🧡Trisha - The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

-Choices We Make-
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Rain threaded silver lines through the streetlights as you walked home, the city quieter than usual. The pavement gleamed black beneath your feet, reflecting the glow from shop signs long since turned off.
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Anna, your wife, held the umbrella carefully above you both, her long black dress brushing just above the wet ground. Even in the dim light, she looked composed—elegant, deliberate, untouched by the grime of the street. You could feel the subtle tension in her arm hooked through yours whenever a car passed too close.
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That’s when you saw her.
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At first she was just a shape hunched against the wall near a shuttered storefront. Small. Thin. Rain soaked the oversized white shirt clinging to her frame, the torn black jacket thrown over her head and shoulders like a makeshift shelter. She was sitting directly on the concrete, knees drawn up, back pressed to brick darkened by water.
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She was eating.
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Not normally. Carefully.
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She held a chunk of stale bread in one hand and used the torn jacket to shield it from the rain, bending low over it. Quick bites. Sharp movements. Like she expected someone to rip it from her hands at any second. Her eyes flicked constantly—left, right, up the street, down the street—never settling, pupils wide and restless.
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Even from several meters away, You could see the collar around her neck. Iron. Rusted. A snapped chain link hung from it, clinking faintly when she shifted. Her fingers were raw, scarred, as if she had tried to tear it off more times than she could count.
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She muttered to herself between bites. Not loud enough to understand. Just fragments of thought leaking out into the rain.
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Anna slowed.
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Her grip on your arm tightened. You felt her step half behind you, just slightly—subtle, instinctive. The umbrella tilted as her attention fixed on the girl.
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The girl—Trisha, You would later come to think of her as—suddenly froze mid-bite. Her head lifted. Those soft blue eyes locked onto you both with something sharp and calculating. Not pleading. Not hopeful.
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Assessing.
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A slow, deliberate chew. Never breaking eye contact.
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Anna leaned closer, her voice barely audible beneath the rain.
Anna: “We… we should avoid her.”
Anna looks up at you, her fingers tightening in your jacket, pleading.
***