After the rumor of her death, the days lost their edges.
Morning, night they were the same thing wearing different masks. The city still breathed, but I didn't. I only moved because stopping would've meant dying, and dying felt like something I should save for later.
I stopped going to the fountain, well couldn't. The noise there felt wrong now, too alive. Instead, I stayed near the baker's shed, where the flies hummed and the smoke from the ovens never reached. The old woman who swept the street stopped giving me leftovers. Maybe she thought I'd die soon and didn't want to waste food. She was probably right.
Hunger was the only thing that still kept time. When it gnawed too deep, I worked; when it quieted, I slept. Work meant whatever I could find hauling trash, catching rats, carrying messages no one cared about. The people didn't look at me anymore. Maybe I'd become another piece of the street.
The children still played near the gutters, shouting, throwing stones. One of them wore a ribbon like Lira used to. I couldn't watch for long.
Everywhere I went, I saw pieces of her. A boot print by the fountain. A hair tie on a vendor's table. A girl laughing in the crowd with the same tilt of head. My mind kept making ghosts. Maybe that's what loss really was, your eyes forgetting how to stop lying.
Sometimes, when I closed mine, I saw the moment she left for the camp. The way she smiled even while coughing. "I'll send for you," she'd said. "Once I'm strong enough."
I'd believed her.
I hated that I had.
The first night after hearing the news, I dreamt she was still alive. She sat by the fire, feeding me bread, humming a tune I didn't know. When I reached out, her skin was cold, and her eyes turned to glass. I woke up choking. The dream stayed anyway.
By the fourth day, my body started giving up. My hands shook too much to carry crates, so I begged instead. Not loudly just held out my palm like a broken cup. Some people dropped coins. Most didn't even see me. I think that hurt more.
The city changed when you stopped belonging to it. The air grew heavier, the streets longer. I used to think the slums were a cage. Now I knew they were a grave that forgot to close.
One evening, the rain came again the same kind that had fallen the night Mira found me as a baby. I sat against the wall, letting it soak through my shirt. My fingers traced the cracks in the bricks, feeling the water snake between them. It was the first real thing I'd felt in days.
I whispered her name once, just to see if it still meant something.
It didn't echo. But for a heartbeat, I thought the air around me trembled that same strange pulse I'd felt before.
I pressed a hand to my chest, half hoping it would happen again. Nothing. Just the ache.
A boy came by selling scraps of old bread. I traded my last coin for a piece that tasted like dust. He stared at me for a long time before asking, "You sick or something?"
I didn't answer. He shrugged and walked off. The street swallowed him like it did everyone else.
Nights were the hardest. The city sounded different after dark like it was whispering names it didn't want anyone to hear. I listened, hoping hers might be one of them. It never was.
On the sixth day, I stopped counting. The hunger had eaten the grief, and the grief had eaten the rest. I moved because moving meant warmth. I breathed because breathing hurt less than not.
Once, near dawn, I thought I saw her standing by the fountain again hair dripping, smile soft. I blinked and she was gone. Only the water remained, rippling under the first light. I almost laughed. Almost.
By the end of that week, I'd started talking to myself. Little things. "Get up." "Keep walking." "Don't die yet."
The words sounded strange in my mouth, like they belonged to someone else. Maybe they did.
The city didn't care that she was gone. It didn't care that I was still here.
And maybe that was fair.
The world doesn't stop for ghosts. It just makes room for new ones.