When she was born, her legs didn't work, and she doesn't know if her parents are dead or if they decided to get rid of her because of it but she never met them either. She was taken in by a homeless man who took pity on her and who'd take her with him to beg for money or even food in Einbroch, and who refused to move to Einbech because "being homeless in Einbroch is still better than having a house in Einbech". And he died when she was six, of some respiratory malady that might've been a virus or might've just been the soot of the city caking his lungs until they didn't work anymore.

The old man had gotten her a small wheelchair, and she used what meagre savings she had to buy a train ticket to Einbech, because clearly she wasn't cut out to be homeless in Einbroch either.

It was the people there who called her "Lucky", because that was everything she was not. But they were also kinder than anyone in Einbroch had ever been, to her—including the homeless man, who she eventually realised had just been using her disability as a way to get more sympathy from the people he was begging from—and they made sure she had something to eat and somewhere to sleep even though she was useless.

The thing is, she doesn't like being useless and doesn't want to be useless. So she decides she will instead become useful. She starts trailing after people. She watches the shoemaker, and the midwife, and the shopkeepers, and their clerks, and the innkeeper, and the brewer, she follows everyone and tries to understand what they're doing and why and how she can help. Some are annoyed, some are charmed, some are impressed. 

But it's the mastersmith's workshop that sings to her soul. She's small and useless but she can be of use to him, fetching him stuff and organising for him, and she watches what he does, and he gives her spare parts he isn't going to use for anything and lets her sleep in the attic. This means that she has space to try stuff out, and she dedicates half her attic to a makeshift workshop to tinker.  And he first notices her talent when she shows up one day with an improved wheelchair after spending the whole night up messing with it.

He starts including her in his work as a more active participant and apprentice after that. She turns out to be very good at mental maths and visualisation of three-dimensional structures, which means a lot less experimentation is necessary and she can spot issues with his designs before he actually tries to implement them.

Lucky eventually becomes responsible for occasionally grabbing supplies in Einbroch. She's acquired a magic crystal core that she used to spruce up her wheelchair, and now it's capable of dealing with stairs using small amounts of anti-gravity propulsion to keep stable, and that same tech allows it to carry reasonably heavy loads.

It's on her way back from one such trip that she meets Gonie.

As she rolling out of the station, she hears the soft sound of someone crying from somewhere under the elevated train tracks.

She is, unfortunately, a softie, probably owed to her own past experiences being ignored and treated as less than human, so when she hears the crying sounds she rolls over to see where they're coming from.

There is a boy with short messy green-grey hair, probably around the same age as her—though it's hard to tell, because she doesn't know when she was born and she is a girl and a small one at that, while he looks unusually tall for whatever age he is—sitting on the ground with his back against one of the pillars propping up the tracks, knees hugged in close with his head buried in them. Her current iteration of her wheelchair is sufficiently quiet that he doesn't hear her until she's reasonably close, and then he looks up at the strange noise, looking alarmed—and then confused, when he sees her.

"...hey," she says, not having thought about what she'd do once she got here in advance. "Are you, um..." He's obviously not okay. Uh.

He just keeps staring at her, still looking confused and not saying anything, but at least it seems like the surprise was enough to stop the crying.

"...do you want a hug? Or, um, do you want to talk maybe?"

He blinks slowly.

"Okay, well, if you want me to go let me know, I'm gonna stay here a bit."

The boy does not seem inclined to say anything at this moment. He's looking less confused but still looking at her, and he doesn't seem to want her gone, at least? Or not obviously so.

"Do you have a name? I'm Lucky. ...as in, that's my name. Or, that's what people call me, I don't know what my parents called me, I never met them. So I'm just Lucky."

Slow blink.

"Wait, maybe you can't speak? Or maybe you just don't want to. Do you use sign language? I know a few signs but I don't know too many. Oh, maybe you're deaf? Oh, um." So some signs she knows are "Hi" and "My name is Lucky". Any luck with those?

He looks more confused by the signs, not less.

"Okay, probably not sign. Or maybe a different sign language. Well, I don't know. So I'll just keep talking in case you can understand me and just don't like speaking, or can't speak, or something. But tell me to go away, okay? If you want me to, that is."

Still no words, still doesn't look particularly inclined to tell her to go away.

You know what, good enough.

"Do you live in Einbech? I do. I think I was born in Einbroch, or at least I lived there for a long time since I was a baby, but like I said I never met my parents so I don't know. I don't even know if they're alive, maybe they died? But I think they might've left because of, you know." She gestures down at her legs. "—I didn't have this chair back then. The man I used to live with got me a chair and when he got it it was too big for me but then I grew up and it was okay, and then I was a bit too big for it so it was uncomfortable, but by then I lived here in Einbech and I already knew my master—the mastersmith, that is, I'm his apprentice, his name is Jon, I don't know if you know him—but I already knew him and I already knew how to make some stuff so I fixed my chair and added a few things to it. I really like it, it's neat!"

He twitches a bit when she mentions her parents could be dead, but otherwise just keeps staring at her.

"And then I added a few new things to it. I can use it to climb and go down stairs now! Safely, I mean. And I say 'now' but that was a couple of months ago, actually." She gestures at one of the bags hanging from her chair. "I was on a supply run to Einbroch for my master and he gave me enough money to buy a new crystal—a magic crystal, I mean, I don't know a lot about how they work yet but I know a little and that's how I can carry so much weight on the chair and deal with the stairs—the magic doesn't do stairs, it just makes the chair be a lot lighter and not tip over on stairs—anyway so I bought a new crystal for the chair. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, though, I'm sure I'll think of something. Maybe I could make it actually float, get rid of the wheels—actually, that wouldn't be a good idea, because if they ever break then I'm stuck. So I'll keep the wheels. But if it floated I bet I could make it go a lot faster. Look how fast I can go!"

She enables the soft thrusters and starts rolling around in a quick circuit between and around the pillars. She's not as fast as an able-bodied person sprinting, at least not with the curves, but she's faster than a jog.

She looks exhilarated when she's back. "I don't know if it feels as nice as running, or less nice, or nicer, but I really like it. It makes me feel like I can do anything and go anywhere. Not that I can. But someday! I have this thing in mind—I don't know if I can do it but I won't know until I try it, right, except I shouldn't try it yet because it's wayyyyyy harder than anything I've done, I don't know much yet, I'm just a kid—sorry, I hope you don't mind me saying that? Some kids don't like it when I call them kids or sort of say things that mean they're kids, but I'm a kid, I'm ten and a half years old—or I think I am, I don't actually know—how old are you? You look older than me but maybe not—anyway, I have this thing in mind of, like, a robot suit—do you know about robots? They're like people but they're machines instead—I guess they're not a lot like people, I don't think any robots can talk or do people things—anyway I want a robot suit, like machine legs and arms and a body—really it's the legs I care the most about but why stop there?—and maybe I can figure out a way to make the robot legs walk. Or fly! That would be really cool, too, if I could fly. Or even float. Without the chair, I mean."

"I also work on other stuff, of course. My master wouldn't let me slack off, the chair is kind of a side project he helps with sometimes. He works on a lot of things and I help him, and he fixes things, too. He was working on a new kind of gun for the R—uh."