The boy fell asleep curled on the floor near the stove, his head pillowed on his arm.
Dorian watched him for a long time, the shadows from the firelight shifting across the boy's thin face.
In his thoughts came the same refrain as always.
"It would be so easy to walk to the river. To let it all end. I'm tired. So tired."
But the thought no longer moved as freely as before.
It met resistance — a faint, fragile resistance in the shape of the sleeping boy.
"If I leave," he realized, "this child will wake up alone again. Alone in a city that's already eaten everything he had."
He lowered his eyes to the fire.
The flames burned small but steady, a fragile thing in the vast, ruined cold.
His hand went to the paint box again.
The feel of it under his fingers was strangely reassuring — a reminder that he had once created something instead of simply surviving.
I felt his despair pause, caught between the pull of the river and this small, stubborn flicker of purpose.
"Sometimes," I whispered within him, "you only need one reason to stay. Even a small one."
Dorian said nothing.
But his eyes stayed on the boy.
And for the first time since he had sat by the river, he did not feel entirely alone.