Rue's eyes were grey, grey as the cigar smoke trailing in crooked halos around her father's head. She watched her father's after-dinner cigar burn, a deep red ember reflecting in her eyes. Somewhere within, flames burned in her too. Her father sat across the table, inhaling and sighing, meditating on the fiery ash and smoke mirrored in his daughter's eyes. She was almost eight now, the age of new beginnings, the age when something broke inside a child, and she grew into her own person. But Rue discovered what she was early. He knew what she knew.