Astrid looks around wildly, and spots a familiar boot vanishing around the corner of the alley. That shouldn't be possible; she saw the woman get stabbed with her own eyes. Astrid vacillates back and forth for a moment, then takes off after it, coaxing her shaky legs into something akin to a jog. She turns the corner and spies the woman at the end of the next alley, striding purposefully around another turn.

“Hey! Wait up!” Astrid calls, running faster. She continues pursuing the woman that saved her, ducking through alley after alley until she is thoroughly lost, not stopping even to catch her breath. This continues until she turns into what she prays is going to be the final alley, only to find herself faced with a brick wall, covered in illegible graffiti. Astrid skids to a halt, a stabbing pain in her lungs. She looks wildly around, but none of the buildings here offer any sort of exit. She shakes her head and puts her hands on her knees. Perhaps it had been foolish to try to follow her rescuer, especially considering the lack of food in her stomach.

A small noise makes her look up, and her mouth falls open. The young woman is far above her, ascending the building by means of hauling herself up the brick wall, using only the tiny indentations between bricks as handholds. Her ignorance of the numerous fire escapes around her is so blatant as if to be almost intentional. As Astrid watches, she vaults over the edge of the roof, nearly thirty feet overhead.

It is at this point, Astrid reflects, dropping to her knees and digging through her bag, that any sane person would give up and go home. Unfortunately, she thinks, retrieving a wrench from her bag, she's never been known for her good judgement, and giving up on something halfway has never been in her nature. The thought bothers her, so she reassures herself that a person with truly questionable judgement would invent some sort of grappling hook contraption to drag herself up the building.

Astrid has tried building a grappling hook with which to climb buildings exactly three times. It has never worked out well for her.

Astrid opts for simply hurling her wrench as hard as she can at the nearest fire escape ladder, causing it to come loose and descend to the ground with an almighty crash. As she ascends the fire escape, the ground drops away, leaving her amidst an ocean of roofs. Although she gets to see the chaos of Inapithe every time she climbs down from her apartment, it is different being among it, instead of looking down on it from above. The mishmash of architectural styles is far more jarring. In the early morning silence, the world still feels loud with the way that the every sign screams for attention, and every building vies for space with its neighbors. The sky is thick with cranes, steeples, and seabirds, but still manages to be a pale, half-hearted blue.

On the eve of Astrid's arrival in Inapithe, she spent most of the night crying. She told Pell that the city would never feel like home to her. Pell had smiled, and hugged her. “Inapithe isn't anyone's home. It's just the stone that we carve our homes out of.”

When she finally makes her way up the three stories of rickety metal steps, Astrid is delighted to see that she is not alone on the roof. The woman who rescued her from Tove is standing on the far end of the roof, gazing out across the city. The sunlight frames her body, turning into a shadowy silhouette with a corona of gold. Astrid clambers up onto the slanted roof, taking care not to disturb any loose shingles. She stands up unsteadily, swallows, and takes a deep breath.

“Hi, I'm Astrid. I'd like to buy some— I mean, hi. I'm Astrid.”

The woman whirls. She drops down into a low crouch, placing one hand on the edge of the roof. The motion strikes Astrid as strangely animalistic. “How did you get up here?” She demands in a low voice.

“I... used the fire escape?”

“There was a fire escape?” The woman says blankly. She withdraws from her crouch, but the tension does not entirely leave her stance. A sudden breeze catches her hair, and Astrid could swear her heart skips a beat. “Huh. Oops.”

“I wanted to, um, make sure you're ok,” Astrid says.

The woman crosses her arms protectively over her stomach. “Oh. Well, yeah. It was just a flesh wound. Thanks for calling out, you probably saved me.” The two of them stare at each other, silence stretching out awkwardly. “All right,” the woman eventually says. “I'm just going to... I 'm just going to go. Thanks for warning me about the knife. Tove's going to flip when she finds out.” She makes to leave toward another roof.

“Wait!” Astrid calls out in a strangled voice. The woman stops. Astrid blinks. She wasn't expecting to be listened to, and she isn't entirely sure what to say. Pell's reminder from yesterday pops into her head, and she immediately seizes on it. “I know we just met, and I don't know your name, but you seem really cool, and you saved me, and then I sort of saved you, and I was wondering if maybe we could be friends?” Throughout the sentence she can feel heat rising up her neck in time with the rising pitch of her voice, and by the end of her proposition she is sure that she is blushing furiously, painfully aware of her own awkwardness.

Astrid expects a gentle rebuff or refusal, and as such is completely taken aback by the coldness that instantly washes over the young woman's face. “No. I don't know you, I don't like you, and I don't do friendship,” she says shortly, and begins quickly striding away. Halfway down the roof, she slips, and her arms go up to break her fall. The hem of her tank-top rides up, revealing smooth, unbroken skin where there should be a stab wound.

Astrid shakes her head in confusion. That shouldn't be possible. She saw the knife go in.

The young woman's eyes meet hers for a heartbeat, and they are full of a mixture of fear, anger, and something darker that Astrid cannot quite identify. She wraps her arms back around her midsection and launches herself off the roof, disappearing down into an alley, and leaving Astrid alone among the rooftops.