Danton opened the door. He stepped out. He took a deep breath of the damp, cold air. It was the tail end of winter—a grey tail end that only seemed to grow longer and longer. But let it be said: Danton was an incurably optimistic kind of person. Spring would surely have to arrive sooner or later. He would not allow his spirits to be squashed by a little more cold and damp. He shut the door behind him, bounced down the steps and took a bite of the toast. It tasted like heaven. He realized he was actually starving. Peanut butter and honey. His feet seemed to hardly meet the ground before he was off and flying through the air again. He thought eagerly of what lay ahead in the day. You never knew. And he felt friends with the whole world—the lampposts, the cat watching him from behind a front window, the mailbox at the corner. His usual route was to avoid the park and go down Union Street, but this morning just as he reached Grand Army Plaza, he realized he was thirsty. Really thirsty. And it came to him that he could get a drink from the fountain up by the Third Street entrance to the park. He could almost taste the water rushing into his open mouth. He generally thought of it as summer water. You drank as you were leaving the ballfields, all sweat-soaked and salty. It was gift-from-the-gods water, minerally tasting, down- from-the mountains water. You drank it and it poured the life force back into your body. He needed some now. He felt that if he didn’t have it, he might dry up and blow away like an empty paper bag. But, of course, this meant walking along the outside boundary of the park. This was something—it occurred to him---he hadn’t done for months. As if he had been avoiding it.
Deleted Scene - An Alternate Beginning to The Tiltersmith by Amy Herrick Page 2 Page 4