The wheels of her chair seemed unnaturally loud in the darkness. It
wasn’t the yelling or screaming or cursing or shooting that unnerved
her the most. Not even the darkness. Back home, on the bayous,
electricity was a luxury they’d never been able to afford. It was
something else, some dark silence that seemed to slither beneath the
surface of the mayhem and panic taken hold of the City.

She wasn’t sure where she was now. She stopped, flexed her hands
several times, stretched her arms and kneaded her own shoulders. She
was a strong woman. Always had been. And the chair had made her
stronger. She’d lost her feet to sugar diabetes so long ago, that the
way her calves tapered to narrow stumps seemed perfectly natural to
her. She’d developed rock hard muscles in her back, shoulders, and
biceps that allowed her to travel fairly easily over all kinds of
terrain.

And she had traveled long and far since the calling came to her, a
clear and strong sense to go where and when she was needed. 
Mostly she never knew where or why she was going, traveling by bus
until confinement cramped her muscles or until her money ran out. 
Then she would take to the road, propelling herself by her own hands in
her grandmother’s chair.  She’d passed many a night under a dark
sky, beneath the blanket she carried in her small pack strapped to the
back of the chair.  But when it was needed, she always found
shelter, food, companions and some wisdom or comfort that only she
could give.

It had been that way for longer than she could remember.  At
times, she felt ageless; at others, ancient in her deepest bones. 
Tonight, the years rolled back in her mind like thunder over the
bayous, to her years at LeCoeur Plantation in Black River, as companion
and servant to Claire Chevalier, childhood playmate and friend. 
Even now, she felt the familiar ache of loss and longing.  But
some fate had put her on the path she now followed.  And it was
most surely fate that led her to leave Kansas on a bus for this City of
Dark Angels, her sturdy arms pushing her foreward, through the
neighborhoods she *knew* because these were her people and their lives
were written on her heart..

Yes, she was strong. But she was also scared. The part of her that was
still ordinary, still connected to regular folk, wanted to turn back
and find refuge in those parts of the city that most people wouldn’t
even acknowledge. They didn’t call them ‘tenements’ here. They called
it ‘affordable housing’just a new way of lying the truth away. She
knew that. But she also knew those places and its people.