Alice walked quickly through narrow alleyways bordered by crumbling buildings and falling-down sheds. Judging by cold, dark remains of cook fires, some of these sheds had once been homes to people. Alice didn't see any sign of anyone living in them now.

Craning her neck, she looked up at the tall pipe stacks that stretched into the sky. She had vague childhood memories of smoke coming out of those stacks, and later memories with rumors of the nobles objecting to the factory as sometimes the air would blow the foul-smelling smoke to the estate.

Now the factory was shuttered, but the area around the estate had not been cleaned. She wondered what had happened to the former Factory Workers. Hopefully, they had been moved to another factory and not left out on the streets. But looking at the old cook fires, she had her doubts.

As she walked, Prim darted up into the air and then back down again to scout the new surroundings.

"There are people all around, but when they hear your footsteps, they scuttle away like rats. I don't trust them."

Alice crossed her arms over her chest. She peered into the deepening shadows and still saw no one. If not for her dragon's warning, she would have thought she was all alone.

"I don't trust them either," she whispered. They could be desperate Beggars or predatory Thieves with no way to tell the difference. "Any sign of the estate’s Guards following us?"

"No, I think they're still searching the grounds. The alarm bells are still ringing. Do you hear them?"

Alice didn't. She’d moved too far into the slums. Apparently, Prim's hearing was better than her own.

"There is a small alleyway ahead, and through that, you go around that large building," Prim pointed with her head towards the former factory, "then it hits a large road with many, many people."

"That sounds like a main road," Alice said. She didn’t know much about the town, but she knew that much.

Alice ducked through the narrow gap between two buildings that Prim had pointed toward. It was filled with paper litter, rocks, and other bits of trash. She tried to step carefully, knowing that turning an ankle would leave her deadly vulnerable.

The narrow alleyway led out to a rocky dirt path. Turning at the next crossing, she found herself, as Prim promised, on a sort of main road. Cart and foot traffic moved back and forth, and some shops were open. People glanced at her and then looked away again.

Alice was very conscious of the fact that she still wore her estate work smock. She would have to get rid of it. If anybody were searching for her, she would easily stand out.

Speaking of standing out, Prim had to be extra careful not to be seen by curious eyes. Alice was hyper-aware that her little dragon was pushing her concealment skill to the limit.

Prim stuck to the air, darting under eaves of houses and shops, and from tree to tree, keeping pace with Alice’s slow walk. Her flitting concealment skill made her look like a bird, and she was easy to miss among the flocks of pigeons. No one paid attention to a fluttering shape overhead. Her concealment skill leveled up quite rapidly, and Alice got an notification.

“Primordialis’s” Concealment Skill has reached level 7!

"There are so many people here," Prim called down to her.

Alice quickly looked around, but again no one reacted to a high, excited dragon voice from up above.

No one could hear Prim.

Alice nodded in reply, though she was too tense to smile. There were people all around, strangers, when Alice was used to knowing most faces by sight. They were from all classes, from General Worker which was the next rank up after General Laborer, to Merchants, Carters, Traders, and Shopkeepers.

There were even esoteric classes she had never seen before. She spotted a Farrier tag from a big man and a Nanny tag from a woman who was shepherding along several well-dressed children.

There was even a Lady of The Street tag from a woman who stood on a street corner, watching Alice with open curiosity

There were men, too, with hard looks in their eyes that had a Worker tag on them.

"Worker?" she wondered, having never seen that particular tag before. There was something about it that didn't sit right, and she didn't like how their gazes lingered on her as she passed by.

She got the impression, though she didn't know how, that those Worker tags were hidden classes too.

As a General Laborer, her food and shelter were dependent on her employer. Now, Alice couldn't go back to the estate. She had no explanation for Prim, and if word got to the Earl… well, having the attention of a Noble or other high classer was a risk to her life.

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Her only hope was to find another noble or high-class family to take her in and hope that they did not treat her badly. But how could she find someone who was hiring? Her mother had gotten Alice the position at the estate before she died.

Alice wasn't even qualified to be a Housekeeper. She would have to display her skills, and she had none. And even if she did find a job in another noble's estate... how in the world would she ever hide Prim?

Alice walked down the street, worried thoughts swirling in her mind. Around her, the buildings grew taller, some as high as four stories, but the streets were far dirtier. Trash, human and animal, littered the curb, stuck to the cobblestone along with globs of mud. Only, it wasn't mud.

She felt eyes on her, though she could not quite pinpoint where they were coming from.

“Alice,” Prim called from where she had ducked under a dirty eve of a closed shop, “I'm hungry.”

“I know,” she murmured, drawing an odd look from a passing Stable Apprentice.

That was another thing. Now that there were no kitchens to steal from, how was she going to feed her dragon? Well, likely the usual way: Buying. There were open-air vendors here and there with carts parked on the sidewalk.

Alice stopped at one which advertised they were selling meat pies. It cost her one copper just for two small pies, each as big as her closed fists. If that was how expensive things were on the outside, her money was not going to last for long.

It would have lasted longer if Dolly hadn't stolen from me, she thought with a burst of bright anger.

Alice hoped she somehow ran into Dolly and Breydon while out on the town. If that happened, she'd take the opportunity to snatch those coins back.

By this point, Alice was hungry enough to bolt down one of the meat pies herself. Instead, she stashed the still-warm pastries in a pocket of her smock and continued down the street. She would not eat until she could share it with her dragon.

She passed more dirty blocks, increasingly thick with people who sat on the edge of the curb, hands held out in supplication. Most had been begging for so long that the system had actually changed their tag to Begger.

Alice had no extra money for them, though the ones with children made her heart squeeze, but she had to be firm. Unless she figured out something for herself, she could easily become one of the Beggars.

The sun was setting and a chill wind blew through the streets, picking up some of the dirt and spinning it into mini dust devils. The clouds on the horizon made her think that it was going to rain soon.

Again, she felt eyes on the back of her neck. Though when she looked around, she spotted nobody.

Prim gave her no indication that she was being followed by the estate Guards. No, she was simply feeling the eyes of those who knew she did not belong.

And that she was possibly vulnerable.

Finally, coming to the end of a block, she spotted a two-story building with a paint-peeled door left ajar. Most of the windows on both levels had been knocked out, and those that were left were filmy with dust.

Alice glanced in. The floor beyond was empty, and there didn't seem to be anybody lurking inside.

That struck her as suspicious, but she needed somewhere to eat and check in with Prim in peace. Carefully, Alice walked in, every sense on the highest alert for sounds as she was not alone.

There was nothing so she made her way to the rickety staircase. The railing had been long ripped out, and some of the stairs were soft and rotted. Thankfully, Alice had always been a small woman.

She picked her way up and found that the second floor was just as empty as the first. Several doors stood at the other end, though they were barred by padlocks. Alice went to one of the broken windows and called Prim in.

Instantly, a shape fluttered through the broken out window and resolved into her dragon. If she’d only been half-paying attention she might have thought she was a pigeon. Her Concealment skill was coming along quite nicely.

Alice held out one of the meat pies to Prim, who snatched it up and started eating hungrily.

Looking at her ravenous dragon and wondering what she was going to do, the weight of the entire day seemed to fall all at once on her.

The next thing Alice knew, she had sunk down with her back against one of the locked doors and started to weep. Prim abandoned her pie and sat with her, doing her best to cuddle into her lap.

"It's going to be okay," Alice told her dragon, though she didn't know how that could possibly be.

"What do you need?" Prim asked.

Alice shook her head. "I just... I just need a moment to collect myself. It's been a hard day.”

“No." Prim pecked her with the end of her sharp muzzle. "What do you need, Alice?" Her words had a weight to them.

"I... I don't know," Alice hiccupped and wiped some tears away from her face. "I need a new job immediately... I need a place to live—a place that's safe."

Prim cocked her head. "Is this place safe?"

"I don't know," she said again. "It looks like no one's here, but it doesn't feel safe." Alice craned her head to look back at the locked door. "I would love to have a locked door between myself and the rest of the world right now."

Prim cocked her head to the other side. "How does one obtain shelter?"

There was only one answer. "Money, of course," Alice put her hand over her pocket with her two sad remaining coins. "Money will fix everything.”

But the only way she could get money was by working… and that brought her back to the beginning of her problems. How could she find a job with no references and a dragon in tow?

Prim's eyes seemed to gleam.

The next thing Alice knew, her dragon had jumped off her lap and started snuffling along the floor. Alice supposed that she was going after crumbs of pie, though half of the pastry was still un-eaten.

Then Prim settled down and made an odd kind of cough. Her wings drooped as if she was curling them around herself, as if she was protecting something on the floor.

Alice received a notification:

Alert: 1 aspect token has been used.

At the same moment, Prim abruptly stood and... there was an egg underneath her.