What remained of daylight was a narrowing strip along the western horizon. The sky was otherwise an even gray, and full of tumbling snow.
The people in the town below were briskly moving across the fountain square, wanting to sort out their errands without being exposed to the cold too much. One of them who had just excited a bakery was approached by a little girl wearing a coat much too large for her and holding out a small box toward the woman.
With a light shiver the girl asked "Would you like to purchase some matches madam, at a fair price?"
The lady made a dismissive gesture and hurried away while frenetically fastening the buttons on her jacket. The winds were getting more intense.
The girl changed her course toward a man walking past the large fountain in the center of the plaza.
"Sir, it would be an honour to sell you a book of quality matches-" she was cut off by the man, and asked to leave him alone. He trudged off and disappeared into the emerging darkness.
As the day came to an end, and the weather took a turn for the worse, the square cleared of people until finally, only the girl remained. With no one left to peddle to, she pocketed her wares and sought a place to spend the night. A distant bell rang as she left the open space for a side street. The girl counted ten tolls. She had woken up long before sunrise to sell her matches to folks on their way home from their night shifts, and to bakers about to knead the morning bread; now she was dying for some rest. The thought of fresh bread and warm ovens whisked her away from her task of finding somewhere protected from this awful wind. It almost felt like she wasn't hungry any more. At this point she was walking through an alleyway that was too far from the street lights to recognize.
She fell to her knees when she stubbed her frozen toe on something lying among the snow-capped bags of rubbish. The girl didn't have the energy to curse to herself, instead she felt around her for whatever she tripped on. Her exposed hands found something that felt solid as a rock, wrapped in cloth and covered in snow. One of her matches helped illuminate the object. There was a man lying there, face down, dressed in rags and stiff as a board. The girl tried to flip him over, but he was too heavy. She settled for reaching into his pockets, finding only assorted scraps and a half-empty bottle with a foul smell. She put the things in her own pockets and moved on to prying off the man's shoes. Once his feet were bare of both boots and socks, she compared them to her own tattered footwear. His were thicker and had less holes than hers, so she quickly discarded her old shoes, put the new socks over her own and then donned the new shoes, which she stuffed with scraps of a newspaper she found so they would fit her small feet better.
The man's presence unnerved her, so the girl didn't linger in the alley. The icy wind blew upon her, seemingly straight through her heavy coat. She fished that bottle out of her pocket and took a sip. Warmth spread through her cheeks, so she swallowed another mouthful before she continued searching for some place to sleep. The clock tower rang again, and this time she counted twelve tolls of the bell. There was a staircase made of stone that she walked past. Underneath it was a small archway that would have made a good shelter if it hadn't been blocked by metal bars. She stopped and took another swig from her bottle.
The ever deepening snow and the size of the new shoes made it difficult to walk; or perhaps it was just the drink. Without realizing it, she had made it back to the square, wherefrom she had begun. The girl stumbled around the central fountain until she found the least windy side of it and slumped down with her back leaning against the stone, wishing she had a comfy barrel to huddle inside instead. She looked up at the pitch-black sky.
"But then I suppose I wouldn't be able to see this lovely sunlight."
A shadow moved in the distance. The girl finished the bottle. A single ring of the bell tower echoed across the city. A short few of the windows on the surrounding buildings were still lit. A burst of muted laugher came from one of the apartments. She could barely keep her head up and lost all sense of time as she sat. In one of her moments of zoning out, her mind flashed back to the image of the man in the alleyway. She didn't want to end up like him.
The girl's body was shivering uncontrollably. Her head was spinning, and she didn't feel like she could get back up on her feet. If she couldn't move on, she'd continue being at the mercy of the wind, which took no quarter. If she couldn't stand up, the rats would venture out from their holes and tear her to pieces. She rolled onto her hands and knees, crawled up on her feet and ran as fast as the snow and the new shoes would let her.
Rounding the corner, she slowed down to walking pace. Might as well continue looking again. On one side of her were a row of closed shops. On the other was the large pile of ash and broken wood that they hadn't cleaned up yet. She had been there several times before, looking for any leftover items, so she knew there was no shelter to be found among the soot.
The town was now dead. Not a single window was lit like some had been before. The wind wasn't making as much noise now, and so the silence fell thicker than the snow on the ground. Seeing as there was no one around, the girl decided to fill the lull with a little song she had learned at the orphanage. Her gentle cries filled her with vigour, even though it felt like her body was going to split at the seams. The girl smiled at her friends playing in the corner, while the lovely music gently rocked her to sleep. Three loud clangs brought her attention to the clock tower. She could only barely make out its silhouette against the dark sky. Without realizing it, the girl adjusted her course. Eventually she ended up at the foot of the tall structure.
While craning her neck to look toward the top of it, she noticed a service ladder ending at a hatch about halfway up one of the tower's walls. Said hatch kept opening and closing as the gusts had their way with it. The bells in the tower rang each hour, so it wouldn't be feasible to sleep in there for very long, but the girl didn't care at this point; escaping this horrible weather was all that mattered.
The metal steps of the ladder were searing cold against her bare palms. Since she lacked any gloves, the girl removed the extra pair of socks she had found earlier and put her hands inside them for protection, then she began to climb. As she made it higher up the side of the building, the wind increased in ferocity, rivalling the very worst she had experienced on the ground. Her body was so weak that she couldn't even shiver any more. The sound of the bell as the clock stuck four almost made her lose her grip on the final stretch of the climb. Once she'd made her way up and inside the tower, she locked the hatch closed, and it was as if the world came to a stop. The wind was only barely audible through the wall, and it was as the most welcome silence.
The small room she had entered was empty, with the exception of a narrow staircase leading upwards and around the corner. The thought of exploring the rest of the tower was rejected; all she wanted to do now was to rest on this stone floor. The bell rang another few times. She didn't bother counting how many. Every time she just closed her eyes and tried to ignore it. Eventually, the hard floor simply felt too cold to touch, so the girl begrudgingly pushed herself up, and ascended the staircase in search of a wooden floor to use instead. The girl wasn't sure if she had gotten any sleep. It felt like she had just been staring at the wall for a few hours.
The stairs spiralled upwards, passing by a locked door at one point, and ending with another one that was she could open. This one lead her back out into the cold as she reached an area open to the elements, the floor where the bell itself was housed. The view over the parapets showed the street lights stretching out to the end of the city. Among these lights a few people had already begun to walk. Beyond the city limits were the surrounding mountains, and above those to the east was a strip of light; the beginnings of a sunrise.
It was only enough to colour what little sky could be seen through the clouds a pale blue, but soon enough an intense red flare would present iself over the city, which would once again come alive.
A new day was already upon her.
