One would think that over the years, the familiarity of it all would have faded. Maalech knew that he had certainly spent enough time attempting to put it out of his mind, even when he was living through it. And yet, once you stepped back into those shoes everything was all too familiar.

It had taken two days before he had stopped reacting to the smell alone. The parts of town that were considered to be the worst were close to the seaside, where the winds rarely cleared the air. That was where the dregs ended up. The wind was rarely strong enough to drive away the hot and foetid air, and the garbage of the city remained trapped close to shore until the odd times when a sudden storm would mercifully wash everything clean again. He suspected that at those times, the inhabitants would curse and head for cover as most of the shanties were not built to last. And yet, perhaps many of the inhabitants did not care. Sailors that had lost their luck and money, drifting deeper into the depths of drugs and forgetfulness, prostitutes, thieves, the beggars and the maimed and just the unfortunate and poor. Some had drifted into this life, and some had been born to it and knew nothing else.

All too uncomfortably familiar.

But this too was a city of rules. To sit on the wrong side of the street could mean a beating, and even the beggars carried knives, sharpened into thin points from years of use, useless for anything but stabbing another man. It was a dangerous area, and he had no defense but the single remaining fact that he loathed above everything else; at the moment, he was nobody special. He was an old man, obviously not out to make a name for himself like the ones in their prime. He was not a woman that could be bought and sold despite her age, and he was not young enough to be considered for preying upon or induction into whatever organization that ran this place. He was an old man, coming here to die, the last step of a journey nobody cared about.

So, as long as he stepped carefully and did not stand out, he would be left alone. Nobody would bother the old man sitting against the wall, in one of the spots of sun that this island generously provided for everyone. He obviously had nothing to steal, and no pan to ask for coins, though it would have been a foolish beggar that would ply his trade in a neighborhood where people had nothing. So he was allowed to sit there, and to watch.

The first thing that had surprised him was the contempt he felt for these people. He had not expected it to be such a strong, almost visceral feeling. What made these people fall for their own weaknesses to this extent? Why didn't they do something of their lives? Why did they endure this endless drudgery? Those first days he had been gripped by the urge to ask them, to shake them by their shoulders in frustration. Why would they allow themselves to sink so low? What was it that had happened, that had made them give up? That had made them seek out ever more destructive habits? What were they punishing themselves for? What made a woman stay with a particularly abusive pimp, why didn't she leave? Was it fear? Was it something else? There was something in the eyes of people here that disturbed him but he did not know why.

Once the frustration had passed into some manner of distant acceptance he could begin to see more clearly. But in seeing he came no closer to understanding. Was there some fatal flaw inside him that made him unable to see the walls that everybody else clearly perceived. They had been told by life and their surroundings that they were worth nothing, but more than that, they seemed to have embraced the thought and were busy reinforcing it. If they had been locked behind a wall, they were now building it higher and more secure from the inside. And he could not understand it.

Weakness.

There was a woman that lived in one of the shacks across the street, if it could be called that. He guessed that she might once have been a prostitute, but was rapidly approaching the age where disease and wear made her fairly useless to her pimp. She had children, that Maalech knew, because there was a likeness between her and one of the younger prostitutes, and it seemed that one of the child-thieves regularly brought her food. Had she had more? Were they dead? Had they broken out of the chains and left this place? He did not know, and in truth it mattered little. In every shack there was a different story.

And what did they matter, in the grand scheme of things? Were they just the backdrop to make the ones that escaped stand out all the brighter.

Pneuma.

He had pursued that subject, and the implications both vindicated and worried him. And yet he did not know why they should be worrisome. He felt nothing for these people but contempt. It would be simpler to dismiss them all as inconsequential, he was not a man given to pity.

And yet...