AN: On Friday, I gave in and watched the leak of "Simon and Marcy". There were feelings. All kinds of feelings. I wrote this to practice writing from a child's PoV and because I wanted to do some stuff for the actual release of this episode. Feedback would be appreciated.

Hambo's gotten hurt again. His eye's hanging out of his socket and his right leg is falling off. We only have a few pieces of string left. I pouted, staring at his beat up face. A little tear glistened on his smile as I hugged him tightly against my body. I'm sick of seeing people get hurt. They're always thrown aside and nobody ever comes to patch them up. Mama always did that and I'm gonna do the same for Hambo. But when we ran out of band aids, Mama never patched me up again. And soon after we ran out she left me in a shelter and never came back.

Fear hit me in the face like the pavement when I trip on a crack in the road. I ran over to Simon, who was leaning against his backpack chewing a piece of Spam. Hambo brushed against the dirty pebbly ground as I dragged him in my palm. The poor thing was bruised all over when I picked him up. At that point, my lower lip quivered and I just wanted to curl up in a ball and scream.

"Simon. Simon!"

"Huh?" He swallowed what he was chewing on.

I climbed on top of him to get his attention. "It's Hambo! He's hurt and we're almost outta string."

"What? That's awful! Let me see him."

Hambo had a few more tears in his pink skin when I handed him over.

"Oh, it's not that bad, sweetie." Simon held Hambo's eye between his thumb and index finger. "He just has a few loose joints; it happens when you get older."

I sniffed. "No string?"

"Nah, just a few adjustments and he'll be all good."

He handed Hambo back to me, who I was careful not to squeeze too tight. He needed a good supply of oxygen and there was no way I was going to hurt him anymore. For a good while I didn't let go. His cool soft body was comfort against my own. A few sniffles came on and soon my entire face was buried in Hambo's back, the sniffles growing to sobs.

"Marcy, please, don't cry." Simon patted my hair. "You'll make me sad too and then neither of us can make Hambo feel better."

I wiped my nose on my sleeve, sniffed again. "But what's gonna happen when the strings all gone? Are we just gonna throw him away and let him suffer with everyone else?"

Simon said nothing for a bit. Just kept his lips pursed and looked up at the cold gray sky that resembled the smoke of Mama's cigarettes. The way he kept shifting his eyes around, I thought he was trying to find the moon…or the sun. We haven't seen either in forever which made it hard to 'venture onwards' as I like to say.

Finally, he adjusted his glasses and looked at me. His pale cloudy eyes made me feel like I was walking through an endless snowstorm with no tracks to follow. "Who's to say everyone's suffering? Maybe they've found a safe place and are living in bliss for the rest of their lives."

"Does bliss involve slime oozing out of your face?" I thought back to whenever we'd encounter those slow wobbly creatures with holes in their face that contained sickly green slime for eyes, noses, and mouths. They never said anything to us. All they did was moan like a dying cat.

"It could. I bet that most of those things are enjoying what they do and think they have a promising future in chasing people" Simon smiled crookedly. "Or, maybe one day they'll become some other sentient being and they'll still be perfectly happy."

That just made me feel worse. I bit my lip and clung to Simon's long scraggly beard. "I don't want Hambo to be some other sen-ten-iant being. He's fine the way he is."

"Then we're not gonna leave Hambo anywhere." Simon hugged me. His body was near frozen but the feeling rushed through me so quickly I didn't care. "Even if he's hurt, we're still gonna love him. No matter what happens to him—or us—we're gonna stay with him. And if we hurt him, it'll only be because we love him."

"You hear that, Hambo?" I looked him straight in the only eye that stayed put. "Even when I'm sad and Simon has Spam in his beard we still love you."

"Yes it's…wait a minute? There's Spam in my beard. Marcy, you're supposed to tell me these things!"

"S'okay," I held up a dime sized piece with little white hairs attached to it, "I got it out already."

Simon shook his head and set me down on the ground next to him so he could get something out of his bag. "Alrightie then! Let's get Hambo fixed."