It was a blue and smoky night. Smoke from the nearby factories billowed upwards, rolling through a deep-blue sky like thunderheads. Smoke from the East-Gondola urban fires, more black than blue, carried the scents of burnt dry-wall, rubber and shriveled insulation. Smoke from a hundred glowing fire-fingers which sprouted from a hundred mouths. Smoke through the lungs. Smoke round the brain. Smoke in the soul.

Wrapped thick and tight against an imaginary chill, Lindy Lenoe trudged down the smoky back-street. She knew this wasn’t the safest place to walk at night, and certainly not the cleanest. Besides the sewers that lurked below, Maestro Alley was probably the darkest, meanest, most unpleasant street in the entire city. This was, however, Lindy’s entire reason for taking it. She wasn’t feeling particularly pleasant, in fact, she was feeling decidedly unpleasant, so that Maestro Alley and herself suited one another – if only poetically.

Then the last of her cigarette burnt out, and for a moment, she was annoyed at the world in general. That is, until she remembered she had brought an extra cigarette against this exact dilemma. Soon, the last fire-finger was lit and slipped between the resigned addict’s yellowed teeth. She glanced up through the smoky blue air, and saw a sign: “Extreme Delights of Sleep-filled Nights!”

“Who’d’ve guessed?” Lindy grumbled, and trudging past, turned left down one of Maestro Alley’s many sub-lanes. Maybe she remembered what it had once been like to have a sleep-filled night. But who cared now? No sleep. No dreams. Just narcotic nightmares and smoke. The smoke, however, unlike everything else in her life, was actually going somewhere. So she followed it, though it always seemed about to leave her behind. A strange, fierce joy at this idea pushed her steps faster until they moved from a trudge to a fast walk.

For Lindy Lenoe was a woman on a mission. She hadn’t really decided that tonight would be the night, but something about the smoky atmosphere guided her to Ninguno’s Bridge. Through the thick, smoke-blue air, Ninguno River could be neither seen nor heard.

But she knew it was a long drop. When little, she and her cousin Fernando had played here. They had grown together here. She had learned she was adopted here. They had fallen in love here. He had proposed to her here. They had stopped here on their honeymoon. She had told him she was pregnant here. He had kissed her here.

But then they lost the baby because they came here. The surrounding streets were too tangled. The ambulance didn’t make it time. They had cried here. Something had died here.

And then Fernando jumped here.

So Lindy would too.

An annoying sensation tugged on her mind, and returning to the present, Lindy realized she was drawing on a dead cigarette. Wait – no! It was her last one! She couldn’t jump without it. Her legs grew weak, she staggered, then with a single shake of her head, turned-

And ran home.