A mall was built in the middle of a field, the area surrounding it was mostly empty and was the territory for a small community of tribal people, but after the construction of the mall it became a bustling city field with thousands upon thousands of people, from what i understand, the mall brought new life to the location and enriched the lives of everybody, including, probably, the natives.
I know this story because my mother told it to me when i was little. She was enamored by the mall and it's big and sturdy, rectangular design with three floors. She believed it to be the best thing people had created and that it saved humanity from a great catastrophe that almost wiped out everyone on the planet. That's the reason she decided to give birth to me in it, behind the counter of a drug store in the upper west side of the mall. Luckily it was the middle of the night, which meant that there was time for her to get her strength back and take some supplies with her, before going back to the walls where our home resides.
The walls of the mall were quite spacious and we could move around comfortably and safely, because most of the space was not being used for anything and the employees where rarely there, (they would only pop-up on occasion but because they were lost, either because they took a wrong turn or were new and didn't know the layout of inner parts yet). We would gather materials to survive by closely monitoring the employees and the security cameras and never going outside the wall for more than 30 minutes. I learned to read and write with the materials me and my mother gathered from the library in the lower west part, we got our entertainment (toys, movies, games and other such fun things) from the lower east part, clothing from the upper east part, and food from the center, although sometimes we would get our food from the trash and floor of other parts of the mall because to many people would gather in the center for the biannual discounts on certain items of food, when this events happened my mother would be overjoyed by how big the discounts where, but then be saddened by the fact that she couldn't partake in it because she couldn't risk being caught by employees.
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After years living with my mother she passed suddenly in her sleep, to this day i don't know why and at the time i didn't know how to express how i felt about it so i decided to just leave her in a nice corner of the wall and let her rest in peace.
A while after, i found out a technique to blend into the crowd, so that i didn't need to monitor anybody or anything, and so that i could walk freely through the mall for a good number of hours, all i need to do was just to keep walking around the mall, not cause any trouble and not bother anyone. During that time i started people-watching, just a bit, because i didn't want to stare at people for to long in the case i would be noticed, and during that i would notice the things they bought, some would buy things they needed, some would buy things that they wanted, some would buy for the sake of it, some wouldn't buy but would stick around anyway to be with people or to be alone, some would try to buy things but couldn't find then, and either give up or stay around for so long they would by things they didn't initially wanted to buy, some could't buy their things so they tried to steal them, some were successful and others weren't and these ones would never be seen in the mall again, the more people in the mall the easier to blend in.
Being around people was actually relaxing. When i was having more troubled feelings i would just get out of the wall and walk alongside others and this made everything feel more centered and time in particular would feel more fluid like it was passing through me. There are days where i miss those people.