Follow me down to the river...

[Brigid Plunder]

Brigid got up with the sunrise the morning after the attack on Big Ben. Without so much as a word to anyone, she headed down to the Thames to wash up.

Presently, her clothes are piled on the shore as she scrubs the soot and blood of the previous day off. However, the machete thrust into the embankment looks like it's within easy reach.

[Narrator]

"Bathing in the river... not exactly safe," said a hooded female figure leaning against a tree. She hadn't been there a moment before. She wasn't wearing any visible weapons.

[Brigid Plunder]

"Safe as anything in this city," she says, looking over her shoulder at the figure.

"Suppose we're going to fight, now?"

[Narrator]

"Why would we? I don't have a problem with you. I would hope you don't have a problem with me, Brigid." The voice wasn't familiar.

[Brigid Plunder]

"I don't think I know you, and almost everyone I've encountered roaming in the open has been a looter or working for a warlord."

[Narrator]

"They call me Wanderer and isn't everyone a looter of one sort or another these days?"

[Brigid Plunder]

"The people at Big Ben weren't, until someone targeted them."

[Narrator]

"An unfortunate set of events," she said, sounding genuinely upset. "But everyone gets by on what they can scrounge from what's left. Scavenging, looting, 'reappropriating', it's really all the same shite."

[Brigid Plunder]

"And if people feel the need to stage armed raids against refugees, they'll deal with me."

[Narrator]

"So noted, not that I have anyone to stage raids with. Bit of a loner by temperament."

[Brigid Plunder]

"I've done that dance. Not sure I can afford to, anymore."

[Narrator]

"Oh? Something change your mind?"

[Brigid Plunder]

"People I should be there for."

[Narrator]

"Ah, the age old chain around the ankle. Sometimes useful, more often than not a burden."

[Brigid Plunder]

"Only way out is to stop caring."

[Narrator]

"Hard to keep caring with the way things can be out there. More power to you if you can."

[Brigid Plunder]

"Nobody wants to lose what they've got left."

[Narrator]

Wanderer nodded, "Something I can definitely agree with. So what do you need? I come across a lot of things in my travels and everyone seems to need something."

[Brigid Plunder]

"I'm not sure it's something physical that I need."

[Narrator]

"I've dealt in intangibles before. What can I do for you there?"

[Brigid Plunder]

"I have a friend who did... all of this," she says, gesturing around.

[Narrator]

"She did?" Wanderer definitely didn't sound surprised. "That seems like a huge assumption, and a lot of power."

[Brigid Plunder]

"I'm trying to help her. She's all tangled up in it now, mentally."

[Narrator]

"Unwind the twine and you might find the end of it or you may just unravel the ball entirely and end up with nothing. Hard choice there. What does your future-seeing friend think of the possibilities? Or is she just too afraid to look hard at them? Or is she just playing her cards close to the vest the way her mothers always used to?"

[Brigid Plunder]

"She's not the one whose judgment I'm going to trust on this."

[Narrator]

"Trusting your own? I thought you weren't an expert," she said with a smirk. "I do have a tidbit of news. There's a dragon moving in on the western end of the city. I saw it scouting around the other day, probably looking for some place to establish a lair."

[Brigid Plunder]

"Showing you've been watching me isn't a great way to earn my trust."

[Narrator]

Wanderer dismissed the comment with a shrug, "Take the news or not. It's not my problem if you don't. If I went out of my way to earn people's trust, I would have been dead a long time ago."

[Brigid Plunder]

"Forgive me if I'm wary of someone who knows more about me than I do about them."

[Narrator]

"Forgiveness isn't something I give," she said. "Though I do understand. Take the news as a sign of good faith then. I'll be around again." And with that she was gone, as if she'd never been there in the first place.

[Brigid Plunder]

Brigid shakes her head, finishing rinsing off and going to get dressed again.