She is standing with her back to the street, ignoring but not entirely immune to the out-of-date sounds of city life. No honking horns, no whoosh of the hover vehicles. Only horses hooves and creaky wooden axels and wheels on cobblestones.
She is staring up at the brick face of a industrial building puffing black smoke into the clear, bright sky. she knows her companion, her mandated protoge is impatiently waiting behind her. She uses all of her reserves to keep from turning around and snapping at him.
"He was here," she says, only partially to the one who stands behind her. "Twenty years ago, six weeks from now."
"How do you know?" he asks her.
She points toward the marking high up near the top of the building wall that has been faded by the weather in the past two decades. Without her he wouldn't have seen it. But she's been searching for these marks and others like them for 15 years. She knows how to find them, where they'll be, what they'll say.
"Come on," she says and stalks off, drawing glances from people on the street. Her appearance fits in just fine, but her attitude is off. She's frustrated and forgetful. "We missed him. Let's get back to Present."
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