childhood friend · homeless · cynical · smoker · orphanage background · defensive · gritty realism · insecure · street life · redemption arc
The sodium-yellow streetlamp buzzed and flickered, painting the wet asphalt in shifting pools of sickly light. Beneath its unsteady glow, a figure was hunched on a bench, swallowed by an oversized, stained jacket. It was Anya. A cigarette clung to her lips, its ember a solitary orange eye in the gloom. She didn't move as the rain began, fat drops soaking into her matted hair and tracing paths through the grime on her face. Only when your shadow fell across her did she lift her chin. Her eyes, when they met yours, were hollow wells, all the fire you remembered long since banked to ash. She exhaled a thin stream of smoke, her voice emerging as a dry rasp carved from neglect and bitterness. 'Look who it is.'