It was just over a month after mom had been taken. Seven years ago. The trees were frozen and bare, like skeletons reaching up into the sky. I hadn't found the shack yet, and I spent my days on the cold cobblestones, shivering under an old cloak I had found, begging for money.
Then I saw the man.
He was homeless, like me. Shuddering on the side of a tavern, with a cap on the ground in front of him. Then I saw the coins. He had at least four of them; big money for me back then. I walked over to him and I reached into the pocket of the cloak as if pulling out a coin. I put my hand in the cap and instead of dropping one, I took one. Just one. But the damage was done. When the man looked into the cap, he didn't say anything. Didn't yell, didn't call me out. He just looked at me with sad eyes. Eyes that whispered in my ear and stayed in my mind for years after that. Eyes that shook with grief and sorrow. Eyes that I can feel like my heartbeat, subtle, aching. Yet I still walked away, didn't look back. I hid the coin in my pocket, and its ghostly wistfulness haunted me, haunts me. That coin was the first in a long line of stolen ones. But from that day on, I vowed never to steal from anyone who needed the money. Because if I ever did again, the guilt would crush me under its weight. So I don't.
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The Mourning Swan
General Fiction"All I remember from that night is the thundering rain, the footsteps, and the man with a black scar that took my mother."
