why don't you play a game of hopscotch and get Laura to join you?"

They were around my age and eagerly asked me to join them. I wanted to play, but was nervous about leaving Diane. Diane noticed my hesitation and nodded at me, "Go play, they are just going over there and I will be right here."

I followed the other children while keeping an eye on Diane. I had no clue what I would do if she disappeared. The people I had met so far seemed nice enough, but I only wanted to stay with Diane. I played hopscotch with the kids and while I had fun, I noticed that I kept glancing to where Diane and Agatha sat while talking.

After a while Agatha called us over. Diane sat in a seat along the wall and pulled a book out of her pack and started reading while I joined the other two kids with Agatha. She was helping us read. I was ahead of the other kids and could read most words. Agatha helped me with a few I couldn't pronounce quite right. After some time the other kids were picked up by their parents. Diane remained with me and Agatha as they talked about things that Agatha usually taught the children.

Diane looked at me, "Agatha is a teacher and can help you learn to read better so you can take training later on. She might also be able to tell you about some types of training. I will probably be going back to town tomorrow to see if anyone else is trapped in a house. I will be outside of the base so you won't be able to come until you have enough training. Do you want to stay with her until I return?"

I felt torn, I didn't want to leave her, but I knew that if she said I didn't have enough training to come that I would not be allowed. Could Agatha teach me enough that I could go with Diane later on?

Diane smiled reassuringly, "The other two kids will be back here tomorrow and I will return from my work before their parents do."

I slowly nodded, accepting the inevitable. Diane smiled in approval, which caused me to grin in response. I loved seeing her smile. She reached over and gently ruffled up my hair, "That is a worry for tomorrow. You will be just fine and you can play games with the other kids as well." I giggled and danced out of her reach.

We said goodbye to Agatha and headed down for supper. I blinked in shock at how many people were in the mess hall. Almost every table was full and there were more people coming and going. I kept very close to Diane and followed her lead as we grabbed plates and filled them. She glanced around and headed to a table with two men. I took a seat beside Diane and shyly glanced at the two men across the table.

They looked surprised as they noticed me. The one smiled, "Hello, and who would you be?"

I wasn't used to being the centre of attention. I quietly responded, "I'm Laura."

He reached out his hand across the table, "I'm John. Nice to meet you. How long have you been here?"

I gingerly reached out and shook his hand, "Diane brought me here today."

The other man introduced himself as Nathan and he shook my hand. Diane chuckled quietly and I looked at her. She seemed amused by my shyness, "You will be seeing a lot of these two. They are nice."

I took her word for it, although she seemed to sense my reservations. This place was so busy that it had me on edge. I wasn't used to being around so many people, it was almost painful. I relaxed a bit once we finished supper and went back up to Diane's room.