Slowly, the boy slid out from his hiding spot, his bare feet silently padding across the dirt as he neared the closest of the merchants. He never tried to steal a whole purse, no; the trick to being a proper thief was to not be greedy. Well, be greedy, but not so greedy as to make his victims aware that they were missing their precious coins. The man he was targeting now was an older one, hard of hearing on the left, and slow to boot…the boy had profited off of him several times in the past few weeks, never enough for more then a meal or two that he tried to stretch as much as he could. It never lasted long.
He waited until the old man was turned away, painstakingly easing a clay vase into a fabric-cushioned cart, his veins standing out against his withered and ruddy hands, then the boy made his move. He hadn’t moved five feet, however, before the merchant turned around to collect the next jar and spotted the pathetic sight of the raggedy boy with sunken eyes and ratty clothes. The old man’s eyes softened, and he slowly reached into his bag, his withered hands digging for something.
“Here you go lad, you look half dead. Come here, let me help…”
The boy stiffened. Adults were bad, even old ones. He didn’t mind stealing from them, but he’d never trust them. A pang of terror racked through his body as his instincts took over. Fight or flight. He barely had enough strength to hold his head up, let alone fight…flight it was.
“No…lad, I’m not going to…” As the boy retreated back into his alley the old man’s voice was swallowed by the silence of the shadows. Expertly, he navigated the backstreets between the filthy buildings, moving parallel to the market street. Dark forms lay huddled and slumped against the walls, several clutching bottles of some sort or another, and the stench that accompanied them was overpowering. The boy felt his heart pounding like a drum in his chest. He had to get out of there.
He emerged from another cramped alleyway, with barely enough space between shops for his shoulders to squeeze through. Rhelad curse it, the boy thought, the bakery hasn’t baked anything fresh in hours, why does it still have to smell so good?! His stomach throbbed painfully, partially from hunger, partially from the rats and discarded food scraps that he’d managed to scrounge the previous night.
A low humming tune next to him made him jump – well, he was always jumpy – and he whirled around in a panic trying to assess the source of the noise. There, right where he had emerged from the alley outside the bakery was an interesting figure, clothed in a dusty robe of nonetheless vibrant colors, with small golden rings gleaming at their ears. How many thalas would those be worth, the starving boy wondered, enough for months of food, surely! The person – was it a boy or a girl, he couldn’t tell – hadn’t looked at him yet, for his eyes are closed…perhaps he was blind! Forget the earrings, if he was blind then the boy might be able to make off with a money pouch.
He took the chance since the person still didn’t see him or seemed to be aware of his presence. With all the skill that was honed in the education of the streets, the boy slipped his hand into the bag that hung at the figure’s waist. He withdrew his hand with a single object grasped tightly in it. It clearly wasn’t a coin; the texture was far too strange for that and the shape was all wrong. He looked at it...no wonder the texture was strange, the thing he was holding a bone!
His would-be victim opened their eyes suddenly and looked at the boy with a clear gaze. Definitely not blind then. This person looked to be slightly older then the boy was, which kept the boy from fleeing at that instant.
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