Bedlam - Wednesday morning

[xp_daytripper]

Light again, sudden and shocking, and cold air on her skin. With it comes a voice:

"Jaysis, would you get a load of this! There's some bloody kid under here, almost gave me a heart attack. C'mon, you, be on your way."

Despite the words the nudge with his boot is almost gentle. She winces any way - it hurts to move, hurt to breathe, hurt to think. But she has to get up, has to go on looking for... whatever it was she had lost. Her mind, quite possibly.

"Can't be late for work, the job. Do the job, the job's what's important," she mutters, pushing herself upright and looking up at the man who is holding her sheltering piece of cardboard in his gloved hands and looking down at her with contempt.

"Get on with yer," the garbage collector says. He's a middle-aged man with his balding head shorn to grey stubble and an Irish brogue. The accent stirs something sluggishly in the depths of her mind and she raises her hands involuntarily to her ears as if shielding them from a loud noise. Red, she needs red. "You look like hell, that's for sure."

"'m fine," she replies, forcing her hands down and using them to push herself unsteadily to her feet. Her stomach growls insistently. "Bottomless Pit of Brighton."

"You ought t' get yerself seen to," is all he says, turning to throw the cardboard into the back of the truck. "The city is a terrible harsh place for a little bit of a thing like you."

"The city loves me," she replies softly, before turning and making her slow way past the garbage truck and out of the alley. "She'll take me back. I just need to find it, that's all."