Eight years ago:

Brick walls and wooden fences were the borders of her world, roads of dirt or broken cobblestone its fields, rickety staircases its trees. The city wasn't just “a big place” at her age, her size-it was all there was, all there ever could be.

She'd spent much of that day exploring the nearest reaches of that world, along with a number of friends who, like her, were ducking out on the various chores with which they were tasked. Rag-clad and dirt-faced, they moved in a feral pack, yipping and screeching and giggling. Their chins dripped with the juices of fruits they hadn't paid for; their wrists and arms and shoulders ached with the iron grasp of merchants who snagged them before they could run. But there were always more vendors, and those swift or fortunate enough to catch them were far less numerous than the shopkeepers who never knew they'd been robbed. The children pushed, slipped, shoved, and squeezed through barricades of flesh and cloth, making their way through the bustling markets and crowded streets. The heat of bodies pressed together in the throng was enough to make them sweat, despite winter's chill in the air and a light dusting of snow on the rooftops. They shouldn't really have been here unsupervised, so far from home, but their parents had long since given up forbidding them to go.

Futility was a common enough guest in the poorer quarters of Davillon. No sense in inviting him for an extra stay, no sense at all.

Young as she was, however, the girl had some vague sense of responsibility. While everyone knew that adults thrived on giving children meaningless busywork, there were some chores that needed doing. And of course, she wouldn't want her parents to worry. (The fact that it was growing late, and that her stomach-unsatisfied by purloined produce-was rumbling for dinner had, of course, nothing at all to do with her abrupt decision to head for home.)