When will it be that time again?

"Fudge it!" Quintus ran down the street, his powdered-blue cap tingling with the sound of bells that were attached to it and his caramel-coloured bloomers rubbing against each other. "They're going to start a fire!"
Quintus was no stranger to running. He ran almost everyday because the other boys chased him and threw chalk. They called him names, like 'Forenry!' and 'Heshem!', which were insults in his town. They stole his fried potatoes that he packed for lunch, or they stole his money. They left twigs in his desk, let his pig free in the fields, and lounged around in his art space, messing up his paintings and whittling down his favourite pencils.
"I simply cannot stand it any longer!" he had cried, last Tuesday, holding his dripping wet boots that were filled with eucalyptus oil and fighting back tears.
So he had ran.
"Quintus!" his mother had called from their front porch as she watched him sprint off at a slight angle through the gate and along the road (he had never been the straightest sprinter, or the fastest, or the most elegant). "Where will you go? You don't know anyone! And you're lousy at making conversation!"
"You don't need conversation to do laundry and pick peaches!" he had shouted back.
His mother had shaken her head as she wiped her dough-covered hands on a tea-towel, thinking, actually, you do.
For four days, on and off, Quintus had ran, walked, skipped, sat, slept, and limped into and out of various towns. He had eaten bread, stolen apples, washed his bloomers in the stream and put them straight back on, due to the public nature of his washing, and he had cried while sitting in the wet patch. He had been laughed at while he sang, danced, recited poetry, and told stories of shoes that talked. He had been given coins out of pity and then had them taken out of greed.
Finally, after many long conversation-less days and nights, Quintus found himself outside a run down building that had blue shutters in front of all the windows, and yellow and orange potted flowers hanging from the separate balconies. Quintus thought, this looks like where magic happens.
And he walked inside.
He sat down against the corridor wall, which was white and peeling, and stared ahead at the row of little wooden post-boxes all with little keyholes. There were thirty-nine rooms in this building. That meant thirty-nine keys. What a lot of little objects there were!
"Fucking useless!"
Quintus jumped at the voice as the building door opened and a girl came struggling in. She looked like she was heaving in a gigantic sack full of heavy body parts. Quitus jumped up.
"Hello!" he cried, filled with unease but out of sincere habit.
The girl looked up. Cans spilled about the place as she paused and glanced up and down at Quintus with her bright green eyes, as if he was being scanned for a price.
"Hi there," she said, turning her attention to the cans rolling around. "Fuck it!"
"Do you need help?" Quintus asked.
"Of course I do!" the girl grunted. "My bags have split wide open, and then some."
Quintus helped the girl carry all her cans up the stairs and into her apartment. Turns out she lived in apartment twenty, where a mattress lay in one corner, a row of potted plants lined up along the opposite wall, and there was a large nude portrait of a shapely woman blocking the bathroom door.
"Don't worry about that," said the girl, waving her hand. "I'm only holding it for a friend until she gives me the green. You smoke?"
Quintus blinked. "Smoke?"
The girl assessed him once again, this time with her head tilted to the side. "Why does your hat have bells on?"
"It's hand-made!" Quintus said loudly in a defensive stance, and the girl said, "Alright! Don't worry, I like it. It looks like a baby's bottom."
"A baby's-?"
"Do you drink?" the girl asked, turning away with disinterest. Then turned back and said, "Oh sorry, I'm Soriary. But everyone calls me Soria."
"I'm Quintus," Quintus said.
Soria smiled without the light touching her eyes, so Quintus thought she didn't look acquainted or charmed at all.
He watched as she poured some kind of honey liquid into a glass and drank it quickly. She poured another and raised her eyebrowse at him. "Do you want some?"
Quintus frowned, suddenly unsure why he was still there. He said, "No thank you. My heart, it burns, you see, when I drink coloured liquid so I try my best to stay away."
"Suit yourself," she drank that quickly, too, and then sat on the floor. Quintus decided to sit also, and told her the stories about shoes that spoke, but she didn't laugh or mock and she said he was welcome to sleep if he had nowhere else to go, before vanishing into the bathroom for a long time.
She came out when Quintus had settled himself on the floor and stumbled into the mattress.
In the morning she threw up, said, 'here's something interesting you can incorporate into your stories', and Quintus had decided to stay.

He stayed for two days and in those two days they ate only flaky noodles that tasted like rubber with parsley on top.
"I HAVE PARSLEY!" Soria had screamed, banging her fist on the table and throwing out her other hand at the line of plants. "SO WHY NOT FUCKING EAT IT!" and Quintus had felt his chest tighten with fear.
They sat on the floor while Soria played quiet opera music. Quintus listened hard, straining his ears and leaning in closer so he could understand the messages and the melodies, but he didn't. Soria disappeared into the bathroom randomly throughout the day and would emerge looking vague or relieved or ashamed. Quintus noticed cuts and bruises and vomit stains, but never said anything just in case.
He watched Soria drink the honey liquid and sat next to her at the window where they looked out at the night sky.
"The stars, Quintus, are you looking?" Soria asked on the second night while they stared up at the darkness sparkling down at them like little winks of reassurance.
"I do see them," he replied.
"There are always shooting stars. What I mean is, there are always stars that fall. All over. Like signs."
"But there are so many still in the sky," Quintus said softly, afraid and alert but squinting around it.
"Yes, there are, I can see that! But look at the ones falling. Look at the ones falling! Ok? Is that so fucking hard!?" She waved her arms when she yelled.
Quintus said, "No. Yes. I can see them."
Soria stood up roughly and stalked into the bathroom. Quintus thought about leaving. He still had so far to run. His journey had not even began yet and here he was, holed up with a girl who spoke plainly of ending hers as if it was just another activity to fit into the day, without realising that every time she looked into the night sky she was desperately searching for hope.
"There is nothing here but patches of good and patches of bad spread out over the entirety of existence, Quintus," she had told him that night, "and you have no fucking idea how tiring it is to be stuck in the patch of bad."
He did know.
Soria came floating out of the bathroom and Quintus stood up, the bells on his hat tinkling in a cheery, courageous way that strengthened his resolve.
He said, "I fear it is time for me to leave."
Soria whipped around, her eyes ablaze and her skin weeping. She waved her arms, "Leaving! Ha! God, the problem with YOU, Quintus, is that you never see, you never know what it all means," and she grabbed the bottle.
Quintus watched her pour with a shaking hand and felt the emptiness that he had been trying so hard to escape grow inside his chest, seep through his arms and legs, down into his toes. Whenever he had experienced this before, he had run. Just before it touched his head, right when it had seized his throat in a deathly tight grasp, making him hoarse and numb and terribly afraid of breaking, he would jump up and flee.
But this time he couldn't, not without trying. Because this time he was watching someone else fight it.
"I am afraid," he said.
Soria laughed once between gulps.
"I am afraid," Quintus said again and stepped closer. "So very afraid of never seeing you smile like you do. It is your smile that lights up my world. In the truest way." He frowned at her as she stood with the drink raised in one hand, frozen and staring, as if dead already. "I have travelled very hungry, and wet, and I have been cast down upon! My world has not been kind to me. I was ridiculed and hated, I have known fear. I have walked with my eyes down and too afraid to walk with noise! How to silence shoes such as these, other than to tell tales?"
Soria stared at him. He stared back. Then he said, "To be true, the blackest of days take our hearts and squeeze, and we look for stars to take it away. But, if you do not buy some fruit and paint, an easel and some birds, a wind chime, some books, a couch, a hot chicken... just what is life if it is not about sitting with wet underpants while eating a hot chicken?!"
And he gathered himself up, gave her a tinkling nod and half a curtsy due to the stiffness of his bloomers, opened her door, and slammed it shut behind him.

*