It was one of those half-morning bleaks when the city hasn’t decided whether to wake up or give up, a dry-grey haze sitting on the rooftops like a tired thought, and I was dragging myself along Morrison Street, bones still humming with the Dalry-night spin, eyelids gritty, breath tasting of stale coffee and alleywind, and then there it was—no, she was there, but nae her body exactly, more the after-shape of her, the emberprint of that Salamander Street night, aye the neon-slick lass with the sideways fox-glance and the lightning-crack smile that once cut through my ribs like a bright blue shard—and her shadow showed up before her face, slung long across the pavement by some angle of light I didn’t trust.

     I froze, stupid as always around her memory, and my heart did that jazz-stutter syncopation ker-rat-ta-tat like a snare drum in a basement bar, and the city smirked at me in that dry way, sky blank, pavement dull, buses groaning their metal-lung groans, everything looking the same except for the faint shimmer in the air where she must have just passed—aye that shimmer, like heat rising from a thought too sharp to keep still, and I knew it was hers because no one else’s presence leaves a ripple like that, a neon bruise on the daylight.

     My mind wandered back, fast-slow-fast, to that night we crossed paths under the Salamander Street signage glow where the rain did its soft percussion, where her voice was a low-warm blade saying aye lad you’re chasin’ something ye cannae catch, and her laugh—Christ, that lightning-laugh—cracked open the wet dark like the city had given her a key to all the hidden backdoors of truth, and I’d walked away from her that night with the feeling she’d stolen a wee sliver of my shadow just to examine it later under whatever light she lived in.

     And now here, in this bleak non-morning, her echo hovered across Morrison Street, a soft half-ghost stepping out of the cracks in my head, and the pavement whispered in that soundless street-language: she was here lad, aye, just missed her, hushnow, keep walkin’, keep the flicker and I followed that whisper like a daft moth chasing heat without flame, scanning the doorways, the bus stops, the window reflections, expecting her to materialize out of a passing body, but all I saw were strangers stitched into their own weary mornings, collars up, headphones in, faces grey as the sky.

     But the echo stayed—a small flash of her coat corner, a ripple of movement in a shop window, a curl of hair caught in my peripheral vision, a smirk half-remembered but bright enough to bruise— and I felt that old Salamander tension again, aye that tug between curiosity and fear, desire and self-preservation, the city holding its breath as if waiting to see whether I’d chase a ghost down a street too ordinary for magic.

     I didn’t run after her—no, I’ve grown slower than that—but I let the thought of her walk beside me, shoulder to shoulder, like she was some half-tamed storm slipping into my stride, and her neon-memory cast wee sparks against the dull-grey day, and her laugh rolled through my skull in dry crackles, saying aye lad, the city hides nothing but it shows less, look sharper, breathe slower, dinnae blink at the wrong time.

     And Morrison Street—poor tired thing—glowed a fraction warmer as I passed through it, like her ghostprint had rubbed a bit of colour onto the pavement, soft and fleeting but enough to make the morning less empty, and I carried her shadow with me as the road tipped into Haymarket, a thin bright filament of that night threaded into the daylight dullness.

     Aye, she wasn’t there. Not in the flesh. But some people leave echoes louder than their footsteps, and hers has never stopped walking ahead of me, turning corners just before I reach them, neon-shadowed, half-real, half-dream, the kind of woman the city keeps for itself and only lets me see in flickers.