(Prompt photo by Marten_Bjork on Unsplash.com)

Dark rain dumped from the sky slicking the dimly lit sidewalk. Water inundated the air with its heavy rush of sound, like so many voices, one overtop of the other. His wet cotton hood hung heavy and low over his face, his eyes fixated on the movement of the black boots below. His boots, skirting puddles and metal grates while steadily progressing towards their destination.

Carter was nineteen, and in another life, might have been in his first year of university. He'd had places lined up, ready to accept him, to keep him floating along in the current of the good life. But that was before the text.

Before he'd been speared by the digital scrawl, Carter hadn't known the meaning of regret. His family had provided enough money and support for him to be at least moderately successful in most ventures. Moderately successful described most aspects of his life, with one, hole-in-the-chest exception.

He paused as he came to an intersection, looking up briefly, his dirty, unshaved face illuminated by his goal further down the street. The flickering letters bringing the sign to read H- -EL.

His parents believed he was having his year out in the world, vacationing and adventuring as he bridged the year between high school and university. He sent the odd postcard now and then to keep up appearances.

Hey. Moniyaw.

He grimaced remembering those words. He'd read and re-read that text to a now out-of-service number, days, weeks and even months later, until it was all he could think about.

Someone darted across the street, completely oblivious to the oncoming traffic blaring horns in their direction. A few other shadows moved about, shifting in against the crumbling brick and mortar of the nearly century-old buildings, or seeking refuge scrunched into the sill of a window or balled into the recess of a door. The only people out in such weather were those who had nowhere else to go.

Like Helen.

Carter's one older and two younger step-siblings meant that he got along with just about everyone. He didn't get caught up in fights, or bludgeoningly overstate his opinions. When his newly-met desk partner had shifted her dark-glossy hair to reveal a glaring do-not-disturb expression, he'd felt incredulity. A feeling which had morphed into a masochistic endeavour- Carter wanted to understand where this girl was dredging up such enmity towards him.

This girl turned out to be Helen. Helen, with an indigenous three-lined navy-blue tattoo slivered into the smooth hazelnut skin of her right temple. Helen, who was reticent in expressing anything beyond contempt towards the world in general. Still, Carter found a window in.

More precisely, Carter had fallen right through the pane. Helen's art caught.

The teacher had missed it of course. Mr. Howard had picked up Carter's technically perfect grease pencil sketch of boots and used it to show another group how to create finished detail. Later he'd glanced at Helen's work and commented, "You have no depth, from what direction is the light shining? Look here at Carter's..."

Carter had wanted the floor to swallow him up. No depth? He'd drawn boots while Helen had drawn blood-red tears streaming out of scorched pupiless eyes on a face equally fierce with rage and despair. The silhouettes of ravens in flight seemed to tornado out of the girl's blowing hair, and behind it all some sort of indigenous styled face looked out from the moon. A battle scene, but between who?

He passed a needle in the gutter, and stepped over an empty package of cigarettes. Carter shifted the one remaining strap of his black backpack, its faded and ripped seams a testament to the tough year they'd spent together.

"Um, I think Mr. Howard is actually blind." Carter had offered, a good few minutes after the aforementioned teacher had left them with the awkward feedback that Helen's work should for some reason better mirror Carter's.

Helen had lifted her brown-black eyes to meet Carter's blue, before settling them back to her page. Carter still felt the trickle of wrongness the teacher had left behind, "Um, my boots might make an easy hashtag, but they're not going to land on anyone's blog. Your native warrior girl though..." Helen had raised her brown eyes again, speculatively, so Carter continued, "If Mr. Howard can't see that, he is blind."

Helen had dropped her eyes after his words and Carter had flushed feeling like an idiot. Clearly he'd missed the mark. He sighed turning his eyes back to his "technically perfect" boots.

Helen slid something across the desk to him, a red Smartie. "She lost the war. And I'm First Nations, not native. Good try though, for a moniyaw."

'Hey! Gotta light?" Someone called leaning out from the shadows of the wood panelled building, through the wall of rain. Carter shook his head and kept his steady pace towards the flickering red sign, little less than a block away now.

Carter had capitalized on Helen's inability to let him remain so "frustratingly ignorant" to the stories behind her art. Each telling had lowered her guard a little more. She didn't lean away from him quite as much, or stay as hidden behind her sheen of hair.

"Tell me about this one," Carter had prompted, coming around to her side of the desk and pointing at the faded silhouettes of buffalo disappearing in the smoke of a great black train. As usual the ravens made an appearance, seeming to grow out of the trees and swirling up into the sky before throwing themselves onto the wheels and divots of the steam-engine, trying to pick it apart. Broken, black forms lay along the side of the receding track. The buffalo were drawn in a mix of their natural silhouettes and first nations symbols Carter was becoming familiar with.

Helen began quietly, her hands tracing across the paper as she spoke: "The buffalo were destroyed under white man's engine of genocide and greed." She pulled on the hem of her black-sweatered shirt. She always seemed to be wearing clothes that were two sizes too big. Carter wondered if she got a lot of hand-me-downs. Money seemed a little tight on her end, he'd begun slipping her a bit of his lunch when he could, and the smarties, yah, she liked the red ones. Whatever kept her talking, and maybe also, whatever kept her happy.

Carter offered her his wrists, "Better arrest me then, for my father has sinned." Helen put an elbow to the desk, considering, "How about some genuine respect for the Buffalo. You could try drawing one instead of those...boots?" She'd smiled faintly, still reserved, but less so. He was wearing her down.

He stopped before the doorway, slipping his hood off to expose his shoulder length blond hair to the rain. He hadn't had a haircut since he'd started all this. Outer appearances had gone to the wayside on this journey, that and maybe, it turned out, he liked long hair.

He looked up at the sign, took in the filthy smell of urine emanating from around the doorway, and noted the address marked with faded paint. It was the place.

His heart began to race as he felt both fury and immense sadness roll up through him. To think somehow these were the last steps she'd walked up. It was unfathomable.

Why hadn't he replied to her text?

He blew out a breath, catching the cold, paint-worn-away handle and opening the door.

Her empty desk had leeched colour from Carter's life. It had begun with her art, but in the end it was Helen who's story he wanted to know.

After her first week-long absence, she'd returned, raccoon eyed and pale, a fading mark on her cheek. He'd wanted to ask what happened, but one look at the strangled grip on her pencil and her inability to meet his gaze had stolen the words from his breath. Had she been hurt?

He hadn't understood then. Not like he did now. Not after retracing her steps from the reserve she'd grown up on, to the broken parents she'd been taken from to the three different foster homes she'd been placed in away from her people, before finally disappearing altogether.

The information hadn't come easily. No. His first attempts to contact her case worker had been a fail. That's when he'd begun to understand just how messed up the system was, how hard it was for him to meet the people who'd cared about her. In the beginning he'd begun to wonder if anyone cared for her.

He'd finally found purchase upon discovering her art portfolio still at school. Mr. Howard hadn't really known what to do with it, so when Carter had offered to take it to her family, Mr Howard, in a great show of ignorance, had shrugged and handed it to him.

The reception was lit with two very dusty ivory wall sconces whose functioning mirrored that of the florescent sign outside: dim and intermittent. The desk was empty, Carter hit the bell, listening as its chime rang out, the clear sound fading away into the disintegrating floral-printed wallpaper.

By the end of the week she'd relaxed, and they'd continued on with her next piece. Carter was on his third pair of boots, western themed, with some etchings of buffalo. She frowned at his work, "The cowboys destroyed the buffalo." Carter had added some blood over the cowboys boots and she had lifted one eyebrow. He'd take what he could get. He was sure she mostly thought he was an unsalvageable idiot with savages for ancestors, which wasn't going to help him get her number.

In the end though, on that Friday, she'd prompted him. "Hey, let me see your phone." He handed it over feeling hopeful, and watched unbelieving as she sent herself a text from it. "In case you get to wondering about the Ravens."

Actually he had wondered about the Ravens but hadn't got to asking. Unfortunately his chance had fled. Helen hadn't come back to school after that day or returned any of his multiple texts. When she had finally texted him, he'd worked himself into a stupid state of anger towards her and let it go unanswered.

Idiot.

An elderly woman emerged from the dank recesses of the hotel. "Room?" She asked, exposing a few missing teeth.

"I'm looking for Alsoomse" He knew his pronunciation wasn't perfect, but it was close. He'd been practicing.

She frowned, wrinkles making ripples on her face, "Room seven."

Blood thundered in his ears as he climbed the musty smelling stairs. He'd come a long way to walk this worn red carpet, and stand before this cheaply fabricated door. He lifted one hand encased in the warm wool of his fingerless gloves and knocked three times in question. His heart fell with every silent second that passed.

Rustle.

He felt certain someone was standing on the other side of the door, debating opening it. "Alsoomse?"

Absolute silence greeted him.

He almost turned around right then, ready to go join the rest of the homeless in the damp conditions outside, but-

"Carter?" came a whisper back.

His heart dub-stepped, and he had an inhuman moment that if that door didn't open in two seconds he was going to tear it down with his bare hands.

It did open, and there was Helen, looking a little thinner, a little older, and beautifully astonished.

"Alsoomse?" He repeated carefully, feeling lightheaded looking at her, alive. She wasn't going to be another empty red dress.

She nodded slowly, her eyes very large and dark. Surprise seemed to have stolen her voice. She raked her gaze over him from his long shaggy hair to the puddle he was making on the floor. "Your boots have seen better days." She whispered finally, noting the dislodged heel on one, and the duck-tape holding the sole on the other.

He tilted his head looking down at her, "I've been walking in your shoes."