Chapter 20: Nell Farrow

The weight finally shed, and Elara felt lighter than she had in weeks as she turned from the ravenous Thames and started back along the wharf's creaking pilings. Each footfall seemed to carry her further from the drowned remnants of her former life, the chrysalis now empty and forgotten.

As she reached the riverside embankment, she instinctively moved with a predator's stealth, keeping to the deepest poolings of shadow. Out here, the sleek affluence she'd once brandished so proudly would only make her a beacon to the opportunistic depredators haunting these crumbling warrens.

Navigating the trash-strewn paths, Elara's newly heightened senses parsed every potential threat, every exploitable advantage with clinical intensity. The huddled, dampened forms in layered alcoves were no longer just pitiable vagrants, but possible obstacles to circumvent...or expendable resources to be outmaneuvered. 

Knots of furtive, feral-looking louts loitering under sputtering gaslamps transformed into potential hazards requiring a decisive margin of violence to neutralize. Or perhaps an opportunity to recruit provisional allies from their roving packs, should the arithmetic of strength and numbers decree it advantageous.

Every stain, every scurrying movement in the shadowed peripherals carried primal significance in this escalating hypervigilance. Elara's mind raced, constantly updating risk/reward scenarios as the aristocrat's instincts withered away and were subsumed by the predator's remorseless logic of survivalism.

As she crested the ridge of the embankment and turned onto Gravel Lane, a flicker of movement up ahead snagged her heightened threat detection. A solitary silhouette was making its way down the alley, backlit by the sallow halos of streetlamps.

Instantly pivoting into a defensive weave, Elara palmed the pen knife in her hand. Her thumb caressed the keen edge as she assessed the encroaching potential for violence while skirting deeper into the cross-cutting cul-de-sacs between piled masonry.

The silhouette resolved into a slight figure in a threadbare shawl, carrying a covered basket from which seeped the unmistakable scents of hearty broth and fresh-baked bread. As it drew nearer, Elara's watchful study picked out the kind features of a young woman likely no older than herself. Not one of the prowling opportunists then, but someone on some mission of charity or mercy by the looks of it.

Sure enough, the young woman paused every few yards to lean down and gently rouse one of the dozing forms layered in alcoves and brick-piled recesses. As the basket's lid was opened, a chorus of hollow greetings rose in reverent murmurs from those stirred from their stupors - though whether by the scents or the woman's kindly attention was impossible to discern.

Elara watched in mute bewilderment as crust after crust was handed out along with steaming portions of soup or stew ladled from the basket's depths. The battered denizens accepted their bivalve's largesse with grace and obvious gratitude, hunching over their treasures and consuming them with animalistic fervour.

So transfixed was her study that Elara didn't immediately register the whisper of displaced gravel behind her until a lilting voice spoke up in amiably accented tones. "Not often we see new faces 'round these parts, especially one pretty as yourn."

Whirling in a crouch with the jagged glass hard extended, Elara found herself confronted by the same slight figure who appeared to have circled around while her back was turned. Up close, the woman's kind features were framed by a messily pinned chestnut bun and lively hazel eyes which now widened at the feral defensive posture.

"Woah, woah there!" The newcomer backpedalled, basket raised in a placating gesture as her Cockney lilt rilled over Elara. "Dinny mean no 'arm, lovey. Just Nell bein' a bit too solicitous as per usual."

Elara's grip remained tense around the slashing shard until the other woman slowly squatted down onto her haunches, shifting the basket to one side. "Name's Nell - Nell Farrow. Run a bit of a soup kitchen for our disadvantaged neighbours 'ereabouts." She waggled the basket with a warm smile. "Care for a cuppa stew an' a bread heel? Looks like you could use a square meal."

At Elara's mistrustful silence, Nell chuckled slightly and leaned back, crossing her grimy but capable-looking hands over one denim-clad knee. "No need to be so fierce, lovey. We may dwell in the cruellest o' jakes, but that doesn't mean there ain't still little pockets o' mercy an' light to be found."

Elara remained tense but lowered the shard slightly, studying Nell with that same preternatural intensity she now brought to assessing any potential threat or opportunity. The young woman certainly didn't present as one of the predatory opportunists or malefactors prowling these sordid environs. But her disarming affability could just as easily mask a more insidious intent.

"I don't want any trouble," Elara said at last, keeping her tone hardened against any inviting warmth. "I'm just...passing through."

Nell's hazel eyes crinkled at the corners in an impish expression. "That so? Well by the looks of ye, with that smart banjax an' furriner's accent, I'd wager this little pucker ain't exactly a realm yer accustomed to 'passin' through,' is it?"

She gestured at the sharpened shard in Elara's grip. "And ain't many liliths 'ereabouts as go armed with ickies unless they mean to put a sting in someone's darts if ye catch my loop."

Elara tensed again at how swiftly her pretences had been seen through. This Nell was sharper than her feigned guilelessness suggested. "I can handle myself," she said evasively. "Your...concern isn't required."

"Oh, I ain't doubtin' it for a mo'!" Nell replied with a rakish grin. "You got a glim in yer ogles that says you're more than some helpless wildfowl wandered into the fox's run."

She leaned in conspiratorially. "But even us toughest, most savvy chelters sometimes need a hand or a friendly noggin to steer us shipshape through these 'ere slums, eh? The East End's got more prickles an' needleworks than you'd credit if ye don't know the frets."

Seeing Elara's guarded hesitance, Nell sighed and hefted her basket with a grunt. "Well, I'll leave ye to skedaddle in peace for now, doxy. But if ye change yer tinkers, come look for Nell in The Blackened Anchor ."

Nell jerked her chin down the alley. "It's a tavern known by that name - pays homage to the dockworkers an' sailors who frequent it." 

Her sooty lashes flickered as she described it. "Got a sign out front with a weathered anchor all entwined in dark ivy, swingin' gentle-like in the London fog. Sturdy two-story buildin', its great oak door keepin' firm against any brawls or raids tryin' to batter it down over the years."

Nell's eyes took on a wistful light as she conjured the image. "Inside though, it's warm as a whisper - got a proper hearth always cracklin' with life on them cold nights. Walls are all lined with nautical finery an' the sort of bric-a-brac pics up from Jacktar's travels all over the globe." 

She breathed deep as if inmeshing the very aromas. "Cloud of pipe smoke an' fresh-pulled ale in the air, mingled with the chucklesome balmus of hard cases an' old salts spinnin' their lastiest yarns to any mug'll lend an ear-wig."

Nell's wistful expression transitioned to an impish grin. "An' tucked away in a snug little corner, you'll find your Nell holdin' court - dishin' out more'n just grub for any peckish bird needful of a sanctuary from the dockside demons, if ye catch my loop." 

With a conspiratorial wink, she jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "The Blackened Anchor ain't just some jakes for lining coinpurses an' watchpots - it's a proper refitt for any chelter flatsam adrift on the slumrise. An' my little dugger setup's the on'y beacon bright enough to keep its lantern burning."

Nell rose fluidly to her feet, settling the soup basket's wide straps over one slim shoulder. "So if that fancy banjax o'yours could use a spell from the dockside gales, you just slip off yer pinners over to The Blackened Anchor an' ask the first fockled jack ye bumble for Nell Farrow's whereabouts." 

Her impish grin widened, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. "They'll know where to pay the knuckledickers for surest. An' don't worry your tit over gobblerstratchers raising yer acquaintance - ol' Nell'll keep a wallstreeper's glim over ye while ye gets yer bert an' nogekins settled, duck."

With a final wink, she turned and started ambling back down the alley, calling out familiar greetings to the hollow-eyed forms starting to stir within their alcoves once more. As she vanished around a corner, Elara finally felt herself uncoiling from that predatory crouch.

She remained alert, studiously scanning her surroundings for any opportunistic movements now that Nell's charity had activated those dormant presences. But something about the other young woman's unpracticed warmth seemed to have penetrated the armour of ruthless vigilance Elara had been cultivating.

Falling in beside a derelict bonfire barrel, she settled cross-legged against a rain-streaked wall to consider what had just transpired. Nell Farrow is a charitable soul wending her way through these nightmares with little more than a basket and an indomitable reserve of compassion.

It would be incredibly foolish to trust such Overtures at face value, of course. Blind naivety was just as fatal a vulnerability as obsequious privilege in this abrasive realm. And yet...Nell's warmth and determination did call to mind similar flickers of humanity Elara could just barely recall from her former life's peripheries.

Hadn't there been individuals of modest means yet towering reserves of spirit and care? Matrons and almsmen whose very existences had been devoted to tending the suffering and destitute with neither expectation of recompense nor fear of judgment?

She remembered catching peripherals of them during rides through the richer districts, their plain, unadorned habits standing out like solitary candle flames amongst the soot and haughty entourages. Though the aristocracy around her had dismissed them as inevitably as buzzing imprecations, Elara had always been transfixed by their serene acceptance and perseverance.

As a naive debutante, she'd never been permitted any meaningful interaction with their ilk. Now, by the merciless alchemy of her diminution, she found herself amidst the very realms those beacons had devoted their lives to illuminating.

A strange sense of obligation tugged at her, a deeply buried yearning not just to witness that

resilience up close but to test whether she herself could undergo some kindred transfiguration. Could the forges of this lightless purgatory ultimately reforge her into something more than a soulless vector of predation and vengeance?

It was a seductive notion, one that hinted at a potential path beyond the implacable mercilessness she'd already begun internalizing. A route whose derivations may ultimately prove no less harrowing, but which could finally resolve into clemencies worth fighting to uphold.

With The Blackend Anchor now lodged as a potential vector, Elara felt the first inklings of reinvestment in objectives beyond mere survivalism.