Rowan sat on the wall of the downtown plaza and watched the passers-by
below.  Each day that it rained, you'd find her sitting atop the walls
outside the cathedral grounds, watching. She would climb up from a tree in
the rear of the grounds, and precociously walk along the high wall and sit
near the gate, half-hidden by the wings of the guarding gargoyle that sat
over the entrance, and observe.

Today, she crouched, knees to chest, hunched inside her leather jacket,
herself looking like a brooding gargoyle. She felt like a gargoyle, too --
the just defender against evil, but ugly to look at. "I spend my time
fighting all the nasty shit that gets thrown our way, but what good does it
do?" she thought. "Kris breaks up with me, Ali won't talk to me, and Davia
just split town. This sucks." She picked a leaf off the branch and threw it
as hard as she could toward the sidewalk. It fluttered entirely
unsatisfyingly toward the ground.


