Naaghai Lowlands a pretty girl with bouffont hair

Precocious, she diagnosed him, holding back on a scoff at the shift in the boy's features. He reminded her of her useless, deadbeat ex-husband, and though she hated herself for it, it endeared him to her.

Even as her estimation of his character plummeted.

"That's a long way for a young man on his own," she said sweetly, hoping to knock him down a peg. She'd drawn as close, then, as she wanted to be to him — a few feet's conversational distance. "I'm Journey. I've been walking a long way, myself."

This close, she decided he was on his own. Or, at least, not under close watch.

"Where's your mommy?" she asked, still with a sparkle of warmth in her eyes.