A woman starts out from a quiet corner of Glebe in Sydney towards the bustle of Broadway and Surry Hills, carrying with her the manuscript of a childhood friend who has recently died. Her thoughts surge between past and present as she strives to understand the effect of her friend's manuscript, Panthers and the Museum of Fire, has had on her. Not only does the manuscript remind her of what she might prefer to forget - youthful ambitions, an abandoned friendship, entanglements with religion and anorexia - it also ignites in her a creative impulse.