“There wasn’t even time for the shallows of sleep.”

Many nights that have blended into one. The pinprick of stars cast silver strands down onto the city.

The sewer grates stuffed with leaves from a long past autumn forced the rain to pool in the streets. The incandescent bulbs lit the dark surfaces like distant planets bobbing above a cosmic lake.

Small scratches of a pen and the occasional sigh of relief. The numbers were adding up for Konstantin, but not much else was.

Twenty-six years old and thin to the point of dissent, he wasn’t far past the grim predictions his grandmother made when he stepped onto the continental train. He rolled the paint speckled acorn she pressed into his hand. Her last words an oath rather than a farewell.

“Nothing strong grows without deep roots.”

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The parade spilled confetti over the boulevard and idle men sifted through the torn paper for lost coins and candy. The kids and families had already retired once the colonel proclaimed another great advancement on the southern front. The clapping was mechanical— a slow screech like the steel brakes made in the factories on the edge of town.

Fortune found through misfortune. A hole in a jacket pocket gracing small notes an escape from one clenched fist to another. Thin soup and hard bread a grim reward for sharp eyes.

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Twenty-eight and feeling as dull as the worn razor in his wash basin. The patchy beard and smudged spectacles didn’t distract from the hollowed cheeks of Konstantin.

Cursing his namesake— or that of the sixteenth Constantine that was doomed by prophecy and ensured by Ottomans. He’d never taken to his name, but remained weary of Mehmet’s.

The books were growing wider— the marks more frantic as the pen struggled to connect irregularities. The path of his own life would soon stop mirroring the railroad and become akin to the wagon ruts of home.

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