(Sorry for the slight powerplay there having him whack into your character, hope it's not too much)
Layne hadn’t been in Cerenis long before he started getting in trouble. What could one expect? He was afraid of everything, and he did an ass-backwards job of trying to hide it. Other street urchins enjoyed frightening him, which would usually cause him to turn uncontrollably into a sheep and that was just awful.
This time, he was running away from a rat that had bolted across the alleyway he’d been in. Vermin were among the less severe of his abundant apparent phobias, but the sudden movement had scared him more than anything. Lack of proper rest made him even more paranoid, and his wan appearance confirmed that he was in such a sleep-deprived state now.
He took no notice of the crowd as he fled, nor of his own battered and mangy look. He was too pale and too thin, smeared all over with dirt, and his clothes were too big, torn in numerous places, and faded to beigish-grey from whatever colour they had once been. His black hair was matted, bedraggled and dull. His brown eyes, worst of all, seemed disproportionably large for his body and had the haunted look of someone about to go into hysterics.
Yet another thing he didn’t notice in his panic was a street performer, who of course, being the clumsy little guy that he was, he smacked into and, being considerably lighter and frailer than the stranger, ended up falling over on his rear. Oooh no, this guy looked scary, he had big teeth and really dangerous-looking horns…
“I’m s-sorry mister, I d-d-didn’t mean to b-bump into you,� he looked embarrassed about his stutter, but he couldn’t talk without it and especially not when he was nervous. He got up, didn’t even bother trying to dust himself off, and prepared to run for his life, wishing he’d never stowed away on the ship that brought him here.