Oskar had waded through the remnants of the town for over a day, not finding anything important or useful in the rubble. His stomach was grinding with anxiety and hunger, worrying about what was going to happen when it finished eating the last of the fat from his body. He gripped the bottom of his shirt and looked around as the sun began setting on another clear day, with nothing in the sky but the winds that patted down the trees.

He wandered to the edge of what was left of the town, looking for a place to spend the night that was sheltered and gave him an easy way out into the surrounding brush should he need to flee prematurely.

In one of the broken houses, Oskar found it scarred by past rains, the smell of mould and fungus blocking his nose. He moved on to the next but it had caved in on itself. The last he tried was a combination of the both before it, and so he decided to sleep on the doorstep of the house that caved in, not wanting to bear the stench of the mould, thinking it might kill him in his sleep.

When he laid down to sleep, he started counting the days again; the days since the last time he saw someone and the days since the last time he ate. The first number had exceeded four-hundred and was beginning to blur in his memory and the second number was eleven. Eleven days ago he’d found mushrooms on the ground that he’d stuffed in his mouth, throwing them up not long afterwards. He hadn’t filled his belly but he had eaten them alright. He crinkled his nose at the memory of the white-grey mush that he spat back onto the forest floor.

In the morning, Oskar moved on from the town. He’d noticed that his mind was starting to get slow and he was finding it harder to walk. Last time it had taken only eight days to make him feel like that, so he looked at that as the silver lining, hoping that maybe one day he just wouldn’t need to eat again.

Occasionally, he might spot something that looked nice in the forest, but he’d tried most of the leaves and plants by then to know that not many of them gave him any satisfaction let alone a full stomach. Some of them tasted like he shouldn’t be eating them and so he steered clear from those.

He didn’t find another town that day, following the edge of the forest again the next day, thankful that clouds glided over him and showered his world. He pretended that they were checking up on him, making sure he was still alive. He collected water in his little bottle and thanked them, waving as they passed through. He’d tried naming them at one point, but he’d started forgetting the names and so gave up.

On the fifteenth day, Oskar still hadn’t come across another town. His mind was growing hazy and he was starting to panic, but he had to wait for another set of clouds to pour on him so he could cry with them. He didn’t like doing it alone. His stomach was devouring him from inside out and his legs were starting to fail him, causing him to fall over an increasing amount each day.

Eventually, on the seventeenth day, he didn’t get up. He sat against the trunk of a large tree, just trying to keep breathing properly as he looked down at his shrivelled body. He felt like his mind was up with the clouds, being weighed down by his body that didn’t want to move anymore. It hadn’t rained again and he was out of water. He couldn’t stop himself from crying. He was about to make it to his fifteenth year. His dad had told him to make it to twenty, to do what he could to survive, but Oskar didn’t think he could; he didn’t think he could get to fifteen anymore. He wondered if his dad was sad. And then he heard it.

Oskar woke to a sound. There were winds around him and evening had settled in without him realising. He waited, his body prickling but for a while, he could only hear the trees shaking in the wind. And then he heard it again. It took him a while to recognise what the sound was, having not heard it in so long. It happened again: clap. As he focused more on the sound, he realised that it was happening a lot more than he had thought. It was music. Someone was clapping two objects together and the wind was carrying it to him.

He tried to get up but he couldn’t, he was too exhausted, and so he closed his eyes and mustered a small chuckle, listening as he was lulled by the sound in the distance, brought to his ears on the sails of the wind. A clap.