“Outside in the yard, the few mourners who appeared seemed to be dispersing, leaving Millie to wonder if what Dusk said was true. Was she really dead? She didn’t want to believe it, but she didn’t want to hope either. Once she was a girl who was alone in the world, that was until Fanta found her. She was like a little lost lamb, but Millie wasn’t helpless, just angry. She believed no one wanted her and never would, but that was then.

“Fanta, please, say it isn’t so,” Millie pleaded silently as a tear escaped her eye. “Come back to us.”

Her words seem to carry on the wind to some distance across the city, to a place where rats were known to dwell, where hope was never thought nor even spoken.

“Out of the way, lady,” a man in a dirty coat shouted, shoving a disoriented woman aside.

The woman retaliated, sending him head first into a brick wall. “Take your own advice,” she whispered and grabbed him, raising him up then knocking him down again.

She disappeared into the night, running into the shadows frightened of the unknown. Someone followed her. She could sense it. “Who’s there?” she called. “Show yourself!”

“Don’t shoot, Ma’am,” a young woman said putting her hands up. “I just came to thank you.”

“Get out of here, street walker,” she said. “Forget you ever saw me.”

“Please, Ma’am. I don’t want trouble. I gotta know why you done it. Harry woulda done killed me if you didn’t…”

“Stop thanking me!” the woman shouted. “I do what I must. Now, go.”

“First, tell me who you are.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. You shouldn’t either. Now, get out of here before I give you worse treatment then your friend over there.”

“Okay, lady, if that’s the way you want it.”

The dark-haired woman faded deeper into the shadows underneath the city. A place she found comforting. With no memory of her own except for this cool inviting darkness that blanketed the tunnels of rot and sludge. The dirty waters somehow warmed her feet. The rounded walls smiled a welcome. This was home for her. Away from the anarchy and hate broiling in the world above. This being the only home she could recall, safe but damp, warm but lonely.