Rattling rain danced across the pavement, pouring in a steady stream from the eaves overhead and running in rivers down the thin cracks of the sidewalk. The buildings were hazy watercolours on paper a shade too dark for realism. Even the few trees that marked the border of the sidewalk bowed wearily, casting shadows of a sleepy calm onto the empty street below.

A newspaper, soaked beyond recognition on its stand, proclaimed great news in headlines that could no longer be read. Empty eyes scanned the blurred letters over and over again, not bothering to comprehend but unable to look away. Her mouth was a soft unmoving line. It was only when a drop of icy clearness slipped down the back of her neck from a crack in the awning above that she was stirred from her stillness, and raised her head to see the street before her.

People drifted slowly across her field of vision. They were real people with real thoughts, real feelings, real hopes and aspirations, but as she stood in silence watching them pass drearily through the downpour, safe in their individual shells, the image was as lost in the haze as the other side of the street. Her eyes followed them when they came to close – sometime close enough for her to catch a snatch of conversation or a glance that almost brushed her senses – but they were all just so many shadows.

Only one in the street stood out. He was young, small, and wore a mask of uncertainty, eyes dancing from one side to the other. She watched him jump nimbly backwards as one pair of weather wanderers came within arm’s reach. There was a shaky flurry of motion as he bowed, mouth sputtering out an apology even as the returned gaze came and went. He shuffled back to the wall the moment that they had gone, his head down and his eyes shadowed behind a well kept tuft of hair.

She took it all in. His clothes, his hair, his eyes… A faint smile crossed her face and her fingers drummed lightly against her hip, nails tapping against metal in the rhythm of the rain.

In a heart’s beat, the boy suddenly straightened, turning in one sweep towards the doorway at his back. The smile faded from her face, slipping back into the vague empty expression of before. A man had approached, and this one she watched as well. Tall and certain, the perfect contrast for the boy. She watched the words exchanged, and then turned her own back, pulling the unreadable paper from the rack and striding out into the rain.

The man’s eyes lifted, tracing back to the awning where she’d stood, his voice inexplicably silenced. Too late, she had already moved away with a quiet smile and an image as clear as the falling rain. As quietly as she’d come, she vanished into the crowd, a shadow and nothing more.