Westbrook, February 2077
Valerie was currently just taking time to feel the hum of Night City, something she's had to get used to for almost a year now.
Gone was the garb that belonged in the Badlands and instead it was replaced with a black leather jacket concealing a tank top of the same color underneath, along with a pair of dark gray pants and black boots fit to move across both the concrete pavement of the city and the sand and stone of the desert outside the city limits.
So far the former nomad's experience in the "City of Dreams" hasn't proven terrible. Panam was nice company for the most part, and she owed that Ellie girl from the Aldecaldos for helping fix The Rattler, though personally she disagreed with the fact that that Saul fellow requested she owe them a favor in exchange. It's not that she minded assisting fellow nomads, but… well, that always brought her to the downside of this new life she had.
There was no true camaraderie in this city for people like her, the most likely place to find it was among the gangs and the nomads, and that's if you were in their ranks. Even with the Aldecaldos, the business here was strictly professional for any and all independents. With the fixers, the gangs, and no chance in hell was she going anywhere near corpo business.
The way this city was… she may have called it home now, but she lost count of the number of days she woke up wishing she was back out in the Badlands with her clan. Wind in her hair, the light of a sunrise in her face, surrounded by friends… she missed it. Out here she was just an outcast, alone among strangers.
Sighing from her thoughts, she turned into an alley to just be in silence… but instead she found herself hearing a faint strumming, one that just gave her reason to head over to find a lone man on a guitar. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, letting the sounds be the only thing that came to her. Instinctively she just bobbed her head to the slow beat, a memory surfacing in her head as she just went with the flow "There's a special piece of every tune you make on these yourself Vali, what you feel. Because an ear tuned to the music hears the feeling in it. That is how you know it's yours." And with a smile that just came to her face she heard the tune slowly hit its end and the guitar player looked at her as she opened her eyes "You need something?" To which she responded "Nah, nah… just passing through." And with that said she went on her way.