Hunger, an ever prevalent threat to any good ne’er do well.
It haunted your every step, it could eat you before you find your next meal.
Always lurking around every circumstance, your health and vitality leached from you passively.
Maybe some stray dogs would half eat you, maybe you would just get a pauper’s funeral, Connor did not plan on going hungry today, or any other one for that matter.
He swiftly breezed past the bakery, stealing three bread rolls and pointing out it took a great matter of guile and skill to do so, to no one in particular.
He was a simple man with simple needs, he visited the orchard and hoodwinked a few stewing apples, drying out in the sun.
They were crunchy and firm, juicy and rich in flavour.
The sun went over hill and behind the clouds by the time Connor managed to mug some hard cheese and a few flat sausages for the five finger discount.
He was uncertain of an easier method to filling his belly, he could have worked, but that would have been too hard.
His stick fingers found a stray flogged rabbit hanging from its haunches, he cut it down when the merchant wasn’t looking and absconded.
Stealing the warmth of an inn’s fire, he stole the time of day from them to make himself a soup.
A few potatoes stolen from the cellar and a two bottles of ale that were left unattended for long enough for Connor to tepidly sip from the glasses without being noticed.
His hunger and appetite was seldom an issue, but he brazenly grazed wherever he went, hunting for a half-eaten sandwich to be dropped.
Immediately licking his lips of the soup he had left and in the bowl, he helped himself to a stew that someone had been too slow to order themselves.
Accruing a massive food bill and then being cold blooded enough to walk away from the establishment you had stolen from three nights prior.
It was true, criminals always returned to the scene of the crime.
Not to see their handy work or the reaction, but for the opportunity to present itself a second or third time.
If it were any easier, it would be as simple as putting food in your mouth and chewing it.
They can’t take it back out of your digestive system.
The guards would be called, but you would no longer be hungry, and full of the stamina of youth you’d get away.
People were not wordsmiths and details such as appearance can be sketchy at best.
Magic knights maybe would have resolved the problems, but as it were, the regular constabulary didn’t boast as much success as their counter-parts.
They were clueless when it came to recognising a face, but warrant that you will get arrested for pestering them if you get up in their face and start asking questions.
Public nuisance was one such charge they could fine you with, as was vagrancy; disturbing the peace, loitering, the list goes ever on.
May as well label it complacency, apathy denied a greater sense of pride from taking root in the populace, rats stole what Connor could not.
He kicked a few of them as he walked, resigning to singe them to a tasty crisp later.
Man’s gotta eat.

He lit a smoke, from someone else’s pouch, with matches he had brought from home, arson had its uses, but Connor couldn’t really call himself a fire bug.
He enjoyed stealing things with reckless abandon, he was a megalomaniac when it came to larceny.
Stealing food was no different than stealing anything else, however the perishable nature of the object was an advantage in many ways.
There was a bounty of it behind every door, in most pantries.
Potatoes, carrots, onions; these things were easy peasy lemon squeezie, meats and eggs were not.
By nature the eggs were fragile, it would be easier stealing a chicken then a tell red uncooked piece of meat.
It bled everywhere after all, leaving a trail behind you and antagonised canines for at least fifty meters or so.
A barking dog can be an excellent cover for footsteps when it’s on the next street over, not so great when you’re facing it inside a person’s home.
He broke in and entered many of the citizen’s houses, locking picking was relatively easy, Connor barely wiggled his thumbs at this rate, it was as easy as breathing.
Connor’s favourite thing to steal was; without a doubt, cheese wheels.
There was no cheese wheel safe in all the kingdom from his larcenous ways, it would be sacrilegious to leave the cheese, and he never did.
Here and there he would find cold cuts of fermented meat, spiced in a villainous manner to prevent mice from stealing it, it; minus the waxy exterior, was excellent and incredibly palpable.
He scoffed one of the three bread rolls he had stolen earlier and stashed the other two, all in all, it was a good breakfast and lunch.
Cheese, bottles of wine, wild berries that Connor identified to be non-poisonous that were sweet and pleasing in many ways.
Connor returned home with mulberry wine marks on his lips and a slight stomach ache from eating so much cheese.
He poured a cold cup of coffee from the morning prior his foraging expedition, it soothed his nerves but did little to help his indigestion.
Working alone was getting tedious but being that his belly was full, he couldn’t really complain but did so irregardless, to no one in particular.
He broke off a small thumb sized piece of cheese and bread and left it for the rats or who ever would find it, he left it for the fairies for all he cared.
Who ever got to it first could claim it, he resigned himself to his bedroom and slept for an uncounted number of hours.
Sure of only two things, that he was well-fed, and that he would have a hang over in the morning.
He awoke in the middle of the evening, as he usually did and fixed a midnight snack from the prior days salvaging.
Before doing so he showered for no auspicious reason, brushed his teeth with charcoal and said a silent prayer for the good person he wasn’t.
May they not have too much, and when they do may they languish while they still had it, the hungry were starving for blood so blue, Connor only had a small taste of luxury and had developed a refined palette and sense for how sharp a cheese in a wax mould would last for.

Word Count: 1,129