Klara had barely pushed her way out the door of Saarland Museum, fists clenched, when she received a localized public alert POLIZEIAKTION.

True to protocols she backed up against the wall and assumed the attentive stance.

Around the corner of the museum a small figure dashed. As they passed they locked eyes. It was a fox girl, a little taller than Klara.

The girl threw off her hoodie onto the ground and stooped just a bit to match Klara, she too assuming the attentive stance.

Two police officers rounded the corner and sprinted past with barely a glance.

Once out of sight the girl let out a low giggle and said in strangely accented German, “Thank you for remaining quiet. Please excuse me, must run.”

The museum door rattled to a loud argument, the door opened and slammed shut again.

Klara gripped the girl’s arm. “Can you get me away from here?”

The girl’s eyes danced and she took Klara’s hand. “Oh course, this way.”

Sun had peaked to mid day by the time they entered an empty warehouse near the French border.

They’d taken a circuitous route involving rooftops, train tracks and even a storm sewer.

“Hey, got a name?” The fox girl asked as she shifted a piece of sheet metal against the wall.

“I am Klara, my command designation-”

“Don’t tell me that, and down here take a nickname.”

“Klara is my assigned nickname.”

“Assign yourself a different one for down here. Call me Dab.”

Klara had already run a variety of searches on ‘Dab’, Meritxell Riba, Andorran, wanted for vandalism and hooliganism in Montpellier and Lyon. And an obscure mention in a cached file from the Historisches Museum Saar, website for a current exhibition on street art.

‘Dab’ shoved her backpack through a hole in the wall and crawled in after. “Come on.”

Klara looked down at her immaculate uniform despite the sewer run and shuffled on her belly. It was an office with desk upside down in the center of the floor. Dab reached back through and dragged the sheet metal back over the hole.

The desk was a cover for a hole in the floor into tunnels below. From the ladder top Dab put the desk back into place and dropped back down.

Although able to ‘see’ in pitch black it was when Dab lit an electric lantern the life down below became apparent.

An African hyena face roughly yet brightly painted, and on the other, a trio of Asiatic cats in a boat.

The murals went on and on as they traveled through the tunnel, until finally a large print graffiti ‘Dab’ nestled in mountains.

Klara stopped there and examined the word and the fox girl sidled up, “Welcome to my world.”

The underground chamber had been built prior to the second great war, part of the French Maginot Line, and had been added to by Germany as a supply depot.

Three dozen people there, walks of life from Africa, middle east, eastern Europe, and Asia.

“Fell through the cracks,” was all Dab would explain.

“You, though,” Dab asked as she emptied out her backpack of spray cans and five kilograms of potatoes, “Why did you come with me?”

Klara thought back to her meeting with the Kurator of the Saarland Museum, and the Chief Purse Officer. They had asked her to use a magic spell on a government official to speed up some paperwork.

“I was asked to do something dishonest.”

Dab laughed, “Very common here. So you’re on the run?”

“Nono,” Klara replied, “It’s my programming, it’s stuck in a loop trying to get me to go back and follow orders.”

Dot laughed again, “Want a different one?”

“I don’t know if-“

“Help me cut these potatoes.”

And just like that Klara’s buffer cleared.

Dab had been listed as a contributing artist at the street art exhibition but had been removed for her outstanding warrants in Lyon and Montpellier. Still, she came to Saarbrucken and had been here for six months relentlessly doing flash murals in the middle of the night.

The police were after her for stolen potatoes.

She was also teaching refugee children basic art skills with spray cans as they came through, as well as working with adults to build the tunnel mural to tell the story they were there.

And so, spray cans in hand, Klara and Dab laboured quickly, Dab mostly showing technique for what Klara tried to describe with words.

Klara had declined but Dab simply said, “Don’t be a no one. Come.”

And Klara’s drives kicked in, and so she tried to picture a name. In a picture.

Underground she had no wireless access to anything, no way to pull down an image generation routine.

She held the canister of blue in her hand. And remembered the painting featured a blue horse by Franz Marc, well the label called it a horse but abstract shapes could mean anything.

Her attunement: Resonant. Reason. She collected the tags she’d seen in her memory, and she began.

She started with a shape, like the blue horse, and stretched it into an R. Dab grew a wide grin, and Klara felt the glow of delight from the fox girl, she continued, o? E? No. I.

Dab started with white lines around the R, sharp turns, dots, a circuitboard.

Caught in the momentum, Klara hammered two ZZ and an O. In the O she worked an eye with the pupil as a cog.

With black she outlined the letters to advance the blue while a giddy Dab turned the section of the wall into a circuitboard.

Klara stepped back and used her white in close to trace a thin edge to the letters, “See how this makes the text have depth?”

Klara’s eyes widened and she held out her hands for the canister.

Bouncing on her toes, Dab surrendered it and Klara mimicked the technique inside and outside of the letters, then stepped back.

Little points of joy erupted to the side and Klara turned to look.

Smiling faces had emerged from the chamber to see the work. The gaggle of children rushed out and stared in awe, jaws slack, as their parents chased after to prevent little hands from disturbing the wet paint. More and more lanterns came and the light on the walls glistened.

Dab put a hand on Klara’s shoulder, “This is the story of all of us. We were here.”