As soon as awareness returned and Alaric felt himself come back into focus, his gaze slowly drifted toward the street. There... his bread lay scattered across the ground.
The paper bag from the bakery had torn open, flung aside somehow when he'd nearly stumbled into the road. Some of the bread had rolled to the edge of the sidewalk, while others were crushed and broken on the asphalt.
But something else caught his eye. A small flock of wild birds, about five of them, tiny bodies covered in brownish feathers.
The birds were pecking eagerly at the pieces of bread strewn about. The soft tapping of their beaks against the crust made a sound sharper than the hum of passing traffic. They looked like they'd stumbled upon a spontaneous feast in the middle of the city's cold, hard streets.
