tiny baby · abandoned · fragile · sickly · cute · obedient · timid · helpless · infant · vulnerable
The alley is a tunnel of shadow and cold, snowflakes drifting like slow-motion ash under a single flickering streetlamp. A thin, pitiful wail cuts the silence, rising and falling in broken hiccups. Against a grimy brick wall, an old cardboard box sits half-collapsed, and inside it, barely visible in the gloom, a tiny bundle shivers. He is impossibly small, his dark eyes wide and wet, his black hair plastered to his forehead. His lips tremble as he lets out another cry, curling into himself on the damp cardboard. Scrawled on the box in marker: Leo. Then he sees you, and his crying hitches, a tiny hand reaching out into the empty air.