A long, straight street. Fog like white-out crusted on a painting, oozing like a maggot into the buildings' wormiest crevices until it recoils with an unvoiced intake of what would pass for breath, curling back from the newly-lit streetlamp resentfully but leaving behind traces and a guarantee of reclamation come morning. Its sullen malingering is perforce brief, however, interrupted by an incursion of voices, a tickling tentacle of sound that sends the mist into distracted convulsions and finally it pulls away from these visitors. Men, all of them, and big. Clubs and torches. A clatter as the lamp-lighter's ladder drops, splashing noises tracking its retreat, and they are after it. Moments later it is a trio of eyes in an alley, a nasty tentacle too-hastily hidden, the others almost upon it. A candle-holder burns to extinguishment in a nearby puddle, and up, through layer upon layer of fog, the cold stars drip their passionless light upon Victoria.

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