By the time the first buses rumbled down Holly Street, coughing diesel into the thin dawn, Rafi was three neighborhoods away from the bed he'd abandoned. His feet ached through the cheap sneakers, but the ache made sense to him. Pain, at least, was honest.
He stopped at the edge of an empty lot behind the old community center — a place that reeked of stale beer and boys pretending to be men after dark. Weeds taller than him leaned against a rusted chain-link fence. Beneath them, the dirt was littered with bottle caps and bright foil corners from candies kids used to buy after school before the center closed for good.
Rafi climbed over the fence anyway. It caught the hem of his hoodie, ripping a line of stitches free. He didn't bother to fix it. On the other side, the ground dipped, forming a crude bowl where rainwater pooled in muddy, half-frozen puddles. He crouched beside the biggest one, peering at his reflection: hollow eyes, hair matted flat from sleep, mouth slightly open as if listening for something just out of reach.
In the mirrored water, the hush sometimes came back to him: a phantom green glow between the trees, breath warm on the back of his neck, a girl's voice with no mouth to shape it. He dipped his fingers in, half-hoping to feel roots brush his skin from beneath. Nothing. Only the cold bite of winter's mud.
Behind him, a thin voice squeaked, too close:
A little boy. He hadn't heard him approach — no crunch of dry leaves, no nervous breath. Just there. Staring at Rafi with wide, feral eyes, like he recognized something inside him.
The boy couldn't have been more than seven. His sneakers were two sizes too big, the laces knotted so many times they looked like vines choking a tree trunk. He sucked on the back of his hand instead of speaking.
Rafi didn't ask what he wanted. Kids like this didn't come for words. They came because they knew you could see what they saw.
"You lost?" Rafi said softly, but the boy only stared harder, rocking on his heels like a sapling in wind.
Then a rustle — a second child, a girl this time, older maybe. Her hair was an oily curtain over her face. She stood at the edge of the weeds, silent, her feet bare on the frosty ground. Her arms were wrapped around her ribs so tightly her fingernails left little moons in her skin.
Rafi looked from one to the other. He felt something in his spine twist awake. He hadn't drawn them here. He didn't want them. But here they were — small ghosts with real flesh, drawn by the echo in his bones.
He opened his mouth to ask their names, but before he could shape the sound, the girl flinched back, eyes darting to the far corner of the lot.
Rafi turned. At the fence, just beyond where the shadows thickened, he saw him: a man, thin as wire, coat hanging off bony shoulders, face hidden by the low brim of a cap. Watching. Hands stuffed deep in pockets, but shoulders hunched forward like a hunting dog smelling blood.
Rafi stood slowly. The boy pressed closer, bumping his leg with a damp cheek. The girl did not move; her eyes flicked from the man to Rafi and back again, breath fogging the chill air.
"Hey," Rafi called, but his voice carried no threat — just a warning, a dare.
The man didn't answer. He turned instead, melting into the thicket behind the lot's edge. Just gone.
Rafi looked down. The children — his accidental foundlings — trembled, but not with cold. They smelled faintly of mildew and sleep, like him on the nights he woke scratching at imaginary bark under his skin.
He knew, without needing to be told, that they hadn't spoken to anyone in days. Maybe weeks. He knew they wouldn't go home if he asked where home was.
He also knew, with the quiet certainty that fear teaches, that more children were slipping between the cracks again. Same city, same forest breathing beneath the concrete.
He knelt and touched the boy's shoulder. The kid flinched, then settled. Small warmth, so thin.
"Alright," Rafi murmured to them both, tasting the lie he'd tell himself later: I can't save anyone. I'm not going back.
He tugged the hood higher over his head and jerked his chin toward the fence. The girl came first, padding past him like a ghost made of bone and frost. The boy scrambled after her, never once letting go of Rafi's cuff.
The hush was not done with him. And these children — silent, wide-eyed, soft as moth wings — were proof.
Rafi took a breath that tasted of ash on old concrete and walked with them toward the streetlight flickering at the corner. He didn't know yet where they'd go.
But he knew where they'd end up.