Timeline: TC1853.07.01 (Evening)
Location: Various locations across the Empire
Seventh Ring - The Forgotten Fringe, Grandma Miller's Tea House
Grandma Miller sat in her modest tea house, the same chair she'd occupied for forty years, watching the small display crystal her granddaughter had given her last New Year. The footage played silently—she'd turned off the sound long ago, unable to bear the commentary anymore.
But she didn't need sound.
She'd known this girl. Had fed her when no one else would. Had watched her slip through back alleys like a ghost, too proud to beg but too hungry to pretend. Had seen the bruises and the hunger and the terrible, determined light in those muddy brown eyes that should have been violet.
