Brent and Catherine finished their breakfast - Brent even managed to persuade Catherine to have some of his pancakes, to her private relief as she was still hungry after finishing the muffin she'd ordered - and the two of them waited for a while until they realised that in this particular café they were expected to pay at the counter. They duly did so, and then left.

The cold air of the drizzly winter morning outside hit them with a heavy shock to their lungs as they emerged from the warm café. Their breath plumed out before them, and Brent hugged Catherine close to him as she pulled her beanie back on, gathering her hair behind her head to get it out of the way.

"Aren't your ears cold?" asked Brent, touching her right earlobe affectionately with the tip of his finger.

"Gah!" she yelped and recoiled from him, giggling. "Your hands are freezing! How could they be so cold after sitting in that café for so long?"

"Bad circulation" Brent shrugged. He gently turned down the rim of her beanie so that it covered her ears. She turned to him, her lips pursed in the tight smile he liked to see so much, her eyes gleaming. "Maybe you should be wearing the beanie" she said.

Brent laughed and wrapped his arm back around her waist. "It looks better on you" he replied.

They walked slowly, a little awkwardly because they were so tightly entwined, down Smith Street. "Where are we going?" asked Catherine.

"I don't know" answered Brent. "Towards Johnston Street, I guess."

It wasn't a long walk: in a few minutes they got there and turned the corner.
As soon as they did so they noticed, further down the road towards Brunswick Street, a number of police and police cars blocking off the street. Behind the police was a large flat-bed truck, beyond which a densely packed crowd had gathered, holding banners and listening attentively to somebody who was speaking into a megaphone from the tray of the truck.

"What's going on down there?" asked Catherine.

"I don't know" replied Brent, puzzled. "I haven't heard anything about a demo today. Shall we go check it out?"

"Sure, I guess so." Catherine wasn't particularly interested, but she was happy just to wander and Brent's curiosity was piqued, so they headed down Johnston Street towards the demonstration.

As they approached the demonstration, the noise of it grew steadily louder: on Smith Street, the closely-packed buildings and the fact that the speaker addressing the crowd was facing in the opposite direction had ensured that they couldn't hear anything - but now they were closer it was becoming quite loud.

They got beyond the police and stopped at the fringes of the demonstration. It was a mixed crowd: students, pensioners, families with children, men with dogs. They were all listening intently to the man who was currently addressing them, some applauding loudly and some applauding with a little more reservation - indeed some weren't applauding at all, though that might just have been because their hands were pushed deep into their pockets against the cold. Brent scanned the crowd while Catherine, a little bored, gazed up towards the speaker standing on the tray of the flat-bed truck.

She suddenly felt Brent's arm slip away from her waist; she turned her head to see him walking a few steps to tap a young woman on the shoulder. The woman was dressed all in black, with a scarf wrapped tightly around her throat and thick-rimmed glasses balanced on her nose. She was listening seriously and respectfully to the speaker, though with a frown on her face and her brown creased with unease. Her expression changed to one of great surprise when Brent, also surprised at finding her there, tapped her on the shoulder and spoke her name:

"Sacha?"