When the smoke cleared and he dared to peek his head out of the sewers Souris found himself alone. They'd taken that kindly woman's head, the one who'd fed him the last few months. She'd asked for nothing but gossip in return. He'd lurked on rooftops above their sparkling terrace, a keen ear to the wind, fingernails digging hard into the cracks between the shingles until they bled. All for a few moldy cabbages and loaves of stale bread. Her aims hadn't mattered, but the bread did. In his mind, there was was no quarrel with the gentry. They simply were born with a bit of excess luck. He had his own gifts after all. Still, if revolutionary fervor kept him fed, then he'd slap a sash about his waist. He chuckled, a horrible dry rasp. Idealists and idiots all meet the same fate.
Though it was strange. Strange, how she never seemed to eat, strange how she gave so freely despite being equally ragged and hard-out. Stranger still how she appeared out of the shadows themselves only in the most private recesses of the Thieves Highway, or the tunnels below the Ouvrier and always when he found himself alone. Which was often enough, mind you. Proximity to other beggars meant competition for scraps, and Souris would have none of that. Not that they liked him much once they saw him up close, even those with nothing else have their prejudices.
Naturally her death hadn't bothered him one bit, save for the fact he was hungry again. Rifling through the refuse the Falks had left behind their little bar he sighed. All rotten. Souris clenched his jaw as a particularly juicy rat scurried by. Fatter than him and probably living a little better. It might've smelled better too. Perhaps if the other wastebins turned up empty as well he'd return and eat the bastard out of spite. Or maybe now. His stomach growled.
The caliban smiled beneath his filthy cowl and ran an inhumanly long tongue over his set of pointed teeth. His quarry stopped, whiskers twitching but a few paces away. It looked at him with beady eyes, he looked back. Then he pounced. There was a squeal, a spatter of blood on the cobbles. Then he wasn't hungry, at least not tonight.
In his lair, Souris picked his fangs with a shard of bone and wiped his lips on his sleeve, sated. He crawled into his hammock and half sang a wretched little tune as he rocked himself to sleep.
Her clothes were thin, her feet were bare
And the snowflakes covered her head
"Lemme in," she gently said
"Please spare a little bread."
As the little girl still trembling stood
Before that stately door
A butler looked down and scorned the girl
"Not a solar, nor bread for the poor."
Then he went to his table so fine
Where his master’s family fed
And the tiny waif stood in the snow so deep
As she cried for a piece of bread
The butler slept on a velvet couch
And dreamed of his master’s gold
While the orphan lay in a bed of snow
And murmured, "So cold, so cold."
When morning came the little girl
Still lay there by his door
But her soul had left an’ gone on home
Where there's plenty o’ bread for the poor
