Colfax – Lost.
From the A Little Bit of Magic AU. This is before Colfax met Adrian or Sawyer or Charlie.
Reading Time: ~5-10 minutes.
Colfax scowled at the shoes that walked by in front of him. Hidden in a drainpipe like he was, the shoes were all he could really see. The city was bustling at this hour, and he had quickly discovered that he had no choice but to duck into the hiding place. He might be learning a thing or two about magic, but he couldn’t stop someone from stepping on him.
Maybe one day. But not yet.
He’d been wandering side streets for some time, after a narrow escape from a few crows that could never stop bothering him. Now, he found himself staring sourly out of a drainpipe at far too many enormous shoes. He didn’t know which of the main thoroughfares he’d found. It was hard to read the signs that stretched above even their heads.
His stomach growled lamely at him, and Colfax pursed his lips. There was some dropped food near a vendor just half a block back. It wouldn’t get him any closer to a more familiar area of the massive town, but it might get his stomach to shut up for a little bit.
With a huff, Colfax crept out of the drainpipe, and immediately sidled to the edge of the nearest building. He could feel every footstep that wandered by, vibrating up through his own shoes. Humans and other human sized folk all had such power behind a simple stroll from one destination to another. Colfax resented and envied that all at once. Things would be a lot easier for him if he wasn’t the size of a toy.
He inched along back the way he’d come for a time, never once stepping away from the building. He could see the vendor avidly trying to sell her wares to people passing by. Mostly she had small dishes of assorted fruits or vegetables, with some meat pies from the nearby shop that she was to sell for the owner, if her signs were truthful.
As people walked away with the food, some of them dropped pieces of fruit or crumbs flaked away from the confections. One man tried to toss a blueberry into his mouth and missed, and it bounced to the ground to be crushed under someone else’s shoe. Colfax scoffed at the waste.
By the time he reached the booth once more, he’d seen no less than four pieces of food dropped on the ground only to be squashed by an errant step. These people were such slobs in their hurry. At least the food dropped next to the booth simply got swept into its shadow. Colfax nabbed a berry while the woman at the booth was busy selling another bundle to someone.
“I’m lost!”
The shrill voice nearly made him drop the berry in alarm. Colfax backed up hastily until he was pressed against the side of the booth while a little girl wandered right up to it to place her hands on the edge. He watched her shabby shoes arch upward as she stood on tiptoes not even six inches from him.
“What’s that, miss?” came the voice of the vendor.
“I’m lost! I can’t find my mama!”
“Oh, you poor thing,” the vendor cooed.
Colfax tried to slip along the side of the booth while the girl and the vendor tried to suss out where the child’s mother had last been seen. Their voices overhead set his heart pounding with the worry that one of them would glance down and see him there. At this distance, that child could kick him right into the air without any trouble.
Once he made it past her, Colfax couldn’t help but run to put some distance between them. He kept close to the walls, as before, but his goal became to get away from that crying child before she noticed him. Young kids were the worst; when they grabbed, they grabbed harshly and left him no room to breathe.
She would find her way back to her mother. Someone would help her. Colfax, by contrast, would probably end up trapped if he asked for directions. The two of them would just have to go on being lost on their own.
Writerly Things 