He had accidentally taken one of the jeweled’s rings. In his broken grip he had pulled off a polished silver braided wire ring, three thin, woven strands coalescing and collecting at the apex where a glinting pinkish gem sat fixed, winking at him.

It was not his. He started to call out to the other child, but the other spoke first, a faint little voice almost a whisper to the sea.

Keep it, friend! Let it bring you good fortune and future!

And then the bright blue of his dress vanished.

The people around continued to pulse and throb and mull around.

The lost one pushed his way forward as fast as he possibly could. Maybe if he tried hard enough, if he concentrated, if he worked himself towards a singular goal, if he put his heart into it maybe he could find his companion. Would the world allow him such a thing? What if everyone worked together to find what he was looking for? How long would it take? An hour? A minute? A second? What if these people found his parents? What if they found him his friend? What if they smiled?

The boy burst out into an open space; the people had thinned in this area.

Stands, old wooden things, old metal things, tables hodgepodged together, tattered tents of torn canvas and taut ropes, little stacks of blue chicken crates with half-rotten boards atop them, all of these frail things piled with fruit, green, red, purple, blue, boxes of manuscripts, stacks of linen canvas with flick-flicks and smatters of color, trays of beaded bracelets, of knitted necklaces, of jade and jewels, rows of fresh clay pots and tarnished statues of disproportional people, hanging animals skinned and not skinned and cooked—still smoking—and animals still caged, pacing, yelping, chattering, barking, sleeping, and racked dresses in violets and greens and reds, some with gold collars, some with intricate stitched henna, some with painted white lilies on the bottoms, some plain, some striped, some satin, some cotton, but all of these things were bountiful, and they were all scrutinized, bargained over, haggled about, traded with, and bought by people: the people in couples, in packs, in droves, masses of people, many and morose.

He walked through this marketplace. He could smell the cooked food, the raw fish, the cheap perfume, and he could hear the springy notes of a wind-up phonograph from somewhere, the strange and exotic sounds of mammals and birds, but above all the bustle of men and women, their mutterings and discussions and exclamations were prominent, almost overbearing.

He could feel the fear swell again in his heart and in response his little feet quickened pace. He walked and then faster, even faster until he ran and faster until he sprinted and the vendors and people and the pitted and pocked cobblestone walkway became a blur, became just a color, just the world around him that he was trying to escape—

The blare of a horn stopped him in his tracks.

The lost one fell and skinned his knee. He threw out his hands and braced them hard against the ground, and his arms locked and jarred when they stopped him. His heart pounded from the running, and he was too stunned to shriek aloud as he had inside. A shiny steel fender vibrated with the rumble of an engine just centimeters from his face. The curvy black automobile it belonged to had stopped. No one exited this fascinating machine as the boy scrambled back into the market area he had run from.

The engine roared. The child watched silently as the thing slowly moved forward.

White-skinned man. He paused long enough to nod at the boy with hard black eyes and a flat mouth. Then he was gone.

A nod. A greeting, a farewell, a thank you, an acknowledgement. I saved your life, it said with not a single thread of anger, or of relief or joy. You’re welcome. It meant nothing else but recognition. It was something, though. It was more than any man had done for him in these fear-ridden moments.

Help! the boy wanted to cry. Help me find my mother! Help me find my father! Help me find my blue friend! Help me find my way home, but O, where is my home in such a family of strangers!

Where is home inside indifference…

The sun said goodbye to the boy with a pinkish-orange sky scattered with wispy white clouds that shimmered with the warm color, and then slowly faded with the coming dark.

It was dusk that found the boy shivering and crying, withdrawn into the receding corner between a crumbling clay-bricked shoppe and a Roman columned concrete two-story painted a brackish flat gold. He balled one hand into a fist and with the other pinned his knees to his ribs and pushed his brow to them. The marketplace had died out mostly, the people scattering as the day faded away, the tables and goods packed onto wooden carts or picked up and carried on broad shoulders. Though they did nothing and meant nothing, the lost one couldn’t dismiss the idea that he was becoming more and more alone.