Barrow Fields you're gonna keep my soul, it was yours to have long ago.

Dad had told her to stay within shouting distance of Dawn and Adi, and she assumed he knew just how loud she could be, and just how far her voice could carry. He still probably would not have been happy with how far out of their reach she had strayed, but she was a big girl now, already almost at her full adult size, and Daddy wasn't there to say anything.

So Easy trotted on, feeling very grown up out there all on her own, but very small at the same time. Especially when a dark stranger appeared in her line of sight, somehow unnoticed until they were just a hundred yards away from each other. Dawn would've seen him, she thought, feeling foolish all of the sudden. She glanced behind her and thought about screaming when Dawn and Adi where still pinpricks in the distance.

But she was a big girl. Even though she had plenty of reasons to fear a stranger, she knew that Daddy and Dawn would not have been in her place. And so she pushed aside the strangling fear and faced up to the stranger, her posture defensive and her gaze challenging.