Re: Queens: Wren & Saint.
Saint knew nothing of white rooms, and recipes that undid themselves in memory. He didn't know Wren the way she was known now, small hands clasped in hers, soft-words, blankets and dogs and birds and the world defined by connections. The Wren he'd known once had had tenuous ones, gossamer-in-water. She had been strong, and it was the sundress that curved one eyebrow up in what was not a question but a filing away of a note to self.
He said nothing of the boy with the curls, a dirty scrap of humanity who ran as if he knew something were licking his heels. Curiosity, or something other, and he followed, with a long sure lope that kept him just at the length of a stride behind Wren herself. That sundress glowed like a lit flame in the dark and dirty alley. She stood out, the way a housewife might in a crime-riddled street, glowing too cleanly for investigative journalism of any kind of type.
Saint himself was either threadbare for the job, or simply for a lack of anything else. He did not look like he came from any particular place, but there was enough creases and dirt that he belonged a little less obviously elsewhere. "What does he have?" It was extrapolation. Either the boy had something physical, or there was something about him that warranted following. Saint didn't question the following: more the motivation.