In the street of Crumblebottom, inside district 3 of the city of Zareth an orphan with a dirt covered face and rags for clothes hobbles past the rundown buildings looking for any scraps that can sustain him for the day.

To each side of the street are the poor and the homeless. Thievery, begging and prostitution are flourishing in the slums district of the city.

As the young boy walks he sees a piece of scrap bread the size of an index finger in the gutter. little insects are festering on it and a rat scurries past to take a bite.  He lunges forward with what little strength he has and fights with the rat over the bread.

The bread breaks and the rat takes a little less than a third, the boy seeing this quickly shoves the other two thirds into his rag trousers and hobbles away.

As the boy walks to find an abandoned shack to eat his spoils of war in, he stumbles over what is most likely the sewage of the inhabitants of the street and the small piece of bread rolls out the bottom of his rag trousers and rolls a further meter and a half.

As the boy notices this he gets up to retrieve his bread, when suddenly a skinny bird with brown feathers and a green beak swoops down and steals his bread.

The boy heartbroken, collapses on the floor and cries. Strangely enough it is not about the bread, but about the injustices of the world.

He detests that a privileged few sit there and control all of the money acting as if they are some kind of god. He is jealous of the fact that their children are able to eat fresh meat and fruit, how they can waste as much as they want without any problems. He hates how a simple word from these people is all it takes for a happy family to be destroyed overnight.

It is with these thoughts that the little boy cries further and further into a pit of despair.

Suddenly he thinks of his own family, his strict father, his smiling mother and his annoying little brother. It is with these thoughts that eventually allow the boy to sleep on the cold floor in the middle of the street.

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An unknown amount of time later and the boy wakes up only to find that his stomach is rumbling and the sky is dark.

He is unable to move a finger due to exhaustion and lack of energy. it is at this point that the little boy has resigned himself to death and hopes to close his eyes again to be able to see the faces of his family one more time before he drifts of into the stars.

“Are you afraid child?” says an aged voice.

The boy shocked awake by the presence of another opens his eyes and realises that he is no longer in the street and is inside a house without a roof.

He is unable to look around and talk due to a lack of food and clean water.

“Don’t worry child, it’s almost ready” says the voice.

The boy can smell something; it is not a nice smell similar to the smell of boiled red cabbage. However, to the boy who hasn’t eaten in a long time it is like the scent of a succubus. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was dehydrated, he would be salivating like a hound right now.

“Here” says the voice. The sound of footsteps approach and a shadowy figure in strange coloured clothing appears.

The boy tries to open his mouth and is able to open about an inch from the top to the bottom lip.

The figure descends and the boy is able to see his face. It is an old man. He looks to be in his sixties or seventies, he has deep wrinkles on his face a long white scraggly beard that forms a point at the bottom. His white hair is styled in a top knot and he has two studded ear piercings on his left ear and a nose piercing that makes a hoop from one nostril to the other.

“Eat slowly” says the man. He opens the boys mouth by an extra centimetre and uses a wooden spoon to pour a thick paste in his mouth.

“Purple Kruy from the marshland in the north, it’s not very tasty or fragrant but it very filling” the old man smiles towards the boy.

The boy swallows the food and almost vomits from the aftertaste, it tastes like a horse’s ass thinks the boy, But beggars can’t be choosers. He continues to swallow the foul tasting food when the man holds a strange object towards his mouth.

“It’s a water skin, you must drink to increase your body fluids” says the smiling old man.

The boys raise his head an inch from the floor with great effort and downs the water. The old man brings him another and the boy quickly finishes it off.

After the second water skin is finished the boy falls straight back to sleep.

“uhhhhhhhh” the old man sighs “what a pitiful child” the old man goes to get a blanket to keep the boy warm through the night. He chooses one of the finer ones made from a Khasa and drapes it over the boy.

As the man himself prepares to go to sleep he looks one more time at the child and notices the smiling expression the boy has on him as he sleeps.