The blue strawberry candies were still under his pillow where he had left them, safe from the burning of the sun. The opposing armies were treading through their soil and they would be in Despodent soon, combing through the villages for any of the stations where the Crissons were still being held. Lacomb slipped his hand into the glass mason jar and then grabbed his hat, stepping outside.

His walk to the grate was filled with regret, guilt, for the fact that he had not opened the grate sooner, that he had let the influence of his father’s ignorance cause him to pause for too long, to think too hard. He kicked at the dirt with his fraying shoes, the broken clothe he wore around his legs no longer hindering his pride since almost everyone was forced to wear them like that. He fingered the cellophane in his pocket, looked up to see the shadow of the brick building loom close, the grates along the side to the sewers popping out a short distance, the clasps glinting maliciously on the sides. A heavy sigh escaped him.

It hadn’t been long since the alarm had gone off. Maybe a week. Perhaps two. He had forced himself not to count. Yet with every new day, with every new walk down the trodden path, Lacomb felt his chances slipping away. He felt the candy go cold in his pocket as it drifted towards twilight and there still was no visit from the small angelic body trapped inside the frigid blackness of the chambers. Yet he would come… because… he had to. Because he didn’t want to die in the chambers and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t because Lacomb had finally decided that something so beautiful couldn’t rot away with ugly things.

He remembered the face Talen had stared at him with, arms reaching out as long as they could go, desperately pleading with Lacomb to come help him. Just in the nick of time, Lacomb had released the grate. But that had left Talen with no time to escape. Lacomb sniffed slightly and rubbed at his eyes. Talen had been taken away back into a prison as soon as he had tasted the freedom. He wondered if Talen thought Lacomb had been teasing him.

He arrived at the grate and peered inside, looking down the empty tunnel and frowning. Talen was always here when he arrived. It was getting to be unbearable to come and not see him pressed up against the grates. If anything, Lacomb wished that he could hear Talen calling him a bastard in the distance.

He would be there until late into the night, when the moon had settled deep into the clouds in the sky and the roads were dark and black. He had been thinking of leaving, thinking of moving, when he heard the sloshing sounds of company. His hope spiking to a new pinnacle, Lacomb whipped from the side and peered in, watching the stumbling form of a young boy trip and claw his way to the grate. Lacomb grabbed the bars and waited anxiously, reaching inside to grab the boy’s face as soon as he was close enough.

Startled, the Crisson reeled back, collapsing into the water and staring horrified at Lacomb. For a moment, that was all they could do. Lacomb, realizing it wasn’t Talen he had found, leaned into the bars and felt the tears collect over his eyes. The boy stood up, coming forward again, looking hopeful.

“Hey, mister?”

Lacomb reached through again and touched the boy’s hair, smiling warmly and sincerely for the first time in a long while, and nodded his head. He undid the first clasp with one hand and then wrestled the other free, letting the grate drop heavily onto the dusty ground. With a little help, the Crisson stepped onto the land and stared up at Lacomb, unsure what to do.

“Here. Have this, okay?” Lacomb said, holding out his hand in a fist, waiting for the boy to hold out his tiny fingers to catch his gift. He released it and then gave the boy a very small and chaste kiss on the head, walking away back towards him home, the grate laying discarded on the ground.

Confused, the boy looked down at his hand, mouth opened slightly. Then, with his fingers clutching the blue cellophane tightly, he ran off towards the woods in search of safety.