The rain had been falling since dawn, spitting cold and cruel over the narrow streets of Edinburgh. Cobblestones slick with water reflected the dim gas lamps, and Angus MacLeod, as he had been called before the world began to strip him of all names, pulled his threadbare coat tighter against the wind. The chill wasn't in the air alone; it crawled into his bones, whispering that he was already a ghost among the living.
He kept his head low, moving quick and silent. In his coat pocket, a small leather purse pressed cold against his chest. He had not planned the theft. It was hunger that made him bold, desperation that made his hand so light, so sure. A butcher had bent down to lift a fallen knife, distracted, and Angus had acted. One hand, one motion, and the purse was his.
A footstep clattered behind him — sharp, echoing off the narrow closes. He froze, heart hammering like a drum. The butcher turned, eyes sharp, mouth opening in a wordless cry. Panic rose, bitter and hot, as if the cobblestones themselves were pushing him toward ruin.
"Ye thief! Stop there!" the butcher shouted.
Angus did not run. Why fight? Resistance would only mark him further, make him more visible, more real to eyes that already despised him. He was too late anyway. The city, the very stones and alleys, had decided his fate before the hand could even clutch the purse.
A crowd gathered, drawn by the shouting, by curiosity, by the silent joy of witnessing another man's fall. He could feel their eyes like claws, tearing at the flesh of his identity. In their gaze, he was no longer Angus MacLeod. He was nothing — no son of the Highlands, no clerk, no man. He was already labeled: The Offender, soon to be stripped of his name entirely, rendered a ghost condemned to wander in broad daylight.
Hands seized him, iron and rough, dragging him along the rain-slick streets. He fought nothing. Every instinct told him he was already defeated — not by law, not by the butcher, but by the eyes of a society that had decided his worth. As he was hauled toward the magistrate's office, Angus's thoughts spun, bitter and biting:
I steal… I still.
The phrase rose in his mind like smoke. — the act that marked him, condemned him, made him a thing of shame— the stubborn whisper that he existed, that some fragment of himself, unbroken, remained, even as the city and its laws sought to erase him utterly.
And in that moment, as rain soaked through coat and hair, as the magistrate's office drew near with its flickering lamps and colder judgments, Angus MacLeod understood something he had always feared: society could take his name, could take his freedom, could brand him and spit him out, but it could not yet touch the raw, trembling pulse of his consciousness — the part that still watched, still felt, still lived.