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"When I first saw him, I fancied myself looking at the shadow of something that may have once been human, but was now nothing more than a wisp of smoke with hunched shoulders and ratty trousers that hung too long and dragged upon the ground beneath his shoes. As the boy stood blinking in the atrium, he held up his arm to shield his eyes and squinted as though he had just emerged from the depths of a very dark place.

His tawny skin was ashen and his matted hair appeared as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Streaks of grime covered his cheeks and chin, and there was a layer of dirt caked beneath his bitten-down nails. He flinched violently when Papa set a hand upon his shoulder.

'Benjamin, this is my family,' said Papa. 'My wife, her sister, and my wonderful daughters.'

The boy’s red-rimmed gaze met mine just then, and I couldn’t hold it long: there was something unsettling and melancholy about his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t his face…perhaps it was in his eyes. Perhaps it was the way he folded into himself and held his breath, how he moved in slow, almost indiscernible shifts and twitches, or the manner in which he gazed out at us as though he was trying to figure out whether or not we were real, or whether anything was real at all. "

— Vergessenheit, pg. 30

* * *

Ok, so he's technically not a baby atm. But since I moved back the start of the novel a year (it's still following a similar timeline, just over a longer period), he's only fifteen here. So this is essentially a depiction of what he'd look like at the vert start of the book: all scruffy, dirty and anxious.

Art, writing (c) me

Description

"When I first saw him, I fancied myself looking at the shadow of something that may have once been human, but was now nothing more than a wisp of smoke with hunched shoulders and ratty trousers that hung too long and dragged upon the ground beneath his shoes. As the boy stood blinking in the atrium, he held up his arm to shield his eyes and squinted as though he had just emerged from the depths of a very dark place.

His tawny skin was ashen and his matted hair appeared as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Streaks of grime covered his cheeks and chin, and there was a layer of dirt caked beneath his bitten-down nails. He flinched violently when Papa set a hand upon his shoulder.

'Benjamin, this is my family,' said Papa. 'My wife, her sister, and my wonderful daughters.'

The boy’s red-rimmed gaze met mine just then, and I couldn’t hold it long: there was something unsettling and melancholy about his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t his face…perhaps it was in his eyes. Perhaps it was the way he folded into himself and held his breath, how he moved in slow, almost indiscernible shifts and twitches, or the manner in which he gazed out at us as though he was trying to figure out whether or not we were real, or whether anything was real at all. "

— Vergessenheit, pg. 30

* * *

Ok, so he's technically not a baby atm. But since I moved back the start of the novel a year (it's still following a similar timeline, just over a longer period), he's only fifteen here. So this is essentially a depiction of what he'd look like at the vert start of the book: all scruffy, dirty and anxious.

Art, writing (c) me