8 Minutes Earlier...

She had some thick ankles, this woman.

"Zdrowas Mario, laskis pelna Pan z Toba..."

Of course, had the girl sitting across from the woman in the sparsely filled subway car not begun her examination from the floor up, she might have first noticed the fact that this fat-ankled woman, with the extensive varicose veins creeping upwards from beneath thin nylon socks, veins like tributaries of ink soaking through rice paper, was intently focused a set of rosary beads gripped protectively close to her chest with stubby pale fingers. As it was, the girl was too intently focused on the woman's ankles to yet examine further up.

"Blogoslawionas Ty miedzy niewiastami I blogoslawiony owoc zywota Twojego Jezus"

The rosary and the surgical precision with which the woman manipulated the beads with her fore-fingers and thumbs would have been a useful clue as to what the woman was muttering under her breath. For the girl however, the alien-sounding language was little more than aural accompaniment to the discomfiting nature of the blue lines, some as thin as thread others thick as yarn, that formed a net around legs until the woman's dark knee length dress thankfully cut off visualization of just where those lines might terminate. Had her complexion been darker the lines could have maybe seemed to coalesce, giving her legs a red or bruised color, but the pale whiteness instead served as a complementary backdrop highlighting the vividness of the blues that from time to time darkened to even purple. Some of the veins submerged slightly below the translucent skin and some looked to have fought their way to the surface and some beyond. One particularly dark vein that twisted around the leg like a vine looked to be as thick as a drinking straw.

"Swieta Mario, Matko Boza, módl sie za nami grzesznymi teraz i w godzine Smierci naszej."

The girl's ankles weren't fat, but they weren't thin. She hoped an unformed prayer to God that they never looked like that.

"Zdrowas Mario, laskis pelna Pan z Toba..."

The woman's mumbling had started off inaudible but was slowly gaining volume.

Next: What is going on with the lady and just maybe... what does this have to do with anything?