It’s always safest to go out at night if you’re worried about getting caught by The Officer. The shadows and lack of people wandering about the streets made it harder to be found and easier to move around. The dark crooks, just outside the pale light of lamps and in the alleys, are my hiding places after I’ve hit a store or two for food.

I’ve always preferred the quietest way to do things, even if it means I’d take longer. It’s better to be sure that it’s safe. I couldn’t risk turning a corner and getting surprised that a hand had clamped down on my arm and wouldn’t let go. And besides, it draws less attention to myself.

I’ve left my brother in the tower, tucked him in for the night and said that I’ll be back way before the sun rises.

“Just look at that clock,” I told him as I point to the giant clock that is our window, “when it says eleven, I’ll be right back here.”

He nodded and made a pillow of his arm. He watched as I climbed down the stairs and disappeared to the floor below, which is still a long winding way down.

The stairs creak with each of my footsteps - old as the tower is. Faint strings of dust hang from spider webs across the railings, and I smell that musty scent of things as old as this. Most of the windows and the doors are boarded shut. The one way I take to go in and out is a crawl space you’d only find if you know where exactly to look.

And we’ve been holed up here for almost a month now. I figure that it’s the best place to live for two orphans - as I’ve already considered myself as - who want to be left alone. The look on the building’s facade is enough to keep everyone else out. With the ghostly stories it made, helped greatly with the comings and goings of my crows, no one has ever dared to set foot on its crumbling steps and venture inside.

People are usually afraid of those things.

And I am afraid of them.

I stand in the middle of the darkest alley I’ve known in my life. The lamp posts only light up either end of the muddy stretch, and everywhere else between them is shadow.

My crows sit hidden over the rafters of the adjacent house, their eyes following me around and occasionally, one or two of them would fly up and move closer to me as I put one foot in front of the other in my own memorized way.

I no longer need to feel my way in the dark. I’ve known what littered the ground between the entrance and the end of this path like the back of my hand.

The store across the street closes in a few minutes. I stare through its wide glass windows and see only a woman, besides the owner. She has a basket over her right arm. Her neck’s wound with a pink scarf. And she smiles down to an unseen child.

I watch them from afar, still hidden in the shadows. I can feel the resentment growing inside of me as I remember my own kin. One thing I realize is that it never really goes away. The worst of it may have already passed, but the feeling never stops hurting.

Our mother left us. That’s all I need to know.

I watch that woman leave through the front door of the shop, her hand around her daughter. Her voice carries over to where I am, and all I can hear in my head is the reason our mother never gave for leaving - just an empty, sad voice telling us she has to go.

I lean to the wall beside me and watch them go. I wait until they’ve disappeared around the corner at the end of this street. One of my crows swoops down and picks up a dirty, bronze coin from the gutter. It flies up and disappears into the night sky, its black feathers blending with the starless sky.

It should be headed back to the tower, but the rest of us have a job to do.

I raise my hand, level to my cheeks, and snap my fingers. The crows fly in a practiced rhythm around the shop, just barely out of sight. And with their dark coats, they can’t be seen as easily, spread out unevenly over the roofs of the houses and the signages of the stores. They are my scouts on this sort of mission.

I stand up straight and brush my fingers through my tangled hair. I do my best to not look like the street orphan that I am as I pull on the corners of my jacket, trying to make myself as presentable and normal as I possibly can. The last thing I need is raising an alarm.

I keep my head down as I walk through the shop’s front doors. The bell that hangs overhead rings and I can feel The Owner’s gaze follow me around. I can feel the suspicion in it as I scanned the racks for a bread I can afford with the bits of coin the crows have gotten us.

I am a new sight to him, I understand. I am not the kind of customer he probably expects to see just before he closes up - or any time. With my mud caked shoes and a coat with thread hanging off its cuffs, I don’t look like a regular customer, which of course I am not. I don’t come to the same store for about a week lest I want them to remember me.

I stand in front of the counter with a piece of bread the size of my palm and dug the handful of coins I’ve got. The owner looks at me, his brows creased, sizing me up with unsure eyes. Then, like the slowest cashier I’ve ever seen, he rings my purchase up and starts counting quarters in his palm.

He’s so painfully slow - and I’m not exactly used to being in the open for too long - that I can’t stop myself from dancing on the balls of my feet. I try to be discreet, darting looks past the glass windows and onto the streets, expecting to be caught in no time.

Just as he’s halfway done counting the stack of coins, I see one of my crows fly in a low, wide arc in front of the window, then two, and three.

He’s coming, I think.

I look at The Owner, too busy to take note of much more than the coins and the suspicious kid in front of him, and I look at the door. Without hesitating for even a second - not a time I can spare - I grab the bread and run.

“HEY!” I hear The Owner say, but it’s drowned in the sound of a thousand wings, the ring of the bell overhead, and the loudest beating of my own heart.

I run through a different alley, taking an unpredictable route and the longer ways back to the tower. My crows fly overhead and behind me in irregular patterns, prepared to dive as soon as they hear me snap my fingers.

But for the most fortunate of cases, I don’t have to. Then we all just disappear.