Chương 18: Interlude Two - The Seamstress

Debra hadn't been on the streets for long. Long enough to know that people just didn't live on the streets for long, period. City Nineteen wasn't a kind place, not to the best of people; to those who were at the bottom, it was even worse. She… didn't know why she was on the streets some days. One day she'd been a happy little worker bee. She got up with the sun, worked until it set. Day in, day out. She was cautious and careful, never put off doing her part. She'd learn the cost of having to rush work early on.

That was always a price paid in blood, and she didn't want to pay it. Then the factory changed hands. It had done that before, but this time they brought in new machines, they made things faster, needed less seamstresses. They were more dangerous. She saw a girl, a woman she'd worked beside for two years without really learning much about her, get her brains spilled across the floor when something broke. She didn't come into work after that. She just… couldn't. Maybe something had broken in Debra too.

Her life had been a fog before being homeless. It was no less of a fog now. She'd heard stories about what happened to homeless women, but so far she'd been spared that fate. She just sat around and stared at the living city around her, the days slipping by. Winter would come around, she knew. Then the cold would take her. On some days, the fog wasn't as thick, and she found herself wandering the alleys and side-streets. She still needed to eat.

There was always food to be found, if one wasn't squeamish, and if they were desperate enough. There were camps too. But they were always busy. A constant hustle and bustle of people doing things and trying to scrounge for something better. She didn't like those. There was a hierarchy, a pecking order. Some of the stronger people ruled over the others and… and she didn't want anything to do with that. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Debra liked talking.

Not about deep things, just gossip and sharing stories about so-and-so and what they'd been up to. It helped her forget. That morning, she'd watched as some thugs went around and broke into a few of the warehouses and homes in the corner of the city she was tucked away in. It was usually a quiet part. She recognised some of them from a campfire. They passed her by. She didn't have anything worth taking, and they knew it. Then, a few hours later, a kid had shown up. They weren't too uncommon.

There wasn't much for some people to do other than enjoy each other's company, and that led to plenty of whelps. Groups of them roamed the city in little cliques, causing their own sorts of trouble. She had to watch out not to get her head bashed in by a rock, but usually they kept away. This child was strange. Three, maybe four years old, if Debra had to guess. She would barely come up to Debra's thigh if she were standing up. Debra couldn't guess if they were a boy or a girl. She leaned towards the girl, but…

it was hard to tell at that age. Then the toddler spoke. Sure, they slurred their words, and they had the worst gutter accent Debra had heard, but the choice of words, the… intelligence behind them. Something was deeply bizarre about the child.

"It's not a pretty way to go. I'm going to install some traps. Tell anyone that tries to break in that if they do it again, they might get a faceful of spores. And then their livers will rot inside of them. It's not a nice way to die." Those weren't the kinds of words a child barely above a baby should have been speaking. And the eyes… Debra could still taste the mushroom, hours later. The child had left, waddling off to gods knew where. She wasn't sure what to do about it, so she settled on nothing.

Nothing was always an easy choice.