Not guaranteed to be actual.

Every so often, as the mind must, it returns to the past. The past is where we are all from. We may think we live in the moment, but the moment is finite, and instantaneous. We may wish to live in the future, but what we wish is under no obligation to pass. We live in the past, because it shapes our now, which determines our then.

When I was younger, running with the others through the wild streets of the place that we called Beggar's Town, everything seemed simpler. More savage, dangerous compared to where I live now. And it was that way, but there was an undeniable freedom in life then.

Simple acts of petty thievery, fighting among the other child-gangs. Occasionally being lucky enough to be favored by a true gang, the dangerous ones.... But inevitably, even if we are creatures of the past, we must hurtle blindly into the future.

We had a darkness and a light, then. Perhaps they are there still, simply in shapes I can't recognize. There is darkness and light in everything....

The temple was the heart of Beggar's Town, even though it was right on the edge, between us and the City. The real City, not the shanty-town of petty squabbles and limitless freedom that we called home. People from the City, beggars, bankers, thieves, aristocrats.... Everyone went to the Temple. The City had more temples, but none so old or generous as the Temple.

On the holy days, rice would be given out, and sometimes bread. As children, it was easy enough to scare up a cheap meal just for sweeping the steps for some elderly monk. Or perhaps run buckets of water to fill a freshly cleaned basin. It was a cunning trap, in many ways.

It was there that I actually learned to write, surrounded by the dust and sun at the top of the hill, in a crowded little room with a monk who insisted I copy exactly. There was no punishment for failure, merely no reward. And if I wanted to validate my hours at the Temple with a bowl of broth and rice, I had to learn.

So I did, not even realizing the truth of what I did.

Even the gangs that gave us errands, our darkness against the Temple's light.... Even most of them didn't know how to read. Of course, no monk knew where a good fence was. Or what some wealthy visitor from the City to the Temple wouldn't notice missing from their purses and pockets.

Bounding between these two forces we were shapes, slowly but surely. We had little power, ultimately, us creatures of the past. But the thieves were living in the moment. Trying to, anyway. The monks were living in the future. They saw our potential, and forgave any darkness we carried as children.

The gangs didn't care what we had done, or where. Merely what we were doing for them then.

So the shape of things changed.

As they must.

Enough time has passed that I've left that darkness, that light. I go to another temple, in another town.

But this temple is not so bright as the Temple. And this town is not so dark as the one I grew up in. Still, has anything changed, or is the story the same? The darkness not so dim, the brightness dulled....

Does anything change? Can it?

Of course not. Because I am a creature of the past. We all are.