Little One

Under the Streets

She huddled into a small ball with her knees drawn up to her head. A rather dramatic position she had to admit that was a little uncomfortable, but it felt like the right thing to do. The sewer rattled with the traffic hurtling by overhead as big fat drops of cold water dripped steadily down her back. She always came down here when she was sad, but this was the first time that anyone had found her. The little man that she didn't know knelt before her and gazed at her quizzically with his giant watery eyes as if he were searching for something he had lost in her. No one had ever looked at the girl like that before. The others had only looked with greed or envy or fear. But none of them had ever probed the little girl as he was doing now. She decided she liked it and looked back up at him.

"Why?" the little man hesitantly whispered in her direction. Not necessarily to her, but she thought she should answer nonetheless. Just in case. Maybe he wanted to know why she was upset. Maybe that's what he was searching for.

"I'm crying because I'm sad."

"No." he said firmly. "Why do you hide your tears?" He suddenly locked his gaze back on her, "Don't you want people to know you are sad so they can help you?"

The girl had never thought about this before, but now that she did, she wasn't quite sure why she hid every time she cried. And the more she thought, the less she could even remember what she had been sad about in the first place.

"Never hide your suffering from a creature such as me, little one" the man whispered at the air again. "Do you want to see what I do with my tears?"

She paused for a moment, not sure what to say. Eventually she decided that it would be rude to say no, and she didn't have anything or anyone that needed her up there. Going back up into the sunlight above felt almost unbearable to her. So she wiped her eyes and nodded solemnly to him.