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Pigeons flew low over the dingy rooftops, spooking dramatically when something startled them, their wings flapping rapidly as they flee in all directions. Above them, crows perched on the tips of the rooftops, talking to each other raucously, but silent on the wing. Below, the street was almost empty, the sun having not even risen over the expanse of buildings that stretched into the morning mist. Its grey light filtered into the sky, a transition from black to bruise-blue, but most of the humans below were still tucked into warm houses, their days not beginning until the sunlight managed to touch the rooftops and light the east with pink.
The girl once known as Trisana, formerly of House Chandler, stepped around a chimney and followed the angle of the roof, bare feet finding purchase on slippery roof tiles. If the sun meant that it was time for the humans below to go about their loud, meddling business, then it was most definitely time for the girl to hide away.
In one hand, she held onto a long bolt of cloth folded around her newest acquisitions; bread stolen from a bakery's first morning batch, a new jacket from a dew-covered clothesline, a metal fork and spoon to replace her old wooden ones, a new kerchief she had seen in someone's bedroom, a block of cheese, some cider. She slipped in and out of houses as easily as she walked across the roofs, these days, and often times an object catching her attention was all it took to distract her into taking it.
There was a long wooden beam she had to crawl over to get from the east side of the alley to her old building, the attic of which was now her home. It was open to the elements, but that was how she liked it. Rain dripping on her food and a deep chill in the winter was worth it after two years in that place.
(don't think about it, don't think about it, don't, don't, don't)
The girl arranged her new things neatly around the room, making sure everything had a place on what furniture she had constructed from that left behind. There was no carrying tables or chairs across the rooftops in the middle of the night (she had tried only once) and so she made due. Perhaps thanks to her life before the attic room, it was tidy in its own way... but, then, that was something she didn't think too long on either.
It was easy, sometimes, not to think about all the things she didn't want in her head. Everything ran a little slowly. Thoughts that should have come easy didn't come at all some days. A screen could be pulled over her mind until everything seemed clouded in mist, removed and distanced and remote.
It made up for the days when all Tris could do was rage and cry and replay her lost life.
Because she did remember being Tris, even if it was one of those things she didn't, didn't, didn't think about.
It was far easier to push away the memories of being unwanted, given away, feared, locked up that it was to think about them. Thinking about what she was before gave Tris no resolution. She didn't feel better after crying about her parents. She didn't feel at peace when she came to a new understanding at why the temple feared her, called her a monster. She never forgave those in the hospital for the things they had done.
Instead, Tris raged until lightning and hail scared away her feathered friends, and the building shook and sent the mice scampering for the safely of their soft, lined nests in the floors, and the little people on the ground wondered and wandered into her life where they weren't wanted.
When she could forget, when the girl lured the mice back out into the open with pieces of her cheese and brought the pigeons cooing into the windowsills with the bread crumbs and the people forgot about the wild child living in the abandoned building... the girl felt almost okay then.
The girl left her mind blank of betrayals and disappointments and sadness and fear and since that was all Tris had ever known, this girl was not anyone at all.
The pigeons gathered and a mouse took a crumb from the girl's outstretched hand and the sun rose over the city.