Two of our women are gone. And it's okay that we're scared.

Sara Zelenak was dressed for Saturday night.

At 21, far from home and with boundless potential to do and be whatever she pleased, this was the night she planned and looked forward to. This was the night that would round out a week of nannying, of caring, of responsibility.

Dinner, perhaps a couple of drinks, a friend in tow. A special outfit.

This was London, she was from Brisbane, and the world felt smaller than it ever had before. The world was hers, and she could mould a Sara-shaped hole in it.

Five minutes before terror would strike with uncompromising force, Sara Zelanak would open Whatsapp for the last time in a while. Perhaps she would read a message. Perhaps she would send one.

And then, out of nowhere, and certainly not in the blueprint of Saturday night, a white van would deliberately mow down pedestrians within metres of the bar she and her friends sat at. Sara and her friend Pri Gonçalves would get up and run and run and run, not looking back and certainly not stopping to talk about an escape plan. They would just run, terror of terror propelling them forward.

“I ran thinking she would be running with me, but I looked back and she wasn’t there,” Pri would later tell Fairfax.

Sara was wearing high heels. Her high heels, Pri believes, may have slowed her down as she ran. These heels - a shoe choice common to Saturday nights and 21-year-olds - a stark reminder that terror hits the unsuspecting.

A stark reminder that no matter how much we talk of it, and no matter the size of our fear, no one plans, on a Saturday night, to be running from terrorists.

***

Metres from the London Grind, the bar Sara would disappear from, 28-year-old Australian nurse Kirsty Boden would see the same carnage from a different angle.

She too would see chaos, fear and terror of every definition.

Kirsty, one who once wrote "life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely" and who has been described as someone who "had a smile on her face 24 hours a day", would run towards danger. She was a nurse, and nurses fix things. Perhaps, Kirsty may have thought, she could fix this too.

But somewhere between deciding to run towards death and destruction and reaching her target, Kirsty would lose her life.

A prized nurse, a much-loved family member, a soul brimming with compassion and light, it seems fitting the image of Kirsty flooding our feeds is one where she's posing beside a bouquet of sunflowers, a grin stretching to both cheeks, her eyes shining.

A woman who moved to London some time ago and a keen adventurer, a woman like Kirsty, a "one-in-a-million" nurse, doesn't plan to take on terror. She doesn't ever plan to fall victim to terror, either.

And yet Kirsty and Sara will forever be linked; two strangers whose smiling faces will always be cropped together to represent how terror speaks every language and reaches every shore.

Two women, two more on a long list of innocent victims, caught unaware.

***

Three days later, the ripple effect of a night of violence in London is compounded by what is dubbed a "terror" incident in Brighton, Melbourne. A man kills a civilian, takes another hostage and cowardly and irrationally calls his actions ones in the name of terrorism.

A girlfriend, a Melbourne writer I know, changes her name on Facebook soon after. She writes a lot - opinions aplenty - and this "attack", this act of violence, hits a little too close to home. At the risk of being identified for writing a lot about the depraved acts of violence men like this carry out, she takes no chances.

Another woman I see on Facebook writes to a support group at the same time. She owns a business where she offers mobile services - let's say makeup - to strangers and travels to their homes. She wants to know, is she being crazy? Would it be understandable if she didn't take on strangers for a while in their homes?

Listen: The terror attacks of the past few weeks have left us reeling. (Post continues after audio.)

And then, well, there's me. Sitting on peak-hour public transport, eyes travelling from person to person on a packed train, trying to assess how this many people would escape if a train was targeted. How the hell would those stuck in the middle of sardine-like masses make their escape? Run for their lives?

In times of great drama and greater tragedy, we have a tendency to make it about ourselves. Someone dies? Oh! That's a friend of a friend of a friend. Tragedy strikes a landmark? Oh! But I was there three years ago.

It's annoying but innate.

This time? This time having fear, and internalising that fear, is OK. This week, terror hit a little closer to home, affecting the people who live near us, and feel like us.

We can reel out the stats; the ones that tell us we're more likely to die in our cars than by a terrorist. They're true and important and comforting.

But we can own our own fear, too.

Because on Saturday night, Sara Zelenak dressed to let her hair down. She didn't dress for terror.