Perspective: The Fragment
The street thickened until it could no longer pretend to be a path. It became a place—lanterns in a stuttering line, stalls asleep under canvas, doors leaking light like held breath. I moved with the slow edge of the crowd, where a person could pass without belonging.
Someone stepped out of a doorway ahead and stopped—mid-twenties, narrow shoulders under a patched cloak, hands chapped by work. He had the look of a man who knew how much a loaf should cost and how often a winter lies. He set a basket on a crate and began counting what was inside, lips shaping numbers as if they were a prayer.
I meant to go by him the way water goes by stone. He looked up too early.
Our eyes met. The rest of the street loosened and slid away for a heartbeat. I had seen gaze before—angles and attention, the geometry of being looked at. But this was a weight placed on me, not on an idea. It found the torn skin of my hand first, then the bruise spreading like dusk along my side, then my face. His pupils widened. Something drew back in him, as if a thread had been yanked from far inside his chest.
Stranger. The name arrived between us—too neat a word for the distance it measured.
His mouth opened as if to make a sound and then reconsidered. The basket thumped once as his fingers tightened around it. I realized he had taken a half-step backward without deciding to. I had not moved at all.
What changed in his breathing? Faster, higher in the ribs, as if the air might cut him if he drew too much. The muscles along his jaw worked as though the bones of his face were rehearsing the hardness they didn't want to wear.
Fear. The idea fit him the way a wet cloth clings to skin. I could name it in his eyes, in the way his body turned a little sideways to make itself smaller while pretending to square up. The shape of it in me remained blank.
"Are you… hurt?" he asked, as if testing whether words could cross the space. His voice was not unkind. It was wary, built for leaving.
"Hurt," I repeated, to see what the sound did when I used it. The syllable came out hoarse. He flinched anyway, as if my throat had teeth.
He glanced past me, looking for someone who belonged to me or to whom I might belong. Finding none, he returned to my face, and the fear settled deeper. Not terror. Not the kind that makes legs forget direction. A simpler thing that keeps a person ready to step away. It held me like a lantern holds a moth—enough heat to warn, not enough to burn.
The crowd did not stop for our small experiment. People poured around us, unconcerned, stepping over the rope of attention strung between two posts no one else could see. He kept his basket close to his stomach, protective without noticing he was doing it.
He tried again. "You should have that cleaned." His chin indicated my hand. "The 'pothecary's two streets down."
I looked at the cut, at the fountain's work rinsed away by time and air. "Cleaned," I said, and heard my voice refuse to trust the word.
He took a breath as if to add something else, then lost it. The fear did that—shortened roads inside him. He gathered himself and tried a different path. "Do you have… anyone?"
Anyone. A word shaped like a door. I had walked through doors; I did not know what lived on the other side of this one. "I am—" The sentence offered me several endings and then took them back. I let the air go. "Walking."
That answer disappointed him in a small, visible way. He shifted his weight. His fingers loosened on the basket and then tightened again when I moved half an inch closer to hear better. The motion troubled him. Touch announced itself in my mind like a quiet guest at a loud gathering. It meant skin meeting skin, pressure, warmth passing from one body into another. I could recite its uses. I could not say what it did to the center of a person.
He seemed to consider offering me his arm and decided against it. The decision put a crease between his eyebrows and left it there, accusing him of something he might later call mercy or caution. I did not know which would be accurate.
"Wait here," he said, voice rising, as if talking to something you do not wish to startle. "I'll fetch water. And cloth." He nodded to himself, as if permission should be visible, and went inside.
I did not wait. I stood where he had left me and tried to understand the shape he had made in the air. Stranger. Many had passed me tonight, but this one had looked until a name became necessary. The name changed both of us. For him, it made a boundary. For me, it made a place to stand that was not a wall.
He returned with a small earthen bowl and a strip of linen. "Give me your hand?" The sentence leaned upward at the end—half request, half command.
I offered the injured hand because refusing felt like an answer I did not know how to carry. His fingers met mine—warm, rough, certain only in their uncertainty. Touch. It arrived as an event rather than a definition. Not shock, not revelation. Just heat against heat, pressure gentle enough to avoid harm and firm enough to insist on care.
He wet the cloth, wrung it, and dabbed along the cut. My skin stung where the grit lifted. The ache answered like a small animal waking. He murmured something I couldn't catch—sound meant to calm. For whom? Me, perhaps. Or himself.
"Name?" he asked without looking up.
I searched empty places and found nothing I trusted. I could have offered a title that had once moved constellations to make room. It would have been a joke the street did not share. "I don't… know," I said, and watched the words make a new line in his face. The fear softened for a heartbeat, replaced by something heavier that wanted to be kind but did not have the tools.
"We'll call you something till you remember." He nodded again—he liked nodding; it made decisions feel like agreements. "Sit?" He indicated a low step by his door.
I sat. He took the step beside me but not too close, as if an invisible teacher had measured the proper distance between mercy and danger. The crowd skirted around us, annoyed at the obstruction but practiced at forgiving small delays. He tied the linen around my palm. His breath moved more slowly now; the fear had not left, but it had learned manners.
"You from the north?" he asked, as if my silence were an accent.
"I'm from… here." The lie was not intentional. It came out like fog: shapeless, looking for a shape.
He almost smiled, a brief, surprised movement. "Everyone says that when they don't want the right answer." His fingers brushed my wrist as he adjusted the knot. Touch again—less a fact than a question, returning to see if I had learned anything. I had not.
Across the street, someone shouted about a lost purse, and a knot of bodies tightened around the noise. The man beside me turned his head, instincts counting exits and witnesses. When nothing came of it, his attention returned.
"You've got somewhere to sleep?" he asked. The upward tilt was gone now; the sentence fell flat, already knowing its answer.
"There is a wall," I said. "And the ground. They are dependable."
He gave a short sound that might have been a laugh if laughter could be small enough to hide. "A wall's an honest friend, I'll grant it." His eyes went to my face again and did not flinch this time. He looked as if he were re-measuring me against a different rule. "There's a shelter near the mill. Not the best, but better than fighting stray dogs for a corner. If you head there, keep to the lamps."
Lamps. Rules. The city offered him a map, and he offered me the simplest line from it.
"Why did you help?" I asked. Not an accusation. A need to see how causes are connected to effects when power belonged to no one.
He seemed surprised at the question. "Because… you're bleeding." He shrugged, as if the answer were self-evident and needed no history. "And because folk looked past you like you were a shadow. Makes a man feel wrong, that. If I were you, I'd want someone to look once and not away."
He stood, hesitated, and then did something his fear did not authorize: he reached and set his hand lightly on my shoulder. Touch. Warmth pressed through the cloth and into me. The contact was brief, careful, as if he feared waking an animal. It left the idea of itself behind. My body did not know whether to lean into or away from it. I chose stillness.
"If you get turned around," he said, "ask for the mill. Everyone knows it." He stepped back, withdrawing the hand as if returning a loan. "And if you pass this way again—" He didn't finish. The sentence did not know if it wanted to be an invitation or a warning.
"Thank you," I said. The words tasted new and old at once.
He nodded a last time—agreement made visible—and lifted his basket. When he went inside, the space he had occupied took a moment to close. The street's noise came back like a tide over sand.
I sat for another breath and listened to the absence he had left. Stranger, the name remained, but it had changed shape. It no longer meant only distance. It meant a thread that could be held without being understood.
I rose and stepped into the flow again. The lanterns made their dotted path. The crowd accepted me as an obstacle and then as part of its arithmetic. Behind me, a door shut gently. In front of me, the street bent toward something I could not see.
Fear stayed with the man, but a thin copy of it came to live along my spine. It was not mine yet. It watched the world with borrowed eyes. I let it. Some words must be carried before they can be owned.