<div align="center"><strong>-=the raggedy girl – Eavesdown Docks – panicky=-</strong></div><br/>The busy docks were no longer her salvation. Her feet bruised as she fled the boulevard, shouldering past gawking strangers. Their open stares did more to unnerve her than the stones beneath her socks, so she kept running. Both arms up over her bosom, she held together the wide vee of her jumpsuit, trying to find the zipper to pull it upward.<em>Jao gao</em>, it escaped her while still moving. Slowing, she slinked past a raised platform, actors upon it trying to gather a crowd for their show, exotic costumes flaring as they raised their arms and moved about for attention. Making herself as small as possible, her head hung forward, she ducked through the milling crowd. Passing under the overhanging nacelle of an Osprey waiting for the return of supplies or crewmembers, the noise of the boulevard was finally behind her.<br/><br/>Finding herself in the ashen, burned out back alley of the docking area, she knew this was not a safe place to be. Anyone testing their engines or starting up a lift cycle might place her in a world of hurt. Running the previously announced estimated times of departure through her head, she counted backward through the lot numbers, recalling through extraordinary memory which ships were likely to be taking off soon. Continuing to move, her memories slipped back to the times when she recalled not moving for a little while, periods of rest since… awakening. She reflected on the rare moments of peace that had slipped past too quickly; the succulent meat on a stick, licking up the grease with her eyes closed; taking a moment in the sun against the metal storage container, one foot propped behind her other knee; … were there so few of those peaceful moments to remember? She needed to rest, to stop moving if just for a while to sleep. When was the last time she’d slept?<br/><br/>She’d slept on the Elefante class homestead transport out of Albion, the Vena Ray. The five-deck monstrosity still wielded a speed class 5 at full-burn, taking little time between its home and Persephone. The nubile woman had been able to deeply sleep while the ugly as sin ship was in motion, the thrumming of the dual engines making her feel secure enough to chance a snore – that is, once hidden under a tarp in the back of a mule strapped to the deck, unlikely to be needed before touchdown. She reckoned that to be two full days ago, having landed in the morning. Before slipping out of the main cargo bay with a crate hefted over her shoulder for camouflage, she’d snapped up someone’s grey nondescript worker’s jumpsuit she found in a corner under the stairs, the matching boots also too big but suitable for an appearance change. Selling what was in the crate and her old clothes to the farthest market tent with credits to offer, she’d made do the cheap purchase of a hat and hiding until the Elefante lifted off again. Sure by then that no one had raised an alarm over her pilfered gains, she ventured out to look for work or transport. However, never having worked in her existence, she had no clear idea how to go about it. She ended up desperate again, planning to utilize her last technique to gain passage across the black, furthering the distance between her first memory and her current self.<br/><br/>It had been before her arrival on Persephone that she’d started regularly changing her appearance, just in case. No telling if someone would be looking for her or not, she’d grown paranoid after realizing what she might have escaped. Ha, how the crew of the<em>Yinglong</em>had complained about the unfortunate timing and placement of their landing at the start of a soft rainfall on Albion! She hadn’t recognized what the trouble would be until she was caught outdoors moving toward a quiet half-dead shopping plex when the rain really hit. Torrents of water suddenly deluged the acrylic and composite-tube city. Her blonde hair was plastered to her scalp within moments and she’d laughed out loud at the image of herself in a window. Racing inside the shopping center, she’d had a hard time finding anything she expected to, hoping for easy changes of clothing and dye for her hair – just simple stuff to change her appearance before having to get off world again. The place must have been abandoned by any semblance of security, shops empty, the spaces barred or chained closed, but for a handful of necessaries all in one corner. Barter was expected over cash and she took advantage of their resell business, trading for clothes and foodstuff with her last goods, plus a fine decorative comb for the henna job in a questionable salon down the way.<br/><br/>The Eurasian salon attendant showed amusement at her sodden dress and ruined canvas sandals, encouraging her to towel off before looking around at their services. Quietly refusing the private back room ‘massage’ offered to her after watching other women come out with dreamy looks on their faces, the blond was curious but assumed she did not need it, nor could she afford it, whatever the luxury was. The burly gentleman escorting them seemed sweatier each time one of his clients was sent away. “No – just the henna,<em>xie xie</em>, and slice it shorter?”<br/><br/>The few credits in her pouch would not get her off world again but could be stretched enough for the week’s food and berthing while she figured out what to try next. On her way to an anonymous wall of sleeping coffins, she thought on how very sweetly the recommendation of this particular ‘hotel’ as safe and clean had been offered. The Eurasian attendant had described the place so that the blonde cum redhead could not mistake it for an under-construction site, the laddered scaffolding being part of the structure. “Just walk the crossbeam at the east end of this building. Across the valley is the clerk’s office, the brightly lit corridor with a lavatory. Those guys will fix you up cheap if you’re…<em>nice</em>to them,” she’d advised with a wink. Knowing how to be polite and genial, the newly henna’d blonde had made her way carefully over the dangerous crossbeam, doubling as a bridge from the neglected mall, essentially fearless.<br/><br/>Paying for the cigar-shaped coffin out of her precious credits, she almost took the clerk’s suggestion of paying for several days in advance, just in case anything kept her out of the tube for longer than a day. “You wouldn’t wanna find yourself locked out,” he mentioned with a leer. She’d not enjoyed his overt attention and, hoping the berth had an interior lock, she climbed the several more stories upward to her assigned 1m x 2m x 1m space. Secure for a single night, she’d slept, though never as deeply as when snuggled up against a vibrating bulkhead or wrapped in the heat of an engine.<br/><br/>Despite her attempts to freshen up within the cramped space, it was the hard rainfall the day before that had showered her relatively clean. She changed into her new clothes, simple stuff with utilitarian uses. Button-up canvas pants matched her low soft boots, both navy in color. Adding a placket-pocketed shirt of simple blue tartan fabric, she wriggled her shoulders to ensure the stylized yokes were centered, the dark colors good for hiding stains.<br/><br/>Upon opening her tube to the smoggy outdoors the next morning, the same clerk greeted her with the demand of an oral favor for the continued right to her sardine can. Instead of frightened or compliant, he found her confused and angry. She didn’t seem to understand his ham-handed attempts at coercion – just grew more annoyed with him when he refused to clear the obstacle of his body from her exit space. When he asserted himself with exposure of his interested groin, she surprised him, kicking out at his center of mass with her flat-soled boots. She jumped down onto the scaffolding with her bag in hand. Grabbing at what he could reach, the bag’s strap broke in their tussle, spilling everything she owned into the debris-coated ditch far below her coffin’s level. Perhaps the man only meant to keep her from screaming, but when he approached her again, the return of her earliest memories sent her into a panic, running from his outstretched hands. Running out of level ground, she leaped over the end of the railing, catching the rail of the next lower floor with her hands and flipping over to regain her footing. Racing down the scaffolding as low as she could go before noticing another clerk darting out from the office area to see what was happening, she pin wheeled in a different direction, hoping to elude a two-man chase. Either her escape tactic worked or the men never started a chase in earnest, for she found herself without any money or salvageable goods on the outskirts of the town before she caught her breath.<br/><br/>Calculating the odds of the salon attendant’s collusion took no time. Trapped on the planet with only her new look and clothes, she needed a full day’s realization to recognize the limited solutions to her precarious situation. She had no identity card or credits, nothing left to barter. She’d escaped one version of hell to find herself in another, helpless and alone. Intelligent but innocent about the ‘verse, she couldn’t handle any more assumptions of sex by the males of the specie. Every time she saw open hands coming to capture her, she froze up inside, terrified and unable to debate the best course of action. She only knew to run. Now she’d been running for months in one state of discomfort or another. It took her three more days of rough survival on the outskirts of the city to find her courage to return to the docks – that and a bit of desperation.<br/><br/>Finding herself investigating the posted destinations, she multiplied their announced distances with their standard speed classes, summing up how much longer she might have to be without food or comfort.<strong>Yes…</strong>what she was supposed to be doing right now, she reminded herself. Shaking her limp hair around her ears, she woke up from her intense memories, staring up at the ass end of a Dragonfly class mid-bulk transport.<br/><br/>*****<br/><br/><em>Jao gao</em>– literally “spoiled cake,” alas or too bad.<br/><em>Xie xie</em>– thank you.<br/>