Snapshot

[konomaigo]

A small boy, perhaps ten or eleven, stood at the edge of the street peering back and forth along the street as if something might jump out and gobble him up. His cheeks were smeared with dirt from days, or weeks of accumulation. He scratched the back of his leg with a shoe that once was quite nice but now falling apart around his feet. They didn't provide much protection from either the rain-swept streets or the bitter cold nights. His jacket hung loose off his shoulders to nearly his knees, one of his hands completely lost in the sleeve. The other sleeve bunched up at his hand, where he held a small plastic container now devoid of peanut butter. A leather satchel hung over his shoulder held up well to the abuse the boy had put it through, obviously well crafted and dependable even through use. It held only two items: '

' and '

', distributed among the two pouches in the satchel.

He was one of a thousand small boys in the City, all lost, all clutching the last vestiges of their memories lest they, too, are stolen away.