Elaine’s general feeling towards buskers in Destiny City was one of benevolent annoyance. They certainly contributed to the general feeling that she was no longer in rural Kentucky, but there was something irritating about their subjecting the hapless public to their need for performance.

Still, she had stopped to listen to this one, Petitcru shivering in the crook of her arm despite the dog’s sweater and her own furry coat, because she had stopped to watch the player’s long, elegant hands on the neck of his guitar - illuminated in the darkness by the cheerful Christmas lights adorning the main square - and to feel a pang for which she did not even have the heart to reproach herself. She should really see about getting someone out there to teach him how to read modern music so that she could bring him things to play - it must be frustrating having to visit thousand-year-old muscle memory over and over, or else fumble around blindly attempting to compose things with no experience. Maybe if she put up a Connections ad - or spoke to Encke, who seemed to know everyone - or -

With her thoughts running along these lines, she almost did not notice when the tune changed. It took her several seconds more to realize that there was a vague familiarity to the tune that she could not place, and then another several to realize that someone had joined her: someone tall and silent, wrapped up against the cold in a very modern coat and scarf that did not seem like him at all.

She did not want to look. A sick instinct told her to turn away. She was, even, considering whether she might not be imagining the figure at her side, when Petitcru - afraid of nearly everyone - stretched out her nose towards the stranger, her ears pricked forward as if in recognition.

This might be some awful trap, of course. It was exactly the sort of bait that she would fall for. But the pain was in her and it was hungry and growing, and all morning she had seen couples holding hands on sidewalks and felt a rage that she could not express and was forced, for her own sake, to stifle.

She could not look at him. She knew, somehow, that to look at him directly would be to destroy this: that he would become, in that moment, some stranger; that the face only slightly visible in the darkness at the edge of her vision would shift, and become someone else’s.

This Destiny City Bullshit, she thought bitterly, her eyes stinging in the cold. But maybe it would be worth it, if it was a trap, to be weak, and to have for a moment what she could not have in reality.

She blindly reached out with her free hand, fingers desperately seeking his. For one hysterical moment she considered whether she might be reaching out to take the hand of a strange man on the sidewalk, but the thought was fleeting, and ended when he reached back. Their fingers laced together, they stood in silence, not looking at one another, watching the guitarist through the duration of a song that was entirely too brief.

With a gentle reluctance he took his hand from hers, and reaching into his pocket, procured a very old coin of worn-down gold, which he tossed into the busker’s basket. She turned, then, desperate to look at him, and saw no one.

The musician gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Lady,” he said, and she could not choke out a reply, except to say in return: “Thank you.”