Shell is an amazing person, like few he has met. Learning about her, getting to know her, perhaps to understand her a little, has done more to help him attune himself with people, hence with all of nature, than anything he has tried since leaving Newark. She does things for people without ever asking anything in return. The kids are not really even her own children. They’re orphans, abandoned to the streets, of no importance to anyone but Shell. She calls them her family, her little tribe. There were only six when Bandit first met her. Now there are eight. Shell picks them up where she sees them, when she thinks she can help them. She is teaching some of the older ones the hard lessons of the sprawl, how to survive, how to get what they need, but she insists on feeding and clothing them herself, or with what she and Bandit snatch. She takes nothing of what the kids get on their own. She wants nothing from anyone, nothing ... except maybe love.