Chance encounter

It wasn't a chance encounter I had alone that brought her into my life, but one my mother and I had together. A client had been generous the night before and we were in the market buying much needed food. A woman came by, lost. She was hungry and cold and quite obviously trapped in the Twisted Kingdom with her mind shattered. Titian brought her home. We shared what we had bought with her, even though it wouldn't last as long that way. I remember we even had meat. Titian gave her the larger bed and slept curled around me that night and the next and the next, working on the streets themselves when she had to, or taking clients to a room for rent.

Her name was Tersa.

Tersa spoke in ramblings that we didn't always understand and one day she disappeared. But then another she came back. She'd stay for a week, two, sometimes a month and then she'd be gone. I liked to sit and talk to her, a child's mind and games fitting well with a madwoman's and she seemed to enjoy playing with me. She'd watch me a great deal, and mutter to herself about power and fragility and protection.

I didn't realize my life would change then. Didn't realize it was changing. She was a woman we took in occasionally. Helped with what we could. She brought me little trinkets she found, bird feathers and once a honeycomb.

And then one day she brought him, and nothing was ever the same again.