Tangled paths

chapter 3

ARIADNE'S POV

The world outside did not wait for me to adjust; it swallowed me whole.

The life outside the gate did not care who I was, did not care that I once memorized hymns and recited the rosary. Out here, there were no prayers. Only instinct.

It's been weeks since I was kicked out.

At first, I kept count. Each night carved itself into my memory like a wound, an unspoken reminder that no one came looking for me, no one changed their mind. Wondering if Elsie thought of me. If she regretted what she did or didn’t do. If she told them that it was not my sketchbook.

Eventually, the days blurred together, held in place by hunger, cold air, and blistered feet.

I slept wherever the shadows held me, under bridges, behind rusted fences, in alleys that smelled of piss and rain. I learned which corner stores wouldn’t chase you off if you loitered too long, and which streets went quiet by dusk because something worse than loneliness crawled out at night.

I started working shifts anywhere I could. Cleaning greasy counters. Carrying crates. Scrubbing toilets. It didn’t matter. Anything I could do to get money, and I needed enough to eat, to blend in, I needed a shelter to not freeze to death for me to keep moving. So I worked with hunger plunged to my skin like skin.

I kept walking. Not because I had a plan, but because standing still made me feel like I’d already lost.

I found a shelter, just above a bakery, Small. Crowded. Loud. It was not like the orphanage, it was worse. No rules. No warmth. Just survival. I only got a mattress with my worn-out clothes I got from the orphanage.

One evening, a brawl broke out in the shelter over a stolen coat; with everything I had picked up from fights around here, all I came away with was a split lip and peeling knuckles.

Mel found me afterwards, crouched near the back wall, dabbing my lip with the sleeve of my hoodie. She didn’t say anything at first, just handed me a crumpled tissue and sat beside me like we’d known each other longer than a few shared nights in the same cold room.

“You’re too pretty to survive here if you look soft,” she said, her voice rough like gravel. “People see a girl like you and think you’re a target. Sweetheart, this world doesn't give a damn about softness. You wanna make it? You gotta look like you got nothing to lose.”

I stayed silent.

“You think I made it out here all these years ‘cause I smiled and said please?” She scoffed. “Hell no. I fight. I walk like I own the pavement. I stare back until they blink first. That’s the trick.”

She paused, lighting another cigarette and exhaling smoke into the cold air. “You’ve got the fire, I see it. But it’s buried under all that...obedience. They trained you to wait for kindness. Forget that. Kindness doesn’t come unless you demand it.”

I looked down at my swollen hand.

“Come on,” she said, standing. “I’ll show you. First rule, never throw your weight all at once. You jab. Quick. Make ‘em think twice.”

She motioned for me to follow. I did. We practised behind the shelter, my bruises fresh but my resolve sharpening. She adjusted my stance and taught me how to square my shoulders, how to keep my fists up, and how to breathe through the hits.

“Stiffen up, sweetheart,” Mel said, one final time, meeting my eyes. “Or this place’ll eat you.”

So I did. I worked my shifts at a grimy little diner that didn’t ask questions. The manager, a lanky man with cracked glasses and a rounded belly, paid me under the table. The job was hell. Grease burns, leering customers, aching joints. But it kept me fed.

Some nights, after closing, I stayed behind to mop the floor just so I could pocket a leftover sandwich. Other nights, I’d walk for hours, not because I had anywhere to go, but because stopping meant feeling. And feelings were a luxury I couldn’t afford.

Mel started training me every other evening. We found an abandoned warehouse with broken windows and scattered debris. She called it “the gym.” Sometimes, she brought a worn-out punching bag someone had ditched in a skip, tied it up with rope, and barked at me to hit it until my arms ached.

“You need to hit harder than the world hits you,” she’d say, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. “That’s the only way you’ll stop being prey.”

Over time, my body began to change, stronger, leaner, tighter. The bruises became badges. The way I walked shifted. I didn’t cower anymore. I made eye contact. I learned how to read people, the twitch in a man’s eye when he was about to get aggressive, the subtle glance of a woman with a blade in her boot. I kept to myself, but I watched. Every corner of this city had rules unspoken, and I was learning them fast.

One evening, Mel didn’t show up.

She never missed a session. Ever.

I waited for hours, pacing the warehouse with the cold creeping into my bones. When I finally left, something in my chest felt off. Hollow.

She didn’t come the next night either. Or the one after that.

I waited.

Long after the others at the shelter drifted into a restless sleep, I sat by the window, staring into the broken streets, half-expecting to see her sauntering toward me with that cigarette smirk and a jab about how soft I looked.

But the streets stayed empty.

The cold gnawed at my fingers.

Every shadow looked like her — until it wasn’t.

A week passed before I heard someone whisper it — a body found by the tracks, a woman with a rough voice, a stare like stone. No one said her name, but they didn’t have to.

I knew.

I felt it in the hollowness stretching inside my chest, in the way the world tilted slightly out of place.

I didn’t cry.

I couldn’t.

Instead, I went back to the warehouse alone.

The punching bag still swung from the frayed rope, swaying as if waiting for me.

I hit it until my knuckles split and the sharp sting cut through the numbness. Until the air rasped in my lungs and the silence felt thicker than concrete.

When my fists gave out, I slid down the wall and sat there, back pressed against the cold.

The warehouse smelled like dust, rust, and loss.

I stayed until morning, when the light crept in through the shattered windows, bleeding everything grey.

That was when I saw it.

Tucked near the corner, half-buried under broken glass — her lighter.

The chipped red plastic. The almost-dead spark.

I picked it up, turned it over in my hand, and tucked it deep into my pocket.

I didn’t cry.

Instead, I went back to the warehouse alone. I hit the bag until my knuckles cracked open and the sting reminded me that I was still alive. Then I sat on the concrete floor, back pressed against the wall, and let the silence wrap around me like a second skin.

People disappear in this world all the time. Mel wasn’t special to them. Just another name with no one to mourn.

But she was special to me.

Mel taught me how to fight.

The city taught me how to listen.

And now grief was teaching me something else — how to carry the dead without letting them bury you too.

I tied my hair back tighter. I laced my boots higher.

And I promised myself: if this world was going to take a swing at me, I’d swing back harder.

If I had to survive,

I’d do it loud.