Running was easy.

It always was for Roxy. Her legs could could carry her off the edge of the Earth if she asked them to. It felt natural, to run, and sometimes was the only thing she could do.

Like now. With her phone on the floor of Diane’s apartment. With Maria waiting for her on the line. It didn’t matter. Roxy was gone.

Her chest puffed with fire, her feet pounding the pale sidewalk underneath them. Her skin felt cold in the early morning air and she cursed the sky for being so dark and so brutal in the early months of the year.

Roxy’s thighs ached. Her calves burned. Icy tears stung at her eyes and every time she breathed her nose was scorched with brisk late winter air.

She stopped at the lamppost on the corner. Faded tangerine light touched the concrete sidewalk in solemn fingers of illumination. Roxy could feel how the steel bars that caged the light separated the light, streaking it across her face as she huffed with red cheeks.

And here she was, in a worn shirt and underwear, in a cold, grey city. Her bare feet were candy red and covered in gravel, steeped in blood. Roxy leaned on the pole and panted away her exhaustion.

She was an idiot, only warmed from the strain of her muscles and her own fear.

For a moment she watched the blocks leading to Diane’s apartment. The streets were oddly quiet. Bland. Barren. But what was she expecting? Would her Knight really come to save her? She couldn’t expect Diane to come running after her. Roxy shook the thought out of her head like a dog emerging from a lake.

What she knew: she couldn’t stay out here forever. Roxy’s breath had calmed to strong, deep pulls from her lungs and the chill in the morning haze left gooseflesh where it clawed at her.

She welcomed the ache in her legs, soothed by it’s familiarity. She wished she knew nothing else.