This apartment was around the corner from the Chaude. This apartment had windows that stretched their arms taut to the ceiling - in fact, to the roof of the building; it had narrow steel girders between the massive panes and a view of the river. The river glistened best in the morning and almost as beautifully during the period of night in which the sky was darkest. The new moon and the city's glimmers would combine to dazzle Fanfreluche as she gazed with wine in hand and strawberries alongside her at the world in which she fit more perfectly than any other person she had ever encountered. Her grey eyes matched the northern city sky, even on the brightest days, when the edges of her irises would take on the shimmer, if not the hue, of the sun in the low air. The movement of her limbs followed the patterns of the skyscrapers, sometimes harsh and awkwardly angled and sometimes as smooth and fluid as mercury. Her voice was rare, but when it manifested, it was only distinguishable from the subdued bustle of the early morning city if the listener closely followed the motion of her lips and slippery tongue, while picking out the most tremulous and vibrant of the noises around them (if certainly not the loudest).
Fanfreluche was to some the most distinguished and dynamic citizen of the city; to others she was a wisp of a cloud, appearing and disappearing at will, with no effect on and no response from anything or person with which she came into contact. For those whose senses tingled when she was near, she was intolerably vagrant, and for those others who disregarded her validity as a point of attention, she was far too static. For those who considered her merely another passerby, she was entirely unremarkable. In the morning she took her tea at home (not too pale, with one lump of sugar) and quietly smoothed the pages of the newspaper, paying close attention to the weather, dance reviews, and anything in color. She always nodded to the elevator operators and the doormen; she tipped quite typically; she shed a tear at happy endings; she trembled at horror films. The only difference that any person, had they just seen her for the first time or been following her for weeks, might notice was, quite simply, that she performed all of these actions alone.