Chapter 173: Triad, Part 16, Ten Years Ago

A fine day, bright sunshine, the buzz of the City:

A gangly ginger-haired teenager skulks in the background, wandering from one place to another. Always on the move, never stopping anywhere long, she travels the City. Passing through the crowds, the buzz and the confusion, never part of it, she keeps walking, always walking.

Arms folded, head and face down, her long red hair swishes with her movement. She’s tall for her age, built like a beanstalk with no traces of a developing woman’s figure. And thin, with no flesh to her arms and legs, her face is pale and has only a promise of beauty to come.

In the backstreets, the lost and the lonely lie stretched out in sleeping bags or on cardboard. As she sees them she crosses the street to pass by on the other side of the road.

She keeps walking.

At last, streets and houses give way to green spaces. Fields stretch as far as the eye can see, cut off only by the mountains rearing up on the horizon.