A few shouted farewells, a few insults and protruding tongues, and she left her friends behind. She didn't quite skip along her way, for even if she'd been a happy enough child, the traffic on the roadways wouldn't allow for it. But she was, at least, as carefree as her lot in life would allow. Today, given her own limited frame of reference, had been a good day. She watched, with a delight that she hadn't yet outgrown, as clouds of dirt puffed up around her worn and ragged shoes.

The forest of legs thinned notably as she moved farther from the market, and she began to shiver as the season coughed and wheezed across her skin. She kept her head low, wrapped her arms about her chest in a quest for the warmth her tunic failed to offer, and mumbled aspersions upon her friends. It must, after all, have been their fault she'd stayed out so late.

It wasn't the change in the constant roar of the city's voice; people were always shouting about something or other. It wasn't the faint stinging in her eyes, or the almost dainty cough that kept traveling up and down her throat like a yo-yo. No, it was instead the sudden gust of warmth, a comforting yet confounding relief from winter's winds, that finally drew her attention from her feet.

She saw, at first, nothing but the various muted colors and shoddy fabrics that covered the legs and backs of the people before her in the road-more of them, in fact, than was entirely normal. Higher her gaze drifted, higher still, to the flickering glow and the plumes of smoke twisting their way skyward.

Even at her age, she knew full well the dangers of fire, especially in a neighborhood as poor as this. Should she run the other way? Find a place to hide? Offer, however small and feeble she might be, to help?