The storm swept over the city as though the sky had finally lost its patience.
Lightning tore the darkness apart, thunder booming with a rage that felt ancient and unforgiving. Yet even that violent rain couldn’t cleanse the sorrow clinging to one place: the city landfill.
Among ripped trash bags, slick plastic, and shards of glass gleaming like fangs, a small girl moved with the practiced focus of someone who had learned survival before childhood.
Her name was Lily Moore. She was ten, though her hands looked far older.
An oversized gray coat clung to her thin frame, soaked and heavy, and her mismatched boots barely held together, one reinforced with duct tape. She was shaking from the cold, but she kept going. Hunger ruled her body, and hunger never waited.
She searched for cans, bits of copper, anything that could be sold. “Just one more,” she whispered to herself, clinging to the words as if they could keep her upright. She hadn’t eaten in more than a day, but her thoughts were fixed on morning.
Morning meant the market. The market meant coins. Coins might mean something hot to eat.
She was turning back toward her shelter—a cardboard structure hidden in an alley—when she heard it. Not thunder. Not a truck. Something smoother. Richer. The low hum of a luxury engine rolling across the landfill road.
Lily froze. Night had rules, and none of them involved people like that showing up for good reasons. She slipped behind a stack of tires and curled into herself, barely breathing.
Headlights sliced through the rain. A spotless black car stopped nearby, unreal against the filth. The lights went out. A door opened.
A woman stepped into the rain, wrapped in a long coat, her dark hair plastered to her face. She moved nervously, clutching a bundle to her chest. Lily felt a chill deeper than cold.
The woman glanced around, stopped near a hollow between piles of waste, hesitated, murmured something Lily couldn’t hear—and then let the bundle fall. She covered it with bags and a soggy box, ran back to the car, and sped away.
Lily waited, counting heartbeats. Curiosity battled fear. Need won.
She approached, pushed the trash aside, and lifted the box. Beneath it lay a fine wool blanket. She touched it.
It was warm.
And it moved.