“Years ago, children started disappearing in Moorgate.
Not all at once. First one. Then another. Then more.
Some said they had run away. Others believed the tunnels had taken them. Parents became terrified. They locked doors. They tied ropes around their children while they slept. Some even built cages.
Anything was better than losing them.
Then an old man arrived.
Thin. Quiet. Dressed entirely in white.
He asked the station council for paper and pencils.
They laughed at him.
He asked again.
A week later, scavenger teams were no longer searching for food or filters. They were searching for paper. For pencils.
When enough had been gathered, the children were brought together in a common hall.
The old man was waiting.
The pencils were laid out before him like ammunition before a battle.
Every day he taught the children to draw.
Not art.
Not technique.
He told them to draw places.
Cities.
Streets.
Skies.
Anything that could fill the emptiness.
And the disappearances stopped.
The drawings hanging in my home are not decorations.
They are what remained.
I was one of those children.
And the man in white saved my life.”
— Fiona Blackwell, The London Tube
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