A tiny hand reached out to grab onto the light that shone through his finger tips and onto the soft expanse of his unblemished skin, it gleaming with a radiance that only youth could provide. He reached, and reached until he could practically feel the friendly warmth of the ball of light caressing his fingers , as if the ball of light were nothing but a ball of feathers. 

He knew where he was, with the stale taste of blood upon his lips, the ground beneath him was rough, cold and dirty, caked with the ashes of the dying and the fluid of the sick. It was dark but he was calm as he took hold of the generous light and brought it up to chapped lips that hadn't tasted the relief of liquid in what seemed like weeks. It was the only warm thing that the boy had touched in his lifetime and yet instead of taking comfort in this fact, he swallowed it; swallowed the light whole with a mouth too small to accommodate and hands not sturdy enough to provide security.

He swallowed that pretty light, and told himself that he could be happy with just that, and with that, a change occurred. His eyes that were once a chocolate brown and that shone with unspoken hope, became dull upon ingesting the light, and he grew and grew until his unblemished skin became blemished, and the purity that he once radiated was no more. The hope that he had felt was now replaced with despair as an idealistic mind became rational, and he fell onto the floor with the other nameless bodies of the deceased. Dirt and blood covered him hungrily until he was no longer unique, and no longer the little boy with chocolate brown eyes that shone of unspoken hope, no, he was now nothing but a shadow of himself, buried beneath life's tragedy, and he would never be seen from again.