The boy snapped out of his dazed look, he didn't seem to be entirely sure about what he was just thinking about. An invasive and corroding feeling lingered in his mind. He exaggeratedly shook his head.
The boy lay himself down on a brown cot, his head resting amongst the dust. For a while his eyes did not close as he observed the battered walls that were filled with markings and tears.
Outside the tattered shelter, a pair stood. The man with his hair long and messy and standing at a height slightly above average, the woman beside him was as tall as his shoulders, her face should have been pleasant, but it was veiled behind deeply entrenched lines of stress and an expression of crazed intensity.
The man took the lead and entered the home. He walked through the doorway into the cramped room. As he continued, moving from the stone road into the shelter made of scrap metal, an annoying sound echoed.
The man circled the room a couple of times to assess the situation. Stopping finally, he found himself at the foot of a brown cot, his shadow looming over the boy who dozing away with a cute and innocent look.
The man looked at this boy, his raven black hair was a mess, his cheeks had a hint of baby fat despite the child being underweight. The man reaches out his hand towards the boy's face which had drool running down his right cheek.
And without hesitation, his hand closed around the boy's face, a grip cold and unrelenting, the iron claw biting into the softness of his cheek. The man asks, Where is the food boy? Don't tell me you ate it all. With each syllable, the man's grip tightened, crushing the brittle cheekbones of the boy.
The boy's frail hands wrapped around those of the man, halfway between trying to pry them off and begging for mercy. The man did not break his glare even as the boy's hands tapped on his own repeatedly.
The woman looked on from behind, her brows furrowed as she looked from the boy to the man and back.
As the face continued to be crushed, the boy's mouth moved gradually and a weak sound came out to inform the man, I swear it wasn't here when I got home, someone must've taken it.
The man's visage maintained its fierceness but he did retract his arms.
As the boy massaged his red cheeks, he warily gazed at the man, before scaredly retreating his eyes towards the woman behind him.
The woman looked at the child, her gaze not entirely sympathetic however she did not offer any solace to the boy.
A myriad of different expressions surfaced on the boy's face as he looked at the two figures.
A dozen things passed over the boy's face and none of them stayed. At first he looked afraid. Then ashamed. Then blank.
He stared at the man. He stared at the woman. His lips pressed together.
The boy touched his cheek where the blood had risen. His eyes were wide but not wet.
If at one time, the way the boy looked at these two held a special reverence that was reserved for one's parents.
If of late, his regard for them was a palimpsest of what it was before, with a hint of sorrow.
Then now they would be divested of whatever grace he had given them, the look on his face resembled the one he had given to those violent men at the bar, to those women who would make passes at a young boy like him, to those delinquents on the street. They were rats.
The woman observed the changes on the prince of rats' face. Then a look towards the man, his dishevelled long hair and his face with an unreadable anger. The man in his tattered clothes and worn goatskin leather jacket had his hands to his temples as he faced the floor.
With a calming breath, the woman finally took action.
As the prince of rats was entranced and deep in thought, a whispering gust of wind blew into the residence. In his ear the prince heard a strange sentence, You are not like them.
He looked up once again, this time the woman's face was nearing his own.
She looked at the prince but didn't seem quite sure about what she herself wanted to do. As the woman debated with herself, continuing to steal glances at the man who had not moved from his pose for quite some time, the woman noticed the prince's eyes rise to meet her own.
But the expression on his face was not what she had been expecting. The boy looked at her with confusion.
The scraping of metal on metal echoed as the man stood up from his seat and without sparing a glance at the other two in the room, he walked out of the room. The woman soon followed, but not without looking back at that child multiple times with a complicated expression.
The boy looked back, his eyes fixed on the woman.
Her silhouette moved through the rusted threshold. The hem of her threadbare skirt caught on the jagged edge of the door and she yanked it loose without pause. Then she was gone.
The boy was again alone, surrounded by the fading walls of the room and the messy floors, only this time he was comforted by the sweet whispering in the wind. The boy could faintly make out what it was telling him, Do not be fooled by her, it says.
…
Mere hours later the sun came into view as a tiny speck in the distance. Of course, though the rings that their society was built on were illuminated, their 'sky' was still that dark, lonely void.
The boy awoke to the grumbles in his stomach. Tiredly rising, he sat at the foot of the cot and scanned the room. Carefully disembarking while making minimum noise, he peered into the doorless opening that led into the room where the pair would sleep, confirming that the two had already gone, the boy entered.
The room was not unlike his own. The material all around was the same composite made of slag materials, the dull grey base flecked with melted plastic and rust-colored oxides. A mix of lackadaisical construction and a lack of maintenance led to its current situation.
Inside, the boy moved carefully. The floor creaked and groaned beneath his weight, each step punctuated by the quiet sighs of shifting metal. He moved past the makeshift bed where the man would sleep, past the woman's tattered shawl tossed across a low chair. He approached the bent crate that served as a shelf. There, half-buried beneath a broken lamp, lay a book.
The boy flipped open the pages and a few specks of dust flew off. The boy traced the fingers under the words of the book, often furrowing his brows and frequently pausing. Occasionally, the book would contain images of beautiful places that would leave the boy's eyes starry.
A lush green forest with a great wall that stretched wider than the eye could see, a city built from a pyramid of stone, a sandy pyramid built into a rocky mountain, a giant stone statue of a bearded man, a majestic citadel of white.
The boy looked over these images and the accompanying text over and over again.
The boy eventually closed the book and returned it to where it had been before.
The hue of the boy's eyes seemed much clearer than they had the previous night, a slight shine to them, but there was a darkness still visible. A faint whispering in the wind still called out to him, though less audible.
Taking another breath, the boy approached the door that leads out of the house, he had wasted much of the day already, the days here were short and so it wouldn't be much longer before darkness befell them.
The boy walked the disarrayed streets and by the time the darkness began creeping in, he found himself at the entrance of a bar. The boy entered, pushing through a wooden hinged door, his eyes beheld a scene as rowdy as ever.
But in that chaos sat a lone figure unperturbed by the chaos around him, his eyes already fixed on the boy by the time the boy had noticed him.
There sat the strange man.