Perspective: The Fragment
The lantern's hiss wrote a small storm in the circle of light ahead. I stood just outside it, shoulder to the wall, and counted my breaths until they stopped sounding like a debt I could not pay.
I stepped forward.
Something invisible insisted on pulling me down, steady as a hand on the back of my neck. Gravity. The name fit, but it did not negotiate. My knee wobbled; the ground seemed to lean away from me as if the street were a board set on a barrel. I reached for balance and found it already sliding out from under my feet. The wall took my weight without comment.
A second step went better. The third did not. The cut in my palm complained when I braced, a steady, bright ache that kept its own time. I turned my hand so the torn skin wouldn't drag along the stone and tried to move like someone who belonged to walking. It felt like remembering a staircase from a dream: the shape of it clear, the use of it missing.
Voices wandered by in pieces. A woman spoke with the soft command of someone who had said the same sentence a thousand times. A child tried to imitate the shape of a bird and got only laughter for it. Hooves clicked somewhere out of sight, a rhythm that wanted to set the pace of my steps. I let it, briefly, and then the rhythm outran me.
I kept to the building fronts, where the shadows made a narrow river. The street opened and narrowed, stones misaligned by years of feet and weather. Water pooled in shallow bowls worn by use. I avoided them until I didn't, and the cold climbed into my shoe and reminded me that feet were also part of me now.
A narrow door stood half open, a tongue of yellow spilling out and running thin over the street. Inside, someone sang a little off-key while a pot knocked its lid. The scent that followed made hunger pull its chair closer to my ribs. I turned my head away before my body could step inside without me.
There was a barrel tucked under an eave. A wooden lid leaned against it, damp and dark. A dipper hung by a nail, the handle polished where hands had asked it for help. I reached, then hesitated. The idea came late but clear: if the water belonged to someone, so did the dipper. Belonging was a map I didn't have.
Thirst argued louder than maps. I lifted the lid and found the moon where the water should have been, a pale coin floating in the dark. I dipped and brought the cup to my mouth. The first swallow went wrong, and I coughed it back out; the second went better, the third almost felt like something learned. Cold slid through me and put out a fire I had not known was burning.
I set the dipper back, the handle facing the way I had found it. It seemed right, as if returning small things to their beginning might keep larger things from tilting.
My legs tried to remind me they were not volunteers. Weakness had found places to live behind my kneecaps and along my calves. It climbed in when I was not looking and sat down heavily. I stood there until it grew bored. The lantern circle swung on its hook and drew a path across the stones. I followed it because choosing the light felt easier than choosing anything else.
The world hummed with its own thoughts: carts and shoes and one dog too proud of its bark. The noise made a low roof over me, and I was not tall enough to reach it. When the dog came close, it took stock of me with a seriousness I admired. It judged me harmless and kept its opinions to itself.
A man and a woman passed, speaking low. Their hands brushed and then remained near each other, not touching, as if a line connected them that I could not see. I knew the arrangement of fingers and the idea of warmth, but the thing between them was not contained by either. The word for it did not come. Another time, perhaps.
I walked because standing made my thoughts stack up and press down. The alley had let me go; now the street wanted to see if I could keep my promise to leave. The stones were not all equal. Some lifted themselves half a finger higher, and my foot caught and learned. My body adjusted by luck rather than intention. When a cart rattled by, I leaned into the wall again and let it have the middle of the world.
A sign creaked overhead, painted with a shape I almost understood: a cup, or a boot, or a bowl that wanted to be both. Letters followed it—language wearing clothes I recognized but could not tailor. My mind placed sounds under them anyway. The sounds were closer to a meaning, then not.
My breath went faster with the walking. Breath had seemed like a small job; it had hired more workers while I wasn't watching. Chest lifted, fell, negotiated. The night air moved through me and picked up grit on the way, leaving scratches that were not injuries but felt like them.
I looked down and saw that I had left no clear tracks on the stones. The idea bothered me, and then it did not. The place I had come from would not mark itself either.
At a corner, the street split. One way kept the lanterns in a neat row; the other way turned and sank and let the light thin itself along the cobbles until the dark wore it down. I stood where the decision lived and waited to see which direction would choose me. A small cold trickled along my spine. Fear made a tiny den there and lay down, watching. It did not bite. It asked questions.
I chose the light.
Along that path, shutters were drawn and doors secured with habits. I read the geometry of safety without understanding the arithmetic. Somewhere, a lock clicked and a voice finished a prayer and forgot it. I ran the backs of my fingers along the wall as I went, not for comfort but for proof that the world stayed where I left it.
The cut on my hand had glued a thin edge of skin to itself. When I flexed, it protested and opened again. A thin line, darker now, made its case with patience. I should have cleaned it better. Should—a word that felt like being corrected by someone who wasn't present.
I passed another barrel and did not touch it.
A breeze turned the lantern's flame into a tongue and licked the shadows farther down the street. In that brief brightening, I saw myself in a window: a pale shape, hair untidy, eyes too focused on nothing. The sight was a question asked by glass. I had no answer I could trust, so I looked away.
Steps came up behind me—two people, talking. I moved aside to give the part of the street that did not belong to me back to those who did. Their conversation broke across me like small waves against a post, and then it was past. One word lingered: debt. I understood the weight of it, though I did not yet know its currencies.
My legs tried to bargain for rest. I granted them a wall and gave them a minute to count. The counting stretched and folded. A lantern clicked as it settled on its hook. The night breathed, and I tried to match it.
The smell of baking reached me, faint and stubborn. I followed it a few steps before caution reminded me that smells pointed toward people, and people were questions I could not answer yet. I stood between the two instructions until they canceled each other out.
A narrow stair cut between buildings, dropping into a seam where the street's voice went quiet. I peered down and saw nothing worth naming. The dark there felt older than the dark above it. I left it alone.
The path of lanterns ran out at a small square where the stones were newer and cared for. A low fountain worked at its labor in the center, water spilling from a cracked mouth into a basin that kept trying to be still and failing. I went to it because it did not belong to anyone in particular. The water smelled less like wood and more like itself. I cupped some and let it run over my injured hand until the sting wrote its quick letters and then faded. The blood thinned and went away to live in the basin with other small surrenders.
I drank again, slower. The cold moved along the hollows in me and warned the hunger that tonight it would not choose everything.
Around the square, windows watched without interest. A moth battered itself against a flame and failed to learn. The fountain kept speaking to the stone in the language water prefers. My body loosened its grip on its own alarm. Balance visited and, for a few breaths, stayed.
I sat on the lip of the basin because sitting felt like an honest answer. The stone pressed back, less cruel than the alley had been. I let my feet dangle and listened to the city explain itself in fragments—footsteps, a plate set down, cloth shaken, the private sigh that comes when a day finally allows itself to end.
When I stood again, it was not because I had decided anything. Standing simply arrived and found me. I put a palm to the fountain's rim in farewell and turned back to the street. The lanterns made a dotted line into the distance. I followed the first dot to the next.
I did not know where I was going, but the going obeyed me more than it had before. Gravity still tugged. Weakness still sat where it liked. Yet the shape of walking had begun to draw itself around me, a coat too large but wearable. The fear along my spine lifted its head, listened, and then settled again.
At the far edge of the square, a shadow moved where no lantern allowed it. It separated from the wall and became a person. I paused. They did not come closer. They were only proof that the world contained more than my body and a fountain and a list of names trying to become mine.
I kept moving, hand to the wall when I needed it, hand to my side when I didn't. The night's voice lowered. The stones stayed. The street, which had not asked for me, allowed me to pass.