PROFILE

LINES

Natalia Delovna Romanova wanders the streets of Ana -- she is a ghost that floats down the Riverbank, a spirit that drifts across the Crossroads, a poltergeist that whispers jokes and jests to the children that she considers to be her friends. She'd never tell any of them the truth about the death of her parents and how she lives as an orphan in her pick of the run-down Sheds that dominate the southeastern side of Ana, though, no matter how close they manage to get to her before she vanishes in the winds once again. It's an open secret among the adults, but Natalia would rather die than give up her freedom for a chance at a home that she believes she already has -- even if she grieves the fact that there isn't anyone to fill the seats at her crumbling dinner table in the evenings.

ANGLES

Matvei Dmitrievich Alexeyev's take on her: "Romanova? Ach, she's annoying. Can't keep her eyes on the road and her nose to herself -- swear to God, with the way she's running around all the time, the Rooks will get their hands on her one day or another. Would be an awful fate, for someone as young as her… but that's how shit is sometimes, right? I think she has Lisouskaya and her friends make appointments with me for her as a joke -- I mean, I haven't seen her come in to a single fucking one of them. It's exactly the kind of immature, childish thing she would pull, just for the laughs."

Tolys Mareika's take on her: "I was sharp in school, of course, but Natalia… is a different kind of sharp. A mix of natural cunning, hardened by a life spent providing for herself on the streets -- well, it's lucky that she's in Ana, I suppose, where practically everyone around here knows about and tolerates her existence. In the city, she'd be picked off as a menace to the peace in a heartbeat. That's not an insult, no. I'm saying that she sees just enough of the world around her to really make something of herself, if she tries."