The boy feels that if his body stopped moving even for a moment, if he stopped putting one foot in front of the other, his shadow would simply, soundlessly detach itself from his bulk and continue in a smooth, autonomous glide eastward, away from the setting sun. And that is what death would look like. He would slump onto his stomach and reach his swollen fingers out toward that indifferent adumbration as it slid further and further away across the field, across other fields, across the rooftops, and then eventually to the sea (the sea, which the boy has never seen), where it would be lost on
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