Harriet's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Harriet stood still on the cracked pavement and listened. Somewhere past the broken archway, a child laughed. The sound was bright and small. Her servos hummed. She had waited years for that sound. She wanted to run toward it. She wanted, more than anything, to make a child laugh again. But she did not yet know if the laugh was real. She stepped forward. Her hoof-shaped foot bumped a small shape on the ground. It was a teddy bear, faded and worn, slumped where a child had dropped it long ago. Harriet had passed it a thousand times and never moved it. The laugh came again, thinner now, and then folded into the wind. No footsteps. No giggle behind it. Only the bear, smiling up at her with its stitched mouth. Harriet bent and picked it up. Her hands shook. The laugh had not been real. But the bear was. She held it against her chest and began to walk toward the stage. If no child would come, she would rehearse for the one who had left this behind.