Prompt by H: A college student trains crows to fetch him quarters for bits of food. But for this story, it’s a 14-year-old boy and his 12-year-old brother.

Even though the sun is already so high, it doesn’t do anything much than bathe the entire city with a bland color, just gray with the overcast sky. It shouldn’t be long before the streets are filled with puddles and everyone who forgot about the weather runs to shelter. It should be about the same time my crows come flying through the window, flapping ecstatically with either bright or dusty coins in their beaks.

Just a few more minutes, says the giant clock.

I stand in front of it, my hands deep inside the pockets of my jacket. It’s worse that it had to storm for several days in the winter, and we only have the clothes on our backs and the clock tower to keep us warm, which aren’t always enough. Though, there isn’t much to do. We could barely stand on our two feet just thinking about food. And it’s always about food.

It has been like that for a few days, and I have a younger brother to think about. He sleeps in the farthest corner of the tower, just away from the light coming through the clock’s face.

I think about what would happen to the two of us everyday, like my own strange mantra. I wake up and walk around, refusing to listen to the rumbling outside and in my stomach. This is better, I always think. Because the other option is getting snatched from the London streets below. The Officer always roams around, and it always spells trouble. That or the underground takes you. I made a promise to our mother that I would protect my brother, whatever happens. And I intend to keep that promise.

I hear the wooden floors creak and I hear my brother moan before I can see him. I turn to him, just as he is rubbing sleep off his eyes.

“They’re back?” he asks me. There are faint trails on the dusty floor behind him from dragging the blanket all way to where I’m standing.

“Not yet,” I tell him.

He smiles that sweet, innocent smile our mother used to love that made her pinch his cheek, and points one shivering finger to the skies over the city. “They’re back.”

I look out through the clock’s face. Its fingers point directly up, as the gears whine and a loud bong marks noon.

My crows fly their weird dance in the sky, in irregular hyperbolas through clouds and between the roofs of the buildings. One by one - not to make it too obvious to anyone who might have been looking up - they arc up and dive towards the open window just off the seventh hour.

They fly in and drop pennies in the bucket I’ve had prepared in the middle of the room. Then they swerve to the side, where the slats of wood made the walls, and perched themselves comfortably, picking dirt under their wings or staring at the rest with beady eyes.

“How much do you think we’ve got?” he asks me.

I walk over to the bucket and dug a handful out. “Just enough.”

I look at him, and his scrawny shoulders. It seems as if his own frame is only barely holding him up; and when the cold shakes him loose, it’s over.

I walk over to him, and place my hand on his shoulder. I smile at him as much as I can, tired as I am. “Don’t worry,” I say to him, and ruffle his mousy hair, which is something I’ve always said to him. There’s already too much for him to think about.

It had been the hardest for him when our mother left. He was the one who refused to let go of her hand, as I stood there watching them from afar. Because whatever he felt at that moment, watching our mother step farther and farther away from us, I only resented her. It’s weird, isn’t it? How I made a promise to protect my brother to a mother who left us?

The days that came after that are pretty much blurred, running from street after street, hiding from The Officer, and avoiding attention. I can’t let anyone separate us, can I?

“Do you think The Officer would find out?”

“No,” I say to him as I sit in front of the bucket and start counting, “And even if he would, they’ll help.”

I look at my brother and my crows, and I think, This is all of my family.