Author's Note: Originally a part of Split: Voluntarily, Forcibly. Separated due to differences in the writing style. I like my stories to match.
Algae
Mold is growing on her bones. She should move out of the puddle and into a drier patch of street, but she is weak and tired. She can't tell puddle from street anyway, nor can she tell pain from pleasure, nor hot from cold. It's caused her many problems, but she cannot tell that her fingers were cut nearly to ribbons by the cans she was scrounging food out of, and she cannot tell that the busted neck of the bottle she drank God knows what out of last night cut her lips. She doesn't know of the several hundred burns and bruises she has suffered. She cannot remember the heat of the fire she touched in her naivety, but she can remember the cruel laughter and the bitter lonliness. It is a second childhood for her, but the world is not bright. It has become new to her once again, but she is numb to it.
Strange how she never feels grief lying in the streets and begging for what little she gets while she still remembers the injustices in her past. It could be that the injustices are greater, but it may also be that her brain is going numb like her body. If it really is her brain, then maybe her body can feel the sharp edges and the heat and the wet puddle that she's probably going to use as her pillow tonight. Maybe they just can't get the message out that the sharp and the heat and the puddle could all kill her if she wasn't careful. The puddle will probably kill her first. What lies in the streets of London other than her, no one knows.