Searching through the nearest empty shop North and directly across from the stage, it didn't take long to find an old tarp with a few holes in it which he laid across his arm as he continued to search the shop without truly searching. He was lucky enough to find a spare pair of worn, leather boots hidden away in the cupboard. 'I will return them once it is warm enough to go barefoot,' he assured himself, though he paused at the entrance of the shop before he could duck beneath the sheet covering the doorway.
"I'll bring them back, no worse for wear. I promise, I am only borrowing," he told the shop, giving it a small pat on one of the wooden beams before taking the dirty cloth off of his feet and sliding into the boots which were much too big and shuffling back to his small camp, tarp in hands. He was sure to return both items. 'Surviving, not stealing,' he thought.
The tarp was draped across the table and wrapped around the bottom to ensure him a break from wind and snow and wet. It was cold, but he lumped together all the cloth he had, two t-shirt's worth, and created a small bed upon the ground where he could sleep, not comfortably nor warmly, but it was enough.
His stomach growled angrily, he had ignored the persistent gnawing until now but, sighing, he noticed it would be dark soon and pulled off a small chunk of bread to chew on. It lasted him less than a minute and he fought the desire to consume the whole loaf right there.
He laid down on his small bed, curling up like a dog, ready to sleep. He felt something sharp against his leg from below and sat up with confusion and in the motion, the sharp edge cut the bottom of his jeans to the cuff, leaving it fly open with a long, shallow scratch along his leg. He muttered an oath under his breath but breathed in deeply and drew his legs to his chest to think. He did not have much left in his satchel but he remembered an almost-empty matchbox at the bottom and scrambled to find it.
Lighting the first match, he moved the tarp aside just enough to see the sharp point of a throwing knife glinting back at him, appearing stuck in the floorboards hilt first and at quite an angle. The boy grinned triumphantly and reminded himself to un-stuck it first thing in the morning.
Staring through a hole in the tarp, the boy looked at the millions of stars it held and with that in mind, he fell asleep peacefully. Freely.
YOU ARE READING
A Trek of A Storyteller
AdventureThe second part in my trilogy of the young boy. A Tale From Before is the first, and now that our young Storyteller is freed of his captor, he has the whole world to explore. At long last, he is able to settle into a life that erases his past from h...
