I’m really glad that it prompts more ideas from people. I think in my vision, the journey is less about being a touching, violin-strung struggle of a poor woman surviving with only the shirt on her back.

Rather, making it to a doctor is rather early in the story, when she receives the opinion that no medical knowledge in the land can save him, and she’d need to study the world and invent her own treatment to have any hope. As a result, her persistence and all-encompassing expertise ends up making her into something of a legend.

The idea of someone going to all lengths for a victimized beloved is, in part, based on a real legend who sadly didn’t get their happy ending; a human trafficking investigator named Susan Trimarco, who started her work to find her own missing daughter.