Joanna stands still, wondering which way to go. She no longer had to find Prophet, he was safe with Blake. She could go find them, but what good would that do? She didn’t want to see Blake right then, wanted to be alone to think. Or to help others, because the pain of loneliness and confusion she had experienced was still raw in her memory. She looses herself in thoughts of loneliness, in how Kafka has left her consciousness and it is too much, far too much, to be expected to carry on so alone. Blake didn’t have that connection to her consciousness which Kafka had so fully comprehended – Joanna is sick of men, she has been surrounded by them for so long. Even her child is a boy. She sighs.

And a woman bumps into her – quite young, with hair which catches the orange firelight from the candles on the walls and reflects it in a thousand reds and browns, a lighter, more beautiful version of Joanna’s own dark hair. Joanna’s hazel eyes search out the dead green ones, and she instinctively puts out a hand.

What’s wrong?

Her eyes are serious, her mouth not smiling. Joanna doesn’t really understand smiling, she’s too much at peace with nature to comprehend such a gesture either as a defence or an act of friendship.