Northstar Vale fire in my bones quakes

the stranger's silence goes unnoticed, lost as she is in a flood of renewed anxiety. now there is a witness to her meltdown, someone to watch her crumble to pieces simply because the world is so very large and she is so very alone. she must be such a broken thing, that these simple facts cut into her like glass shards; of course the world is large and she travels alone and if she cries in front of the strange man, the strange man will stare. but it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
i don't know, she whispers, and for a moment she doesn't know why she has spoken at all. but, oh! — he'd asked her something, hadn't he? and surely she doesn't know the answer, she who is so naive and useless and frazzled by the world that she cannot —
who are you? it occurs to her that she does not know how this man got here, or where he came from; he could have risen up from the earth in front of her and she would not have noticed, she thinks. and perhaps he had — oh, he is cute, but demons always are, aren't they? she does wish she'd paid more attention to her lessons now.