《Another Kind of Forest [Complete]》 Chapter 1 - Awaken There was darkness. All around darkness, the kind of darkness you could never adapt to, not a single pinprick of light for your eyes to catch onto. No moon, no stars, only the blackness of infinite nothing. Yet there was also light. The warmth of a low autumn sun through glass, the brightness of a clear winter''s day. Day by day, she followed her routine. Awaken, feed the chickens, walk around the house. Awaken, feed, walk¡­ The day lasted a hundred thousand years, The day lasted forever. Until, one evening, it ended. - The sun was bright above her cottage, the morning air fresh and bright and the grass soft beneath her bare feet as she circled towards the coop, a bucket of food scraps under her arm. There were five of them, her girls, all resplendent in their spring plumage. Each with different colouring and good layers one and all. They greeted her at the gate, and she felt joy as she looked upon them. They were her last chickens, she would have no more after these, and she loved them with all her heart. Somewhere in the distance a cockerel called, but he was a wild thing and she had determined to stop feeding him. A frown creased her face, pulling at the wrinkles around her eyes, furrowing up her forehead like the first draw of the spring plough. Straightening up, she finished dumping the contents of the bucket out onto the floor, casting an eye first down towards the chickens, and then up, out into the woods. She had determined to stop feeding the cockerel¡­ When? Part of her knew it was either yesterday, or weeks ago, or many, many lifetimes before, but she couldn''t- She stared down again at her chickens, as they chuckled and gossiped over the food. She had given them scraps, but what had she eaten the night before, what were they eating? She leant in for a closer look- Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. - She awoke, she circled the cottage, and she fed her chickens. The day was warm, but the nights were starting to draw in, the last day of summer. They all had names, her chickens. There was Gertrude, the big orange one. There were Jenny and Jeremy, the two white girls with black spots, originally destined to be dinner but deemed too beautiful to destroy. There was Samantha, small and red and half the size of the others, but the uncontested head-hen. Then, last, there was Sightmind, a name from another time, another place. She didn''t know why Sightmind was named what she was, only that it had seemed right at the time. She was a fairly unobtrusive chicken, the smallest of the bunch and firmly at the bottom of the pecking order, but she was by far the most beautiful. A chicken sculpted in miniature, a rich mottled orange, with sharp black ringing the edge of each feather. As she thought about the day she had bought them home, she realised that, although she had once remembered the event, she no longer did. That knowledge was gone from her, and had been for a long, long time. A frown, creased across her forehead, like bunched-up clouds on a winter''s eve. She had known once. That thought should have bothered her more than it did. - There were only five chickens today, and the cockerel in the woods crowed a mourning call. Had she lost one overnight? to a fox attack, or¡­ She had woken weeping, but she couldn''t articulate why. Outside, she placed her bucket on the floor, kneeling beside it and scooping Gertrude up under one arm. Jenny and Jeremy went under the other, and Samantha followed behind, in consternation at this upset to her endless routine. She had lost one, but she wouldn''t lose another. Sightmind watched, from her perch atop the chicken coop. No fox would take her, no fox would dare, but she would follow anyway, on her own terms. That night she settled them down in the kitchen, in a box next to the wood stove she barely remembered how to use. They would be safe there, she wouldn''t lose another. - When she awoke the next morning, it was with Gertrude under her arm, chuckling gently in her sleep. Samantha, Jenny and Jeremy were perched on the end of the bed, and Sightmind was outside, keeping watch from atop the roof. Gertrude had always been too heavy to roost like the others, spending her life grounded, in more ways than one. Looking out of the window and into the woods- she had taken down the curtains years ago and never put them back up- she did a double take. Checking her eyes and then looking again. For where before there had been woods, the playground of her childhood, the sites of her teenage trysts and the final resting place of probably too many of her chickens, there was woods no longer. Climbing out of bed, she stared up at the tall, grey buildings, which had replaced what she had always known. She felt awake for the first time in a long, long time. As if she had spent the past days drifting through a dream. She absentmindedly petted the ball of chicken under her arm, and stared up at the blank, sightless eyes of the buildings. Grey concrete and empty windows, stretching up towards the sun. It was, she thought, another kind of forest. Chapter 2 The first order of business was to situate the chickens back outside, and the second was to work out how the wood stove functioned, so she could have some breakfast. There was already an egg nestled into her bedding by the time she returned upstairs, Samantha hard at work, and she found two more outside, nestled in the corner of the coop. Whether they had been there a day or a thousand years, she couldn''t say, but they would feed her either way. - Tucked away in the oven, she found a heel of bread, and there was a crock of butter hidden under the step outside, the water seal long evaporated, but the butter itself fine. She sat in the kitchen to eat, and considered The End of the World, staring out of her back door and musing about nothing. It hadn''t been so bad really, she thought as she washed up the plate, placing it back into its space on the dresser. It had both come and gone in an eyeblink, and now here she was, eating millennia-old butter, staring at the cat-claw scratches in her kitchen table, and wondering who lived in the huge grey monsters outside. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. She had never- she thought as she tucked her basket under her arm, checked the linen insert, and pulled her coat tight- she had never seen anything so big before. Even the trees which had towered over her cottage, held barely away by the threats of her fathers, or brothers, or own axe, even those trees were small now, in comparison to these giants. She wondered as she left, if she should lock the door behind her, now that she lived in a city. That was what city people did, right? Locked their doors and hoarded their money in banks and chests. She would have to buy a lock, if that was the case. All the ones she had only worked from the inside. She had never had much use for money either, but there was a bottle filled with coins by the door, a gift from her grandchildren for their backwards old nana, their laughter a little mocking, but not hurtful. She would just check things out today, and if she needed money to pay for things, she could bring it with her in the future. There was a pang in her heart as she considered her family. Had they made it through the End, as she had, were they out there somewhere, lost in the endless grey, awaking, feeding their chickens, and then falling once again into slumber, as she had until so very recently? - She couldn''t lock the door, but she did leave a note on the table, just in case she wasn''t the only one awake in this broken world. It would be nice to be nearer the shops, at least. Chapter Three - Wandering The day passed like a daydream, and afterwards, and as she sat at her kitchen table, Gertrude on her lap and Jenny and Jeremy perched precariously on the back of one of the chairs, she mused about what she both had and hadn''t found. She had wandered for much of the day, getting lost in the monotonous grey, orienting herself by the reflections of the sun off the windows and the call of the cockerel in the distance, and in all that wandering, she hadn''t found anything worth looking at. No stores, no shops, and no signs of life. Nothing. She had ventured into some of the buildings, but they were wrong, somehow. She was pretty sure that the tower blocks were meant to have floors inside. There should be spaces for human habitation or shops or endless banks of machines, people divided up into their own individual spaces by wood and cloth. She remembered seeing images of things like that, even if she knew she had never experienced it herself. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Instead, there was nothing. The buildings all identically grey, each one just a facade, cloth stretched around nothing, jelly moulds on an unimaginable scale. It gave her a headache to look upon them, she couldn''t imagine how they''d been built, or how they stood up. Blocks placed by a child, sandcastles awaiting an incoming tide. That she had managed to find her way home at all was a miracle, she was unused to navigating in landscapes such as this, outside of human scale, but she had made it back. As she settled towards sleep that night, the chickens arranged along the foot of the bed, Sightmind on the windowsill, and the cockerel on the roof, she wondered if she would ever wake up again, if her children would visit. She hoped so. She missed them. Chapter Four The next morning she awoke to the sun glinting off the windows of the huge, hollow shells looming over her home. There was bird song today, from the small stretch of forest she had left, although there were no birds that she could see. The butter was dry of water again, but no emptier than yesterday, and she chose to fry the heel of the loaf today. Variety is the spice of life, and all that. She only had two eggs today, the ones from the corner of the coop. Samantha was taking her weekly morning off and the others followed her example. She hadn''t yet found salt, or sugar, or cinnamon, or really anything of use in the cupboards, but she would make do. She had lived off of scrambled eggs and fried bread before, she could do it again. She was a little worried about what would happen when the bread ran out, or the butter stopped refilling itself, or when the bucket of food scraps by the back door didn''t replenish itself overnight, but it was a vague worry, something in the back of her mind that she couldn''t quite grasp onto. She could always feed the chickens their eggs back to them, and the birds could subsist for a time off what they scavenged from the earth, but it wouldn''t be good for them. She considered herself, and then reached over, petting Gertrude, who was shuffling around her feet. Worrying wouldn''t do her any good, so instead she may as well face the day. Tucking her basket under her arm, she resolved to go explore the city, and properly this time. - Four days later, the butter ran out. It didn''t worry her as much as it should of, but she would miss the comfort of that morning meal, the bread just wasn''t as good on its own. She explored each morning and dug her small garden each afternoon. She hoped that in time it would stop resetting itself, and that the changes she made would stick. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. She had loved gardening, she thought, maybe. It felt like it had been a meaningful activity in her life, and there was an urge to be outside, to dig, which she couldn''t resist. It had been autumn, when the world ended, and her garden, what was left of it, was bare, ravaged by the chickens in preparation for a spring yet to come. Each afternoon she had scraped it clear and planted the seed potatoes she had found in the back of the airing cupboard, and it was a start. Eventually, it would stick, and then she would have potatoes for dinner. - Her hope that things might change was renewed upon the morning of the seventh. The shop hadn''t been there yesterday, she had been down this road many times, but now it filled the bottom of one of the cake tin buildings. There was a wooden sign outside, and glass and metal doors, which she half expected to open as she approached them, although why she would think that, she couldn''t say. It was a superstore, she decided as she entered, like the sort the town council had shut down the building of almost a decade previous. There had been whole petitions about it, she remembered. She hadn''t cared much either way, it would have been all the way over on the other side of the village, but others had. They''d have been up in arms if they''d seen what was going on now. The inside of the store revealed shelves as far as the eye could see, and large advertisements for products she had no idea about nor care for. Shiflewease, Coat Polish, Night Extractor, and so on and so forth. It was a dizzying array of colours and nonsense. That said, there was some logic, and some words she recognised. One rather alarming aisle was simply labelled BLADES, and she stayed far away from that one. Near the back of the shop, for it wasn''t actually endless, she found a section labelled PROJECTS, and there she filled her basket with things she hoped would still be food by the time she got them home. There was a checkout stand back by the entrance, labelled UNTILL with two Ls, but there was no attendant present, nobody to squint over her goods and demand money, or to trade for her eggs and greens. She left two eggs on the counter anyway, just in case. They weren''t the ones from the corner of the coop, but fresh offerings from Jenny and Jeremy, and with only a slight hesitation she made her way out and back home. She didn''t think she''d ever stolen anything before, but there was a first time for everything. She thought she might even be starting to understand the thrill of shoplifting. That night, as she tucked into her meal of BOKKEN and PI- things which, when she opened the paper packets, were revealed to be half an egg and cress sandwich and raw spinach- she decided that whatever being was putting the world back together, they weren''t doing a very good job at it. Chapter Five - Finding For a few days after that, little changed with her routine. Awaken, feed the chickens, wander around the city, and then return home with whatever spoils she had liberated from the massive shop. On the third day, she had found the BOATS, or as she thought of it, OATS, section, and her worries about chicken food somewhat abated, although the location of it moved each day. On the morning of the fifth, the world shifted again. - There were birds outside, now. None she recognised, but instead a mix of everything, as if somebody had raided a zoo. Everything, from strange fat ground-dwellers to small songbirds. She thought once that she''d spotted a hawk, or something similar far above, but the chicken seemed calm and there was no alarm call from the cockerel, roosting somewhere in the depths of the city. Her daily walk revealed other wildlife, rats and mice scurrying away at her presence, squirrels darting in and out of windows, and once, a glimpse of a cat, well fed and sleek, its fur a tawny grey. She had woken up that morning with tears streaming down her face, deep sobs wracking her system as the dawn light filtered in through the window, but thinking back on it now, the dreams which had set it off remained a distant haze. She knew it was to do with her family, to do with the Ending, but detail eluded her, and her emotions were strangely muted. She existed in a dream, day by day, a wandering ghost. Her trip to the store, which now had a sign outside declaring a FEUD MARKET, went as normal. She picked up food for herself and several canisters of oats, this time finding them hidden at the back of the shop, behind a bookcase, which she had to move by pulling a very obvious lever. She was considering going back for what might''ve been maple syrup, but her basket was already heavy enough, and she didn''t know if it would last overnight anyway. Often, when she checked in the morning, the things she had taken the day before were gone. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. She had stopped leaving offerings at the checkout stand on her way out, so she was a little surprised when, upon her exit from the building, she heard the clearing of a throat. - The man behind the register was so young that she hesitated to even call them such, they were maybe sixteen at the most. He had, he stated, simply woken up that morning, and the first thing he truly remembered was as she had entered the store. That night they ate together in her cottage, the chickens roosting on the windowsill in the evening light, the doors thrown open to let in the late summer air. It had been winter yesterday, but when yesterday had been, she couldn''t say. She suspected that she still spent days lost, circling her home in a stupor, or walking through the empty streets. The chickens helped ground her, her worries about their safety, their endless desire for food and gossip drawing her back to life. She watched the boy as he ate. He was still dressed in his work uniform, his eyes empty as he stared out into what was left of her garden, and then when the meal was done she tucked him into bed in the guest room, running a hand over his forehead as his eyes fell shut. Cleaning up the plates and crumbling up the last of the bread heel for her sleepy chickens and the wild birds, she wondered if he would still be there in the morning. - He was not there in the morning. The bed was neat and made, as it had been every other morning, as it had been since¡­ Her mind drew blank, and after a moment of confusion, she shook herself out of it. Prodding at the missing memories was like worrying a sore tooth, it would only worsen the pain. She knew where to find him, anyway. - He was, once again, standing behind the checkout as she left, although he hadn''t been there when she''d arrived. She had checked, peering behind the wooden desk, at the space where there should have been¡­ Something, although she knew not what anymore. He didn''t remember her, or the day before, but he did eventually remember the chickens, dredging Sightmind''s name out of his memories with little to no prompting, and he agreed to come back with her. It wasn''t like there were any other customers for him to serve. - They spent the day touring the empty city together in relative silence, and that night, as she tucked him into bed, she carefully tucked Sightmind under his arm. As she lay in her own bed, the covers tucked up to her chin, she stared out at the skyscrapers, and noticed that one of them had lights in the window. Perfect. She would investigate that in the morning. Chapter Six The next morning the boy was still in bed, and the plates were still sitting in the sink. They agreed that this seemed like progress. He sat at the table, scratching at the wood with his fingernails as she bustled around, nudging the stove into life and making breakfast. She had picked up a jar the previous day which was filled with tightly rolled rashers of bacon, and with the heel of the bread, the butter and the eggs, it made for a pretty decent breakfast. The boy cleared his throat as the meal drew to a close, and staring out of the window at the busy chickens, spoke for the first time. "What¡­" He had to stop and cough, his voice rusty from disuse, and she was struck with a sudden, strong desire for a drink she didn''t remember how to make. "So," he coughed out, "what do we do now?" She tidied away the plates, thinking about it and looking around the kitchen vainly for something that was missing, something from the stove? She knew where it lives, but the ring was empty! Where had it gone! After a minute of thinking, she opened her mouth and spoke in the old way. "I don''t know?" Something about the process seemed to ground her, like an arcing cable finally welding itself to the side of a junction box, and once the words were out neither of them could take them back. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. "I don''t know, I want-" a pause, as she considered it again, "I had a family. Children, grandchildren, friends, I would like to find them?" The boy drummed his fingers on the table, nodding, "I had a family too," he was biting his lip as he spoke, "at least I think I did, before¡­" He trailed off as his eyes dimmed, and a moment later stood up. She watched as he took the last of the bread and crouched in the doorway, letting the chickens peck it out of his hands. His voice was quiet, struggling through the haze. "I had a ma. Maybe? I''d like to find her." Samantha, the boldest of all chickens, grabbed the final piece of the heel from him and raced off with it in her beak. The two of them watched the ensuing chase for a minute. "Yeah, I''d like to find my ma, maybe she''s with your family?" There was a sort of pleading hope in his voice that she didn''t know how to respond to. It was a beautiful morning, the sun coming in through the thin line of trees which separated her cottage from the new city, and it promised to only get warmer as the day went on. Somewhere in the distance, the cockerel crowed out a greeting to the morning, and she forced herself to respond, the words sticking in her throat. She didn''t know about his ma, but thinking about her family hurt too much for to her even begin to broach the subject. "The chickens have their names, but I don''t know mine." Her words were clipped, but important, "do you have a name?" He rose to his feet, dusting off his knees, "I don''t, I did but¡­ But it''s gone now. It''s gone. But, I''m still here I guess." He watched the chickens for a moment longer, as they pecked up the last of the bread crumbs. "We''re both still here. I want to be called Shim." She nodded, pulling the door shut behind her and picking up her basket from the step, "Mine''s gone too, but you can call me Rust." Chapter Seven - City Lights "I saw lights in one of the towers last night," Rust spoke, squinting up at the looming buildings. "We can probably find out what it was, if we look." They had stopped outside the Store, but Shim was wary about actually going inside, lest he be trapped somehow, the world realising he was out of place. On the way over, Rust had told him of how he hadn''t been there until she was leaving, and that hadn''t helped his nerves. "What if another me turns up, or it like, resets me, like a game character or somethin''?" She nodded in understanding, and they carried on their walk, heading towards where she had seen the light, talking quietly between themselves. As they got closer, Shim suddenly squinted, and then pointed up, "Ah, I see what you mean, there''s curtains!" She nodded, looking up herself. The window she had seen the night before was thrown open now, white curtains flapping in the breeze like a flag. It wouldn''t have been much to look at in a normal city, but here, where all the buildings looked identical, it stood out. As they entered, the inside of the building looked almost normal. Or it did if you changed your definition of normal, from ''giant cake tin'' to ''building that might have existed in a regular city''. Instead of a hollowed-out shell, there was an enclosed lobby area, with the ground floor doubling as a sort of shopping centre. They had a brief look around, but all the shops were shuttered and closed, awaiting future tenants who might never come. The silence was eerie as they climbed the wide stairwell, counting floors, with Rust feeling every step in her knees. In a building like this, you expected the noise of people living their lives, but it was completely, utterly silent. "It''s weird," muttered Shim. The quiet and concrete stole his words away, and he didn''t speak again. A whole building which should have been full of life, instead desolate and empty. It was a strange feeling. - Even Shim was flagging a little by the time they made it to their destination, but they knew they''d come to the right place as the area opened up around them. Where the previous floors had contained corridors and lines of anonymous doors, identical down even to the nicks and scrapes, this floor was different. The corridor was wide, and the doors were all different colours. There was a big, bright window at the end of the hall, and halfway along one of the doors stood open. The smell of cooking and the sound of a radio drifted towards them as they approached. Rust hesitated, and after sharing a look with Shim, she knocked on the open door, and they entered the apartment together. - The woman screamed at the sight of them and nearly managed to brain Shim with a thrown frying pan, spotting his uniform with grease and putting a large dent into the door behind him. As he cowered with his hands over his head, Rust shouted at the woman, which in turn caused her to run, finally locking herself in the bathroom. As they fought, the stove winked out and the sound of the radio cut off abruptly, casting the room into silence, the faint smell of gas in the air. - A few minutes later the pan was back on the stove, and the three of them were grouped up on the sofa tears running down their faces, pancakes stacked on the coffee table, forgotten. "I thought I was alone," she sobbed, "I wake, I wake, I wake, I-" She stopped as Rust placed a hand on her shoulder, instead letting out a strangled sob, "I remember it. I remember¡­" Shim laid an awkward hand around her back, and she clung to his shirt, clutching at the fabric and turning the white cotton transparent with tears. Rust kept her hand on the woman''s shoulder, but also stared out of the window. She had never been so high up before, had barely ever been further afield than the local town. Even for her honeymoon, they hadn''t gone further than... She patted the shoulder again and stood to get a better view. From up here you could see the patchwork nature of the world, something she had only suspected before. The city ended as if cut, and a mountain in the distance was sliced cleanly in half. When she peeked out of the left window, there was a strange void where there should have been land or sea, where there should have been- She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the curtain closed. Best not to look, she decided. She could already feel a headache coming on, a sharp pain spiking through her temple. By the time she looked back, the woman on the sofa had eased off in her crying and was now eating the cooling pancakes, helped along by Shim and his endless teenage hunger. "Do you want a name?" Shim asked when the pancakes were gone and even the crumbs mopped up. "We picked names, this mornin''." He pointed over at her. "That''s Rust, and I''m Shim." The woman frowned in thought, wringing her hands through her skirt. Her face was still raw and puffy, but her eyes were bright. "I had one," she bit her lip, "a name I mean, I had one." She stared down at the empty plate, and then up out of the window, her hands still forming knots in the abused cloth. "I like," a deep breath through her nose, "The first thing I remember is waking up, I wake¡­" She took a moment to pull herself out of the loop again, and the other two let her. "I remember waking up with breakfast, the cooking. I would spend all day here, reading, always the same-" Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Another pause, another moment to pull herself back together again, as she fractured over and over. "Always the same book, I don''t remember what it was about like, but I remember it. It was the happiest I''d ever been, pancakes in the morning, and a day spent reading in the sun." Rust nodded in understanding, and Shim frowned to himself. "I''m gonna be Quilt." She decided, "I had one once that I liked." She swallowed loudly, "it was pink with patchwork flowers on it, I dunno where it went, but in the winter¡­" Quilt trailed off, but more naturally now, scrubbing at her face and smoothing out her crumpled skirt. "I don''t wanna be alone, I want to be Quilt. Can I stay with you?" Rust nodded, "I have spare rooms, we can sort that." - Rust explored the surrounding flats, while Quilt and Shim sorted out what they wanted to take from the flat. Most of the doors were closed and locked, but she found several that weren''t, the locks either missing or non-functional. The first looked as if its occupant had stepped out only moments before. There was a still warm plate of food on the table, something with grains and a sauce she couldn''t identify, and the bedroom door was half open, washing strewn over the floor. She tried shouting, and entering and leaving a few times, but when there was no response, she left, shutting the door behind her. Shim did check in, as she was shouting, but shuddered when she explained what she was doing, and quickly went back to helping Quilt pack. Another apartment looked normal at first glance, until she discovered the bedroom furniture all crammed into the tiny bathroom, and the bathroom fixtures were in the kitchen. Another was empty of everything except various stacks of mismatched chairs, like a church storage room. The further she got from where they''d found Quilt, the more things seemed to break down. The rooms at the end of the corridor were empty of everything, even carpet, and floors. She didn''t step into those, gazing instead down the well, towards the ground floor far, far below. - They didn''t go into the Store on the way back, Shim pulling them past, his lips tight, but they had scraped together enough supplies that they wouldn''t starve for a while. Were they even capable of such a thing? The act of cooking and eating seemed to be more a breath of the familiar, a way to ground themselves, than a real need, but maybe that would change as time went on. - As they sat around the kitchen table that night, Jenny and Jeremy roosting on the windowsill, Gertrude snuggled into Quilt''s lap and Sightmind and Samantha snuggled together in a box by the door, they discussed the future. "You said you were happy," Shim hedged, the meal long over but nursing a cup of boiled water. "On that day, you remembered¡­ Well, the thing what we remember, but you said you were happy?" Quilt nodded, "I think that day was the happiest I ever was. I used to think about it sometimes, later, and I came close other times, but that one day in the sun..." She smiled, her face shining in the evening light, and Rust nodded. "I understand. Today-" she paused, "Not today, but what Today was for me, the¡­ The day I awoke?" She struggled to find the right words "My day. I talked to my hens. My children were going to visit tomorrow, they were going to bring somebody new with them. Somebody young." Her heart lurched, but she carried on, "It was a calm day, a beautiful day before a storm. It was winter and my home was warm and safe, tomorrow was only anticipation, I wasn''t in any pain, and I was happy." Shim looked between them, unhappy with their responses. "You two can lose yourself in musings later," he grumbled, placing his cup down on the table a little bit too hard. "I don''t want the day I was happiest to be the day I was working in some supermarket. I don''t want that to be what the sum of my life was. If, if it happened on the days you were both happiest, what does that mean for me?" He stood suddenly, startling the chickens off the window sill and causing the two in the box to look up, "I don''t- what if¡­" He stared out the door, a silhouette in the doorway. "What if I''m just made up somehow, what if I don''t have a past, or a family. You said I wasn'' even there until you left the shop, what if like, the shop just made me, because it knew, somehow, that you were meant to have a person there to ring up purchases." He took a deep, shaky breath, holding back tears. "What if- what if you go back in, because you want some sweets or somethin'', and I just stop existing. What if somebody else else goes in, somebody we don''t even know, and that makes me stop existing." Rust stood up and walked over to where he was standing, staring out into the darkness, one trembling hand clutching the doorframe. She started to speak, but he carried on before she had a chance to interject. "You said it already happened once. You woke, I was gone. I didn''t even, I don''t even remember that, I don''t remember that day." His fingernails bent against the oak of the door-frame, and gently Rust reached up, pulling his hand down. "We''ll find what your day was." Her voice was quiet, "maybe it was a day you helped somebody, or you met a beloved, or you just had a really nice afternoon and evening in the park." She pulled him back towards the table, and a minute later he was sitting again, a grumbling Sightmind on his lap. "We''re not gonna lose you. You''re not gonna cease to exist." Rust emptied out his mug, before refilling it from a pan on the stove. "And if you are gone one morning, we know how to get you back. The chickens''ll find you." He flinched, and she wondered if she''d said the wrong thing, handing him the mug back, filled with freshly warmed water. From next to him, Quilt stepped up, reaching over the nervously petting the chicken. "I don''t know if I''ll be here when morning comes eithr. I don''t really know what happened with you both, I''m new, I only just..." She took a deep breath. "I only just woke up, and I don''t know if I''ll be here tomorrow." She let out a breath, "We can''t know these things." She licked her lips, hesitating, and both of them watched as she struggled. Almost two minutes later, she scrunched her face up and spoke. "It ended. Everything ended. We remember it ending, or I do. We keep dancin'' around the subject, but that''s what happened. "I don''t know how we ended up here, beyond the End, or whatever here is. But I like it here, I didn''t want to End, I didn'' wanna die. None of us did." The colours in the room were fading as the last of the sunset light ebbed away, leaving the three of them shrouded in darkness. Rust was leaning back against the counter, Shim at the table with his eyes on the floor, gently petting the chicken, and Quilt sitting straight and defiant, almost invisible in the deepening shadows. "But I won''t not talk about it, even if it makes me repeat the same day another hundred thousand times. The world ended, and we watched it happen, we were there, and now, I dunno. But I''m not gonna just give up and hide in fear of it happenin'' again." "It did end." Rust found the words hard, but she pushed through, "I remember it too, I remember reliving that day over and over. I was awake before either of you." She pushed away from the counter, and a moment later was clearing the cups and plates off the table. They had taken a big lamp from Quilt''s apartment, but none of them were quite sure how to get it going. "I was awake before you two and I think, whatever happened, something, somebody, is putting it back together." She huffed out a quiet laugh. Outside, the frantic evening birdsong had faded, and a chill breeze blew in through the open door. "They''re not very good at it though. The empty buildings, the strange labels." She went to indicate some of the things she had taken from the store the previous day, but it was too dark now for them to be seen. "Maybe it''ll get better, though. Maybe one day we''ll be sitting around this table and things''ll be good. We''ll know that it ended, but we''ll be the only ones. Everyone else will just live their lives, and the world will be complete and whole around us." She placed the last of the mugs on the draining board, and a moment later she had put the crocks of butter and bacon in the space outside under the step. A quick relocation of the chickens, and then a closing of the door, locking out the night air, locking in the darkness. "I want to find my family." She said, "but first, I want to live." There were nods and agreement from the two silhouettes, and as the three of them headed upstairs for bed, the air in the house was hopeful. Chapter Eight The next morning Quilt was still with them, bleary-eyed and craving pancakes, but indisputably still herself. Shim was yet to awaken, but they had both checked in on him as they passed. "I never had real eggs before," she commented as she watched Rust stoke the aga into life. "The ones in my apartment weren''t right, and I think I always used powdered before that." She fiddled with a salt cellar as she watched, rolling it back and forth in her hands. "Never been out the city, neither, not even in the Before." Rust smiled from over the stove, "on my side of it, I''ve never been out of the country. Grew up here and never felt the need to move. Even when my family did." She tested the hotplate with a drop of water, before nodding to Quilt, who pushed away from the table, preparing to cook. "I feel like I know more every day," Rust said, backing off and watching her work. "Each day it all becomes a little more clear, or maybe the gaps become less obvious?" Quilt shrugged, "poor lad upstairs has it the roughest, from what he said yesterday. He doesn'' know who he is, or even who he was." There was silence after that, the only sounds the birds outside, and the sizzling of the pancakes. Rust watched Quilt cook, and considered the house. It wasn''t a small place. She had raised¡­ She had raised more children here than the house had any right to hold. Five bedrooms, a large kitchen, a utility area out the back, and a parlour she rarely used. The parlour was kept shut up, apart from when guests came to visit, and was, therefore, a room she now associated more with her grandchildren than as a part of her home. There were other bits of the house too, which she was only now remembering. A bathroom, two toilets, odd corners and cupboards, a cellar, and finally an attic, sealed off from the rest of the house, the domain of birds and bats. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. A small man had come once to inspect it once, long ago. He had declared it "not a health risk" and left again. His van had been bright blue with rust spots on the bonnet, and she had thought that that was a health risk, thank you very much. She frowned and opened her mouth to ask Quilt if she knew what a ''van'' was, but was distracted by a clatter from the stairs and the emergence of a sleepy-looking Shim. "I slept in?" he mumbled as he staggered towards the sink, frowning when nothing came out of the tap. "Shouldn''t there be water?" Rust squinted at it, "I always wondered what that was for. I''ve been drawing it out of the well out back." He grunted and helped himself to some of the pancakes instead, throwing himself down at the table. "Not used to bein'' up this early, I think. You should have woken me. What''re we doing today?" Quilt shrugged, and they both looked at Rust, who put on her best ''thinking face''. "We should explore the city-" She held up a hand to stall any pithy comments, "-but we shouldn''t split up. I don''t trust it. What if the world changes around us? Sure, it hasn''t changed while we''re awake that I''ve noticed, but we can''t rely on that." The other two nodded, and Shim raised a hand as if they were in a classroom. She glared at him, and he coughed, lowering it again. "When I woke up, up there, I was thirsty. That hasn''t happened before." He sniffed, and reached for an offered mug of water, "dunno if it''s cause we were drinking last night, or cause we talked about it, or just things changing, but it is a change." "I remembered something," Rust nodded, "A memory of a man in a¡­ Something, he used it to get around. He came all the way from somewhere so he could look at my attic." She considered the memory, "There should be birds and bats up there, he was a rude man." Quilt divvied out the rest of the pancakes and then sat, leaning back in the chair, her knees against the edge of the table. "Like a bike? I had a bike, it were stored in the garrages on the ground floor. Not that there''s garages there now." "Bigger, I think," Rust said thoughtfully. "It didn''t seem uncommon to me, in the memory, but I don''t know. It''s one of the missing things, in the city." "We''ll keep an eye out I guess." Quilt said, but she didn''t sound confident. Shim nodded, mouth already too full to speak. Rust nodded back and tried to put the memory aside, focusing instead on the delicious breakfast. They had taken a small amount of syrup from Quilt''s apartment, and it made all the difference. A half-hour later the table was cleared, the chickens fed, and the three of them headed out into the City. Chapter Nine - BRICKS and BLOCKS The city was sized for something inhuman. The buildings seemed correct, for what little Rust knew of city buildings, but the streets were too wide, the pavements too small, and the distances between things that little bit too far. "I used to walk through the woods on my way home." Shim announced after almost twenty minutes of silent travel. "When I started the job, it was summer, and I could walk in the sunlight and listen to the birds. But when it got to winter, it was dark, and the path was unlit." He shoved his hands in his pockets, and Rust, idly noting that the pockets were too small to make the action comfortable, realised all of a sudden that he had been wearing the same uniform for days now, that it was still splattered with grease, that she had been wearing the same jeans and shirt, and that Quilt was still dressed in her nightwear. "I woulda kept going through the woods," he continued, on a roll now and oblivious to her thoughts, "but my ma didn''t like it. She said I''d get mugged or robbed, if I kept going that way." The two of them let him speak, and he pulled his hands awkwardly out of the pockets. "I said that was dumb, who''s gonna hang around in the woods at that time of night waitin'' for some kid to come along. Better to wait where it''s lit, and you can see who you''re robbin''." Shim peered up at the buildings around them, huge grey rectangles with no discernible features, apart from the one white curtain in the distance. "Anyway, I didn'' walk through the woods after that. Even if I wasn'' gonna get robbed, it woulda made her unhappy. But I hated walking on the roads." He huffed out a breath, and it was visible in the chill air. "Wish I''d bought my coat with me." Quilt suddenly shivered too, "I hear you on that one, lad. Reckon if we go back to my place we can find some blankets or something?" "Quilts." Rust smiled, and the other two looked at her uncomprehendingly. She shrugged, unwilling to explain the joke. The walk to Quilt''s apartment would take them almost an hour, and after a minute of chatter, they collectively agreed to go back to the cottage. Quilt knew she had spare bedding, and hoped she could find some spare clothes too, if needed. - Halfway back, it started to snow, and then to hail. In a laughing panic, the three of them ducked inside a building styling itself as a hotel. The outside had been ornate, with grand steps, gold and silver accents and little bits of filigree, was that the right word? They hadn''t seen it on the way up, but then, they had been trying to take a more direct route back. On the outside, above the first floor, the outer decorations morphed into the same grey building as all the others, tall and uninspiring, and if they hadn''t been rushing they never would have found it at all. Quilt and Rust laughed as they brushed the snow and hail out of their hair, and Shim gave them a brittle smile, before staring around the lobby. It was a large space, and almost correct for a hotel. There was a desk over by one wall with a bank of keys hanging behind it, and a small area with sofas and chairs and something missing. A drinks trolley abandoned in one corner promised poison, and the place was decorated in white and gold. That was correct. What wasn''t correct was the bare concrete floor, the peeling wallpaper and the flat concrete ceiling. The place didn''t look abandoned though, Shim thought. Any piece of metal he could see, the bodies of the keys, the desk, and the legs of the chairs, were all polished to a mirror-bright sheen. It was only the structure which was weird. Rust caught him looking around, brushing off the last of the snow, and she shrugged at him. "That''s what I meant, the other night. Nothing''s quite right, it''s like whatever, whoever''s putting the world back together, it knows what things should look like and where all the parts go, but not what those parts are or what they do. Like a child putting together a dollshouse, out of a big box of bits." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. She wandered over to the reception desk and rummaged around for a while behind it. A second later she emerged with a few paper-wrapped blocks. "Here, look at these," she passed two of them over, "I think it''s meant to be chocolate. I keep seeing them in the store too." Shim looked at the object, turning it over in his hands. Red paper wrapped around silver foil, all surrounding something hard inside. The paper read BLOCK on both sides. He turned it over a few times in his hands, and then warily unwrapped it. A sniff, "I think it''s curry powder?" He licked it and then nodded. "Definitely curry." The second bar was labelled BRICK, and he unwrapped it with less care this time. "Huh," he gave it a taste before drawing back, stumped for a moment. "I don''t even know what this is, something lemony?" Quilt came over for a look and a taste, "Oh, I think it''s a lemon curd, but¡­ Dried? Meringue?" She gave it another taste, scrunching her face up a little at the acidic sweetness of it, "Weird. All the food''s like this?" "No," Rust shook her head, "most of it''s just normal stuff in odd containers. It''s all placed like it belongs," she gestured towards the desk, "but labelled wrong." - They spent a while exploring the lobby, shivering a little as the hail pelted down outside. Shim watched as it piled up on the window sills and blanketed the streets in a soft white haze. Rust fretted and worried over her chickens back at home, but they were smart birds, they would find shelter, probably. How smart were chickens, anyway? "Not very," Rust snapped after he asked, "I once had one get stuck upsidown behind the coop, against the wall. I don''t know how she got there or how she expected to get out, if I hadn''t gone looking¡­" She huffed and walked ahead of him, slamming open a door and only remembering to check for a floor at the last moment. They had headed towards the big double doors at the back of the lobby, expecting it to lead onto stairwells and corridors, but instead, it opened onto a long room, reminiscent of a military barracks. At the back of that had been another, identical room, even down to the trinkets on the bedside tables and the layout of the blankets. At the end of that room, they found stairs. Armed with sheets and blankets, they had attempted to head upwards, but the stairs had ended abruptly, and they could see the hollow of the building above them. "Foiled," Quilt complained, raiding the beds for more covers. Rust had gathered up more BRICK and BLOCK bars, finding one placed gently under each pillow. "I think they were meant to be on the pillows," Rust said, arms full, "But they were too big for that, so underneath. Absolute epitome of form without understanding." - That evening they sat in the main lobby by the doors, sitting on stolen mattresses and wrapped in stolen blankets, snacking gingerly on the BRICKs. The BLOCKs had been stacked up in a corner, in case they felt like cooking sometime in the future. BLOCK was always curry, BRICK was always lemon, and BAR- which they''d only found two copies of- turned out to be a light, dull grey metal, shaped exactly how you would expect a chocolate bar to be shaped. - "This is where it turns into a horror film, right?" Quilt suggested, and the other two looked over for an explanation. "Snowy outside, trapped inside an old hotel? Rust nodded, whilst Shim looked confused, "What''s a film?" "Huh," she thought about this, "I think it''s like a book, but with only pictures?" Rust seemed unconvinced, "No, no, I remember. I used to go into the village for films," she hesitated, "But I also used to go for books. Huh." She considered this as the snow came down, preparing to ask a difficult question. "Have we, have any of you actually seen any books, since we awoke?" Quilt burrowed into her blanket mound, pulling the sheets over her head and looking like nothing more than one of the piles of snow outside. Shim already had his blankets over his head, with just a space left open for his face, but he shook his head anyway. "Seen some empty shelves," he scrunched downwards into the blankets in much the same way as Quilt, "there might have been some magazines, back in the Store?" He snuggled down further, his voice muffled now, looking like a melting ice cream, "we could look?" Rust shook her head, although neither of them could see it. She was wrapped in her own set of blankets, but was more wearing them like a cloak, her head free and her bearing strong, unbothered by the chill. This was partly because of her personality, but also partly because she was the only one of them with real clothes. "You don''t want us to go back there, so we won''t." There was a muffled sound of agreement from the mound of blankets which had once been known as Quilt, and Shim poked his head out again, looking at the both of them with sad gratitude. "But you love books, the both of you right?" Rust shrugged, looking out at the snow. "We''ll find somewhere else to get them, if they exist. And if they don''t we''ll write them ourselves, on the backs of chocolate wrappers. We''ll bind them with string from the bedsheets and glue from egg whites. Not sure what we''ll do about ink, wood ash maybe?" Shim raised an eyebrow at her, and Quilt poked her head out from under her covers to give her a look. "What?" Chapter Ten Rat was lost. A minute ago she had been at home, half asleep in her nest, in a disused cellar down near the canals. Now, she was still in her cellar, but her cellar wasn''t where it was meant to be. Something had changed, something that had been changing for a very, very long time. She pulled her blankets tighter around herself, sinking deeper into the familiar. From her name and location, you would have expected the blankets to be filthy, or stained with grease and grime, but Rat kept her den very clean, almost obsessively so. Once a week she collected together her saved-up coins, her spoils of begging and scrimping, and took everything she owned to the local launderette. It wasn''t cheap, but by the end of it she always had clean clothes, and blankets which kept the heat in, and that was worth going hungry for. She was hungry right now, and had been hungry for a long time, but her blankets smelt of washing powder, which made it all worth it. When she had started going there had been a few strange looks, and a little questioning at somebody as young as her hanging around the machines, but people were used to her now, and nobody bothered her. It was her weekly treat, those two hours spent in the warm, surrounded by the smell of clean washing and the chatter of people with nothing to do. There were magazines and newspapers she could read, and once somebody had bought her some potato scallops from the chip shop across the road, she hardly ever had those! - She took a deep breath in, before sticking her nose out of the blanket mound and listening as hard as she could. Something had definitely changed. Something was wrong. The takeaway above, normally bustling at this hour of the day, was silent, and there was no thunder of footsteps in the streets. There were no passing shadows over the glass bricks, no calls of children on their way home. There wasn''t even the scurrying of rats from inside the walls, trying to squeeze their way through gaps long filled in. Instead, it was grave silent. The air was different, too. A sterile, ozone scent like an incoming storm, like the aftermath of an electrical fire, without all the burning¡­ She squeezed her eyes shut and retreated for a moment, holding back a pounding headache, the part of her which could still think terrified at this sudden onset of pain. What if she had a brain tumour, and this was all some sort of psychosis? Did she have a brain tumour? Had she drunk enough? Had somebody spiked her drink? No, she never went to... Another spike of pain, and she groaned aloud, holding her head and trying to think of anything else, anything to make it stop. She spent a lot of time during the week in the library, and she had once read a book written for people who wanted to be their own doctors. It said that a major cause for headaches was brain tumours, and that they could also make you see things that didn''t exist. You should always get unexplained headaches checked out by a real doctor, even if you decided to ignore their advice afterwards. She squinted at her hands for a moment, eyes wet, still huddled in her blanket cocoon. She still had five whole fingers, so she was truly awake, not dreaming-awake, and they weren''t morphing into demons or anything. There weren''t any monsters coming out of the walls, everything looked normal, it was just¡­ Silent. She stuck her nose out again, squinting in the early evening light, using all her willpower to listen, yearning for anything, any noise at all. Nothing. Complete and utter silence. - She sat frozen for another half hour, waiting for the rumble of the bus, the passing of the... She didn''t remember what a ''bus'' was, but she knew it went past every fifteen minutes until late at night, and would cause the whole building to shudder and groan as it did. Outside the light started to fade, late afternoon sinking into evening. The Bus sounded like some kind of monster, but it was a friendly creature, she knew, she rode it sometimes, out into the country, or she had before¡­ The headache came back with a vengeance, and when she finally pulled herself together enough to look outside again, it was fully dark. There should have been lights on by now, shining in through the window above, filtering in through the gaps, but there was nothing. All was dark and quiet and still. Shuddering, she retreated back into her blanket fort, pulling the cloth tight around herself, like a suit of armour again the world. Maybe things would be normal again in the morning. - Things were not normal in the morning. Throughout the night she had listened, half-dozing, straining her ears for the sounds of the other rats, the rumbles from above, the noise of people, but as dawn broke, she knew that something important was gone. Never before had she, even here, deep in the heart of the city, never before had she heard a silent dawn. Where was the birdsong, the dawn chorus, the- Her stomach growled at her, and she winced, reaching up to rub her tired eyes. Today was laundry day, so she would take her blankets and her spare clothes on over there, and hopefully, somebody would know what was going on. - Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. This wasn''t her city. She didn''t remember what the name of her city was, or in which parts of it she lived, but this was not her city. It was, instead, a facsimile of one, a painting, meant to be admired but never scrutinised. It was the distant romantic skyline, the illusion falling apart up close. Still, the laundromat was roughly where she would have expected it to be if she had been home, roughly a half a mile west of her den, but the location was as close as it got to being right. Okay, the machines were still there, sort of, but instead of the big metal boxes she expected, they had been replaced by gigantic wooden toys. As she touched them in confusion, she thought that they looked like the sort of thing fancy shops sold for babies, but scaled up to massive size. They were all painted in bright, primary colours, and as she peered inside one of the big wooden drums, it was quite obviously non-functional. Where the detergent drawer should have there was a carving, bearing the word SOUP, and the paint flaked off when she touched it. She stared around, flummoxed, before dumping her washing into the machine anyway. Maybe the library would be more normal, if she could find it. - She did not find the library. That night she slept in the laundromat, in a fort built of toy washing machines and hung blankets, her stomach tight. The next day, it started to snow. - She wrapped herself up as best she could against the cold. She had found a coat in the back of her new home, and that combined with every piece of clothing she owned was enough to keep her warm as she explored. She wished she had better shoes, but that was by the by. Shoes were expensive. She would have stayed inside and waited it out, but her stomach kept growling at her, and there was no food in the laundromat, that she could find anyway. There was normally a vending machine in the corner, selling sachets of detergent and packets of crisps, but it was absent, only a watermark on the floor to show it had even existed at all. She couldn''t remember when she''d last eaten, but she was doing her best not to think about it. She was learning now what triggered the headaches, and how to work around them. Brain tumours were the worst. If she could find a doctor, maybe they could save her, but she was probably too far gone already. It was tragic really. They might even write an obituary for her in the local paper. - The library, when she worked out where it should be, was gone, not even a grey tower in its place, instead there was just¡­ Nothing. She thought later that there might have been a park there, grass and trees and screaming children, but thinking back too hard caused the headaches again, so she didn''t. Instead, she copied her namesakes, scurrying from building to building, trying to avoid the worst of the snow. It was up past her ankles now, and the constant fall was interspersed with little bouts of hail. She passed through those buildings which weren''t locked, and those which had floors, and walked around those which weren''t. Her blankets left a trail behind her in the loose snow and the cold soaked through her trainers and into her soul. Still, it didn''t bother her like it should. It was there, but it was distant, appearing only if she looked for it, and she did her best not to look. The whole experience was more like walking through chilled soap suds, or asbestos. She didn''t know what asbestos was, but it might have been a sort of snow which only damaged you later? The gaps in her knowledge annoyed her almost as much as her ending up in this strange world. She had spent as much time in the library as she could, reading anything and everything, and she had been proud of the knowledge she had gained, all of it hard-won. The loss of the library rankled almost as much as the missing memories. It had been a warm place, a place of quiet knowledge, where they hadn''t minded that she turned up at opening and left at closing, as long as she kept to herself. Nobody had bothered her, and sometimes there had even been free drinks and food, sample tables, and sandwiches left over after the cafe closed. To be fair, it was a big library, in the heart of the city, and she was only a small rat. There wasn''t much of her to bother. - A flash of neon light caught her eye, reflecting off the crisp snow, and she broke into a jog, skidding around the corner and enjoying the streaks her feet made as she came to a stop. Lights meant people! People meant food, and freedom from this purgatory! Except, as she rounded the corner, there were no people. There were no lights. Instead, in front of her was another big grey building, almost identical to all the others, except that in the centre, where the doors should have been, was the front of a shop. The shop would have looked almost normal, if you went back in time a century, and if it was in the bottom of a small two-story brick building instead of a hundred-story concrete tower block. Instead, the huge grey building encased it, seeming to swallow the splintered wooden frames and ancient-looking door like a snail eating a pea. She peered in through the grubby window, trying to see through the dust and snow. She had been past shops like this sometimes, seeing them out of the corner of her eye. You were never sure if they were still in use, an ancient being behind the counter spending eternity mending people''s appliances and selling tools, or if they had been abandoned and forgotten about a hundred years before, left to rot. She had always wanted to investigate, but that was more of a romantic notion than any real desire. Trespassing was bad enough, she didn''t need to be arrested for breaking and entering. - A little bell rang above the door as she entered, the shop assaulting her with the smell of dust and boiled potatoes, and she looked around with curiosity, shrugging off the last of the snow. It was like a museum set! She felt as if she''d stepped into a picture in a history book. It was all somehow flat, as if looking around at the wrong angle would cause everything to slide into 2d, but she tried not to think about that. It was probably just the brain tumour talking. It wasn''t a large place, with only three small aisles, but it was packed with stuff. Next to the door was a deep rattan basket filled with bread, and her stomach grumbled at the sight. The leftmost wall was stocked with odds and ends, small statuettes and tools she only vaguely recognised. Along the near wall was a display, which her heart told her should have contained sweets and newspapers, but the papers were blank, replaced with half-wrapped reams of A4, and instead of sweets, there were marbles, beans, small shiny stones, and tiny statues that fit in the palm of her hand. In the old days, she would have found this fascinating, and could have rummaged through the shelves for hours, searching for the perfect toys, but the brain tumour and the snow were making her tired, and all she wanted was food and shelter. There was no shopkeeper, although she shouted. While shoplifting wasn''t beyond her, she had always stuck to the big supermarkets, places such as this were too overlooked, and it was too personal, too damaging. Still, there was a first time for everything. She picked up one of the loaves of bread, an old-fashioned round loaf, and found it still warm from the oven. Odd, as the building was damp and cold, but she held it briefly to her forehead in thanks, before stuffing it under her shirt. She would eat it later, behind the washing machines, when she was safe. For now, she was an explorer! She headed towards the middle aisle, eyeing up the display at the end. Where she would normally have expected gift cards, there were instead index cards, corners rounded off, each bearing a unique name. Upon turning a few over, she discovered that somebody had drawn on black stripes in Sharpie, and they all contained identical names and numbers. Strange. She frowned and pinned it back to the board, heading towards where the till should be. If there was food here, and the place was truly abandoned, maybe she could stay, and make this her home base. - She could smell the bread under her shirt, and her stomach clenched as she peered at the shelves, nagging at her to not wait, to eat it now! She was hoping for something better, though. Rats cannot live on bread alone. Instead of the junk food she was hoping for, she found boxes, baskets, pots and pans. Steamers and ladles and little bowls, all jumbled together in a chaotic mess. At the end of the aisle though, piled up against the checkout desk, she found gold. Not literally, although by now she wouldn''t have been surprised, but metaphorical gold. Tins and tins, all stacked upon each other, all missing their labels, but polished to a bright shine. Her mouth watered as she looked at them, and then at the tools around her, surely she could get these open somehow, and inside, would be what she craved so much. Beans. Chapter Eleven - Hovering on the Edge of Sleep This dead city was, as far as she could tell, hers alone. Whether she was lost in a dream, or wandering around in a fugue state brought on by the brain tumour, she had so far found no reason to be afraid. She didn''t feel the chill of the snow, no monsters were hiding in dark alleyways, and there were no rats in the walls, no cockroaches falling onto her as she slept. Even hunger mostly eluded her, returning only now and again to nip at her heels. - She returned to the launderette that first night, making up her bed inside one of the great wooden washing machines. It had taken some courage before she had managed to bring herself to crawl inside; as if the toy might spring to life around her and wash her clean into the next world, but such a thing had not happened. Instead, it was cosy and warm, if not very spacious. Her own secret den. There was a faint smell of artificial perfume imbued into the wood, and she felt safer in there than she had in... Longer than she could remember, if she was being honest. Fed and safe, she drifted towards sleep. The bread had been warm and beautiful, even after being under her shirt for several hours, and that, combined with some fizzy pop and a rather battered tin of pears, was now luring her towards sleep. She had avoided the COKE, she was learning how this strange new world worked, but the LIMON¨¢D¨¦ did, in fact, appear to be simply lemonade, and she had enjoyed every drop of it. The bottles had been the old-fashioned kind with the glass marble in the top, and it had taken her a good while to work out the mechanism, but it had been worth it. Fizzy and sweet. She had only ever read about those bottles in books before, being more used to¡­ Something else she wasn''t going to think about, but it fit with the aesthetic of the little old shop. She had been loathe to break the bottle, and the relief when she had managed to get it open without doing so was palpable. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. There was such a strange mix of old and new in there. The ancient bottles side by side with the reams of A4 paper, and she would have to go back tomorrow and give it a proper look. She had been so focused on getting food and getting home, that a lot of the details had passed her by. As she snuggled down deeper into her nest, listening to the hail beat down upon a roof she knew it couldn''t hit, she wondered. Why had she been singled out for this? She was just a runaway, one of the faceless many living on the streets. That she had managed to do better than most, holding onto routines and humanity, not falling in with the gangs or getting hooked on drugs, those were incidental things. She was still nobody. Just a cellar rat. A library rat. A drifter through forgotten spaces. Had she been forgotten, too? She lay there, in the gentle curve of the drum, and missed the home of her childhood. She missed the noises of the city, she missed the anonymity that came with being part of a crowd, and she missed her dad... Maybe if she''d stuck it out in the end, things would have turned out differently, but there was no going back now, even if the world hadn''t... She winced as the headache spiked through her, wresting the thoughts away. Instead, she pulled the blankets up over her head, thankful for their warmth, drifting ever closer towards true sleep. She liked the washing machine. It was a little like one of those beds with the curtains that she''d always wanted as a kid, but as great as it was, there was nothing else in the building to sustain her. There was no food, no tools, not even paper or any of the other stuff she had found today. There had been the one coat, and a few bottles of something she thought might be cleaning supplies, and that was it. Tomorrow, she would move her den to the old shop and explore from there. It was the sensible choice, as much as it hurt her romantic notions to leave the launderette behind. She would miss this bed. If she was lucky, it would have stopped snowing by then. She yawned. She was starting to hate the snow. She huddled deeper, the hail like white noise, hovering on the edge of sleep. She was a being of two worlds now. Her dad would have enjoyed this. He would have whittled himself a home in a tree and become the king of nowhere¡­ She could almost hear his voice in the hail, if she listened... Rat yawned again, and the day slipped away from her. Chapter Twelve The three of them stayed in the hotel that night, watching the snow come down and talking quietly between themselves. "I hope the chickens are alright." Rust said for the tenth time, and Shim leaned over and poked her. He had decided that he was going to do this every time she lamented over the chickens, but he was a bit worried that by the time morning came, he would be cold and she would be horribly bruised. It was eerily silent outside, and they were trying to fill the space with talk, with human chatter. Cities were not meant to be this quiet. They were meant to be places of hustle and bustle, of roaring and beeping, alive even into the deepest parts of the night. Instead, this strange, silent world felt more like a gravesite. "Is it our grave?" Quilt questioned, and the other two shrugged, still staring out at the drifting snow. "None of that." From Rust, "we''ve already agreed, we''re here and we''re alive. That the world is still waking up, and that we''re merely premature. Children born a bit too early. It will wake up, I''m sure of it. We just have to give it time." Neither of them said anything in response. This also was not a new conversation, and the silence weighed them down, like the pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Shim stared out at the road until his eyes stung with tiredness, trying to dredge up memories he simply didn''t have. At some point, they all drifted off to sleep, lured there by silent weather. - They awoke together as dawn broke, the bright light reflecting off the snow blinding them through the big glass windows. As they unwound themselves from their stolen blankets and pushed the stolen mattresses out of the way, they discussed what they would do next. "I need clothing." Quilt picked at her nightdress, and Shim felt a sudden urge to blush and look away, a new and strange feeling. "Do you have a sewing machine or something?" She indicated Rust. Rust shook her head, "My mother was into that kind of thing, but I never took to it, I''m not really the crafty type. There was a woman in the village who did that sort of thing, if I ever needed it." "Shame," Quilt shrugged, "me neither, but I was hoping. Wouldn''t even know how to thread the damn thing, if we did find one." Shim stared out over the pristine, untouched snow, and wondered if he should mention that he got top marks in his high school sewing class and that he had had a machine in the corner of his bedroom. He wondered if he should mention that he used to sew little pillows and dolls as gifts for friends of his mother. The light stung his eyes and he had to look away, blinking. It wasn''t worth it, and it wasn''t like they had a machine anyway. His bedroom was elsewhere too, if it even still existed. He missed his ma. What if he''d been stolen away from his world? What if she still existed out there somewhere, going about her normal life, but minus one son? Did she even remember him, if that was the case? Did she think he was dead? Was there another him out there, walking home each day through dark woods, staffing the tills alone at midnight in a dying grocery store? He realised he was staring at the snow again, and that his eyes hurt. - Rust looked over as Shim sniffed, rubbing at his eyes, and felt an emphatic pang in her stomach. Grief for those she barely remembered, and also not a small amount of hunger. That was getting stronger every day, as they slowly came back to life, and one couldn''t subsist on lemon BRICKs forever. Shim jerked as she laid a hand on his shoulder, before shaking himself out like a dog. "Everything ok?" he asked, blinking at her. "I was about to ask you the same," she said with what she hoped was a comforting smile. He looked away again, brushing down his front, and she spoke to fill the gap, "I think we''re ready to go." He nodded, glad of the subject change. "Yeah, we can always come back later for the extra blankets or whatever, we should get outta here." He shot a questioning gaze at Quilt. "Is it safe for you to be out there in the snow like that?" Rust spoke up first, as Quilt was busy wrapping herself up in a sort of bedsheet toga. "Ideally, we''d leave her here until we found some warmer clothing, but we don''t want to risk splitting up. What if this place is gone tomorrow?" This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. "Yeah, that''s sensible." Shim nodded, "I wouldn''t wanna be left behind neither. I''m pretty sure we walked down here twice yesterday and there was no hotel here either of those times, chances are it might stop existing once we''re out of sight." Quilt shuddered, and then glared outside. "If only it would stop. Bloody stuff. At least we can run for the cottage I guess?" Rust patted Shim on the shoulder again, and Quilt stepped up, wrapped in her improvised dress, giving the snow a baleful look. "Let''s hope it''s not too cold out there." - Luckily, despite the heavy snowfall, they weren''t blocked in, but once they started walking they discovered that the drifts were almost to their knees. There were more sheltered parts- the wind had blown steadily in one direction all night- but Quilt was shivering almost immediately. They offered to go back to the hotel, but she insisted they press on. Rust seemed to know the way back, so they let her lead. "I can hear the cockerel." Rust nodded in a seemingly random direction, "He''ll always lead me home. Plus, I can still see your building from here." The other two squinted, but the mixture of cold, snow, and sun-glare made them unwilling to argue. "Just-" Quilt''s teeth chattered, and she spoke rapidly, "Just, just get us home, ok?" She pulled the sheets more tightly around herself, "I just wanna be warm." Rust nodded and they trudged faster, letting her travel in their wake, leaving a deep trench in the snow behind them. Luckily, it didn''t seem to be building up any deeper, but that couldn''t be relied upon forever. - The breaking of the city in return for trees was a welcome relief, the branches whispering a promise of shelter from the incessant snow. Then their first step onto the path back to Rust''s house sent up a flurry of birds above, pelting them all with fresh, cold drifts. "This sucks, this sucks, this sucks," Quilt repeated, and the other two silently agreed, "this sucks, this sucks so much, this sucks, this..." She brushed the snow out of the back of her neck and shuddered as they hurried onwards. "I hope I have spare wood for the fire," Rust said breathlessly, as the cottage came into view, "Shim, you should grab one of the chickens, pick Gertrude, she''s the biggest, they should be in their coop." Shim nodded and headed towards the coop as the other two headed inside. He had no prior experience with chickens, that he could remember, but he was rapidly becoming familiar. Around them, in the trees, birds were stirring, and their noise was a welcome, blessed relief after the dreadful silence of the city. "I wonder if this is how people feel when they first go to the country," he mused to himself as he peered into the coop. "Everything so weirdly quiet." With one chicken under each arm and another balanced on his shoulder, he stomped back towards the house. "Probably," he told Sightmind, and she pecked at his ear. Trying to get most of the snow off his clothes and shoes before entering the kitchen, he was greeted with the sight of Rust and a half-naked Quilt, huddled around the warming oven. She nodded thanks as he passed Gertrude over, who seemed a bit worried about this whole turn of events, as a fat chicken dragged into close proximity with a warm oven should be. A brief scuffle of feathers, some more wood out of the cellar, and an hour later they were all sitting relieved in the humid kitchen, blanket wrapped, with clothes drying up near the ceiling. Rust had mentioned the parlour, wondering if it might be warmer, and realising she had never even checked it in this life, had insisted they take a look. A peek through the half-open door revealed a dim, cold room, filled with sheeted furniture. The stove in the corner was cold, and the windows were covered by thick curtains. That idea had been shelved almost as soon as it was born. As they sat, Shim stared up at his steaming uniform, a frown creasing his forehead. "You know, I don''t think my place even had a uniform." "How did people know you was staff, then?" Quilt questioned, and he shrugged. "I had a badge I guess? Maybe like a jacket, but nothin'' as fancy as that up there." He held his wrinkled feet up to the oven, slowly regaining feeling in them but wishing he had socks. "It wasn''t a great supermarket, and it was only me there most of the time, I liked doing the late shifts." He wiggled his toes. "I dunno, maybe I was happy sometimes. It wasn''t a bad job." Rust petted Samantha, the little red chicken burbling to herself as she dozed. "I think what we''re missing," she said suddenly, "is leaves. The hot water is meant to have leaves in it." The other two startled at her, unsure where this had come from. "Leaves?" said Quilt, struggling to catch up. "For your missing drink? That sounds mad." She nodded back, "Leaves, the more I say it, the more I''m sure of it." Quilt cast an eye towards the snow outside, and then back to Rust. "Do you know what kinda leaves?" Rust, so confident a moment before, deflated, "I- I don''t. Drink-leaves, leaves to make the drink." Quilt humphed. "Well, if it ever stops snowing, I guess we can go strip some of the trees. Aren''t some leaves poisonous though?" "Are you sure it wasn''t beans?" Shim interjected, struck by inspiration, "I feel like it was defintely beans." Rust squinted her eyes and Quilt frowned. "Wouldn''t that just make it be soup, as it were?" Quilt bit her lip in thought and Rust fed another piece of wood into the stove. "We could try making soup, then?" She suggested as she shut the door, "if we can find some beans, but we''re gonna be short for breakfast tomorrow, unless either of you have something hidden away. The chickens won''t lay for long in this weather." Shim stared out of the windows, at the buildup of snow, and sighed a long breath out through his nose. "Fuck it. Let''s go back to the big store. If there is something that could erase me, then I wanna know." For a moment there was only the burbling of the chicken and the crack of the fire, as the two women looked at him. "Are you sure?" Rust said finally. "We don''t have to. I''m fairly sure we can''t actually starve, not yet anyway." Shim shrugged, not making eye contact. "Yeah. I..." He took a deep breath, and the two of them gave him space. "Yeah, I''m sure. I need to know. I can''t have it hanging over me forever, the idea that I could just be erased at any moment." He bit his lip, "not again. It already happened once with... It already happened once, when you found me, and then again when I didn'' wake up here. I have to know if it''ll happen when you leave the shop." Quilt reached over and laid Gertrude on his lap, and he rolled his eyes at her. "Sure, thanks I guess. Maybe I can take a chicken with me for self defense." Chapter Thirteen - Shopping Gathering together in the kitchen the next morning, they found that the snow had waned a little, and after some preparation, they set out towards the Store. A small bell rang above them as the door slid open, and Rust looked up at it in confusion. "That wasn''t there before." "It''s big!" exclaimed Quilt, as she stomped in, dusting off the snow, "You never said it was this big! I would have insisted we come sooner!" She shot Shim a grin, and he stuck out a foot as if to trip her. Rust shrugged. "I hoped we could find somewhere else for food, but that''s by-the-by. We''re here now, and I think there was a clothing section off on the left side last time I was here." They had gone through her stores at home, but the cupboards had been strangely empty, and what little was left was far too large for Quilt. The two women nodded to each other and then set off with gusto, leaving Shim alone by the entrance. "Hope they didn''t forget me proper already," he murmured to himself, walking towards the checkout desk. He ran a hand over the cheap wood, before sticking his head under the desk. It was empty, with only a couple of shelves and space for his legs, not even any strange chocolate bars. "It''s like, going back to where I was born or something. Weird." He shuddered and pulled himself back, staring around the shop. The aisles stretched off into the distance, labelled as if by a lunatic. Even the numbers were all mixed up. With a huff, he grabbed a strange trolley, which seemed to be a sort of pushchair for baskets, and headed off towards the first aisle, helpfully labelled ''¨ª6 - FRIGHT AND TABLES.'' - It did not contain, as he had hoped, Fruit and Vegetables, but there were a lot of large ceramic pumpkins, garden ornaments and, unexpectedly, tables. End tables, coffee tables, kitchen and dining, everything you could ask for in flat surfaces. One or two of them looked antique, but most looked like they had come straight out of a factory, and he ran a hand over each as he walked along, enjoying their varying textures. He paused at one, which had deep, pockmarked cup rings all over it, and wondered about the origins of all this stuff. As he traced the scars with his finger, he thought about the weather, and how everything was going to shake out. There was something about snow which inspired melancholy, he felt. The other two seemed invigorated by it, the old woman Rust and the younger one Quilt both reacting like children. They had gone out the back last night and built a snow chicken, for pities sake! You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Ok, yes he had joined in, but only because they were already out there, mocking him for staying indoors. He liked to think he was far too old for that sort of thing, but Rust was rapidly proving him wrong. Instead, he always felt sad when it snowed, like the dampening of sound also dampened his emotions, blanketing him in white haze. He had never understood the excitement that the other kids felt at those first drifting flakes of ice. He had always just felt cold, and a little sad. Shim turned into the next aisle, this one labelled ''24 - SHEETS''. As he gazed upon the rows and rows of sweets, he smiled. Now this was more like it! - Some time and a lot of sugar later, he found the two women laying out outfits in the clothing section. Rust hadn''t changed, apart from acquiring a more rugged pair of boots, but Quilt was now wearing a much more sensible pair of jeans and a fancy, ruffled shirt. It suited her, he thought, much more than the salmon pink nightdress. "How''re you two doing over here?" he brandished his haul and the two came over to inspect, Quilt much more enthusiastic than Rust, whom he suspected might have been a health nut in her previous life. "Pretty good!" Quilt twisted open one of the glass jars, sniffing the contents. "Oo, ginger candies I think? Smells spicy." Shim gave the jar a sniff, before pulling out one of the lozenges, popping it into his mouth. He grimaced, before perking up. "Yep, not bad though!" Rust rummaged through the basket, rejecting an offered ginger sweet and instead settling on some kind of gumdrops. "I remember these from when I was a kid," she said, selecting one. She popped it into her mouth, and then puckered up her face, "I don''t remember them tasting quite so much like toilet cleaner though." She spat it out, reaching back into the basket for something else. "Then again, now that I think about it, they might have always tasted like that. The things you eat as a kid..." "We found clothes," Quilt said, cutting her off and doing a little spin. "Not perfect, but good enough to get home in." She gestured downwards, "and there''s so many shoes! Boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes." Shim looked around, taking in the area. There were indeed boxes and boxes of shoes, crates and crates, piles and piles and piles of them. All mixed up into a huge, chaotic jumble. Upon closer inspection, some of the shoes were tied together at the laces, but they didn''t match even then. It must have taken the two of them ages to find a pair, never mind ones that fitted. "Man," he gazed out over the chaos, "I had a friend who worked in a shop like this, who had to clean up the shoe section. She''d have had a fit if she saw this mess." He stopped. He didn''t know where that had come from, examining the memory, or the lack of one. He didn''t remember having any friends, didn''t remember who she might have been or even where she would have worked. "I think my mouth said that without any input from my brain." Quilt stared at him, and then shrugged, smiling, "proves you''re real then, ain''t it. My mouth does that shit all the time. But hey, that means whatever you''ve lost, it''s still in there somewhere." He attempted to smile at her, and took another ginger candy. - Shim thought about that as they wandered around the shop together, sniffing packages and loading the ones which looked most like edible food into the basket. He had made it this far without disappearing, but the true test would be when they went to leave, when they passed where he had begun to exist. He held his breath as they approached, and then passed, the checkout, not looking at it, not even daring to look. He kept his breath held until all three of them were outside, only releasing it as the doors fell shut behind them, the jingling of the bell his signal that he was ok, panting with the effort. Rust laid a hand on his shoulder, the other still holding her basket of goods, and Quilt looked at him with sympathy. "You still with us, Shim?" He nodded, and adjusting his burden in his arms, walked away from the building. "I think so." Chapter Fourteen As Rat explored the dead city further, the snow just kept coming down. She had found one of the edges of the city, where the buildings should have continued instead changing into an ancient-looking forest. The transition was jarring, in that there was no real transition, one moment there was city, the next, woodland. She hadn''t gone into the forest, it looked kinda scary, and there wasn''t anything in there which interested her. Rats were city creatures, she thought, and outside of that context, they were prey. She didn''t want to be prey. Further exploration hadn''t revealed any signs of life, but she had moved her nest to the little shop, spreading the sheets and blankets out to air in what she was thinking of as ''the back room''. It wasn''t a great descriptor. The door behind the desk, which under normal circumstances would lead to either a backyard or to where the owner lived, had instead opened up into the surrounding building. It was a huge, empty, and intimidating space where her every step echoed for minutes. There was a strange sort of light in there, filtering down from the hundreds of windows, and although she was a bit wary of the structural integrity of the whole thing, she had decided to embrace the area as her own. It was nothing more than a big space, and she refused to be afraid of it. When she had first run away, catching the train to the city with nothing in her pocket other than some notes stolen from the jar her mother didn''t think she knew about, that had been scary. That first night sleeping in a doorway, clutching her rucksack to her chest in case somebody tried to take it from her in her sleep, that had been terrifying. The weeks afterwards, where she realised that she wasn''t going to get robbed, that she was almost invisible, that she was now a non-person devoid of context, those had been exhausting. Still, it had been an important life lesson, she thought as she danced through the space. It turns out that most people, if they don''t have reason to interact with you, if they don''t have reason to speak to you, well, you cease to exist for them. It was a strange feeling, realising that. On the one hand, it was freeing, it didn''t matter where she was or what she wore, she may as well have been wearing a cloak of invisibility. On the other, it was dehumanising to the extreme. When even the people in shops don''t bother to speak to you¡­ As she trudged back from the woods and along unmarked, snow-smoothed roads, she wondered if she still knew how to speak, if she would be the first to utter words in this new world, or if it would break whatever fragile spell was holding her here. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. She stared up at the dark grey pillars, the snow falling softly around her, and wondered what she would do if it did break. Would she end up back home, with all the memories of this strange place? If she made it back, would it change her course, force her to re-evaluate, to return home? She grimaced. "Fuck that." A pause, and a sigh. "Whelp, guess I''m just stuck here then." She stared at her footprints in the snow, walking backwards. "I could write a message in the snow, maybe somebody would see it, if there is anyone here. Maybe it''s just me¡­ No, that''s dumb, if there was anyone here I woulda seen their footprints." It was like a floodgate had opened in her mind, a door she hadn''t even known was there was now unlocked. "Okay," she grimaced, "Dumb idea. I''m getting cold, and I''m hungry, so I''ll head through grey building number one over there and I think that should lead me back to the shop." She started the trot towards the building, watching her feet as they sank beneath the snow with each step. Luckily the door was open, as were most of them, and she squinted as her eyes were forced to adjust, having gotten used to the snow glare outside. It was hollow, like most of the others, and a brief look up sent her stumbling from vertigo, before she found her feet again. "How do these things even stay up," she grumbled as she set off across the floor. Most of the others she''d been into had what appeared to be poured concrete floors, but this one had wooden planks, and the thumps of her footsteps echoed off into the void. "And who thought this was a sensible design!" As she travelled, she realised that the "planks" making up the floor stretched the full length of the building, and she closed her eyes against the headache that realisation induced. Although why that should be a headache-thought, she had no idea. Best not to think about it. "What do I have to do," she addressed the air, waiting as her voice echoed back at her, "is to get you to magic me up some people." She thought about this as she crossed the space, "people, people, people¡­" bouncing back at her, over and over. "Not bad people though, friendly people. Like my dad was. Not a lost person, not a librarian, but like, a grandma, or a dad or someone. Maybe a big brother?" She stood in the centre of the space and stared up, at the ceiling a hundred stories up. "I don''t need much. I won''t ask for nowt more. I never needed much. Food, shelter, somebody to talk to. You give me the first couple already, just a friend would be nice." ''Nice, nice, nice¡­'' echoed back her voice, and she imagined she could see the sound bouncing around the space, a plea to a deaf god. She stretched her arms up, like the people in the local park used to do each day, greeting the sun, calling out to something bigger than herself. "You must''ve put me here for a reason," the longer she spoke, the more the echoes mangled her words into porridge, a stodgy mix of sounds, all combing together until meaning was taken from them, a plea meant only for those above. "Well I dunno what it is, but I can''t do nowt if I freeze to death here, or starve. I''m gunna run out of pop eventually, the taps don''t work, and the tins were a good idea, but the beans in there were dry and I dunno how to cook them, even if I had the equipment like." She kept speaking, enjoying the soup, the act of filling the space with bouncing sound a joy in itself. "I''ll go home now, back to the shop, and I''ll try the other tins and see what''s in them, but I''d like people, and power. I''d like running water and clean bedding and food I can eat and a place to sit and read. I want books, and I wanna be warm. "I want to be safe." She stood there, arms outstretched, until even the last echos were gone, and the hall was silent once again. A grave, but for what she couldn''t have said. And then she lowered her arms and headed back to her store. Maybe tomorrow she could try melting snow for water, that was a thing people did in survival situations, right? Chapter Fifteen - Statues The next couple of weeks were much of the same. Rat gradually increased her territory, mapping out the area and hating the neverending snow. It hadn''t hailed again, and after the first week, the blizzards and flurries had waned into an endless, slow drift. That wouldn''t have been so bad if it had followed its previous patterns, but the snow seemed to have remembered both that it was meant to be cold, and that it should pile up. Trips out involved running from building to building, spending as little time on the roads as possible. In practice, this meant avoiding the buildings where it snowed inside, those with locked doors, or the ones which opened onto an endless void, stretching downwards into nauseating emptiness. She had only found two of those, but she always checked before going into a new building now. She did not want to find out what would happen if she fell. Part of her wondered if she would wake up the next day, huddled in her blankets and remembering nothing of the day before, but that was a best-case scenario. Chances were she would fall forever, stuck in some sort of endless purgatory. Fantasy stories told her that she would float to the bottom, finding ground or water, discovering a civilisation that had never seen light. She would teach them the ways of the Overworld, as she did her best to make her way back. She thought the last one was the least likely, but she kept it in mind anyway, even as she was careful to make sure it never came to pass. - "The shop is great," she spoke to her silent god, as had become habit by this point, "and I liked the little garden you made the other day, that was cute, although kinda weird in this weather, but I need more food." She pushed her way across a road. The snow was up to her waist, but she had passed by here this morning and the trench hadn''t yet filled back in. "I liked the statues -" she panted as she pushed her way into the building, only taking a moment to check the floor was there. This was a well-trodden route by now, "- in the garden. They were very pretty, but they looked sad, there alone in the snow." She shook herself off, shivering and looking forward to being home. Only two more crossings to go. "But I need a bakery, that''s what I''ve decided." She trotted through the vast empty building, not even looking up. "A bakery with a nice big oven, so I can cook food, and so I can be warm. The shop is great, I mean it and I don''t want you to be offended or nothin, but it''s hard to stay warm there, and I''m almost out of beans. The ones I know how to eat, anyway." Another crossing, and she was into a building she had nicknamed Snows-Through, because unlike the others in this area, the windows were devoid of glass. The incoming wind blew the snow around and around until it piled up into massive walls of white. She imagined that if she saw it from above, the drifts would spell out some message, only visible on the macro scale. But she was just a little rat, that was all beyond her. Snows-Through wasn''t much warmer than the outside, but it was easier to traverse and a much more direct route home than going around. She swore sometimes that there was some sort of non-euclidian physics going on with the wideness of the towers. "Or a little cottage, like in a fantasy story," she continued, "with meter thick walls and a big oven in the kitchen. That would be good too." She hadn''t had much luck scavenging today and was returning empty-handed. The city shifted around and changed day by day, but pickings were slim when most of the buildings only seemed to half exist, and she''d seen no signs of other people, despite keeping a careful eye out. "We went on holiday to a cottage like that once, when I was little." She reached the other side of the massive room, preparing herself to head back outside, eyeing up what remained of her morning path. "I don''t remember much ''bout it, except for a lot of sheep and the big thick wall, except, I could sit on the window sill and that was all just made of wall." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. She huffed, crossing the road and watching her breath freeze in the air, and then she was home, slipping through the double doors and into her very own building. In the distance, lit only dimly in the late-afternoon light, she could see the back of her shop, a small rectangular structure growing off the far wall like a growth. It was like a museum exhibit or an office in a warehouse. From out here, it appeared to have a first floor, but as of yet, she hadn''t found any way to get into it, if there even was anything to get into. There were certainly no windows or stairs up there, that she had found anyway. "But yeah, a bakery, with lots of flour, and a big oven, and matches so I can work it, and wood, so I can light it, and a book, so I can work out how the fuck to make bread." Her voice echoed in the space, combining with the booms of her footsteps. "Maybe some chickens? I don''t really know how to look after ''em, but eggs would be cool, and I know how to make pancakes. I used to make pancakes sometimes with my dad, on a Sunday before we went to church, you weren''t meant to eat before you went, but we never cared, we..." She enjoyed the way her voice lost itself, echoing away into obscurity, but she was, she decided, going a little mad. - The next day, she decided to revisit the garden. There was a no-floor in the way, so she had to spend more time on the roads than she would like, and she had dressed up warm to compensate. She had found a big straw hat, which helped keep the worst of the snow out of the back of her neck, and she was wearing multiple layers of clothing and big rubber boots, which creaked and groaned as she walked. They were far too large for her, but she had packed them with rags and they did the job well enough. She had found three clothing shops in that first week of snow, and she wasn''t sure if it was the god who had crafted this place looking down on her in sympathy, mockery, or confusion. It was hard to tell, sometimes. She just hoped that they were looking down, it was getting to be awfully lonely otherwise. The first shop she had found had specialised in summer dresses for, she assumed, people who were eight foot tall and built like a barn. She had felt like a mouse amongst giants, standing there and staring up at the faceless mannequins. Some of them had too many arms, or their heads were the wrong shape, and there was something decidedly alien about the whole place. She had checked it out, determined that there was nothing of worth for her in there, and left as soon as she got a chance. The second had sold clothes for children, too small even for her malnourished frame. The whole shop appeared to have been taken wholesale from elsewhere, and she had half expected to find a staff member waiting to escort her out. Young mothers with exhausted faces and arms full of newborn clothing. The third contained bins and bins of mixed everything. None of it had been in any sort of sensible order, and it was a bit like what she imagined the back of an airport might look like after the detonation of a suitcase bomb. Still, she had managed to find some useful stuff, the boots being the main thing, but it had taken her most of two days to sort through it. When she returned on the third, the whole shop was gone, replaced with faceless grey concrete. She had laid a hand on the building in thanks, pulled her boots up, and carried on exploring. She had gone back to check the other two shops, though. The one with the giants remained, but the baby one had been replaced with a small stone garden. It was a strange space. Where the doors to the building should have been instead there was a deep hollow, like somebody had gone at it with a hammer and chisel. Carving out space and benches and statues out of solid stone. It wasn''t concrete, it was something else, but the names of stone eluded her. When she looked up at the building, the windows were blank, and she thought it might be solid all the way through. Wild, but why not. She sat now on one of the benches and stared up at the carvings. This one was a statue naked woman, holding a jug and reaching out as if to pour. She was half melded into the stone of the walls, but in a way which didn''t look quite right. Closer inspection had revealed channels for water, and Rat wondered where she had been stolen from, what fountain was now missing its maiden. "Is this you?" She questioned the statue, kicking her legs back and forth, "is it you, you that''s building this world, do I look upon the face of a god?" She paused, tilting her head, but no reply was forthcoming from the grey stone. "Or are you just plucked from somewhere, from another world? From somewhere in this one? From my world, but after..." The area was sheltered, but snow still blew in on the breeze, settling thinly on the gravel. Rat broke off her gaze and instead stared down at where her footprints had disturbed the thin layer of snow. She spoke quietly, her breath fogging in the air, and her stomach clenching around itself. "I hope you were stolen. I hope isn''t the after. That I''m dreamin'', that this is all just the brain tumour talking and at some point a doctor is gonna find me walking the streets and fix me. I''ll go home and it''ll be me and my dad and we''ll make pancakes, or stupid things out of paper, we''ll camp..." She realised she was panting for breath, hands clutching at the bench. Ahead of her, the statue stood unchanged, the grey blank face as lost as she was. "I just wanna go home." Chapter Sixteen It was a two-hour trek to the edge of the city, where the buildings merged into woodland. Well, it wasn''t so much a merge as it was a sudden break. It was as if the forest had existed before, and somebody had simply dumped a piece of city on top of it. There were even splintered branches and split trunks, where they should have overlapped the road. The architecture of the city confused her. It was difficult to navigate without landmarks, all straight lines and huge, wide roads, nothing like the crochet pattern of streets she was used to. There were no quiet alleyways to hide in, no little tunnels between buildings, not even any elevation changes, which was the strangest thing of all. Still, she had spent the morning trekking out here, so she would make the most of it. She planned to follow the edge of the woods until it got dark, and then to camp out in the city until morning. She doubted she would find much, but it was as good a plan as any. Despite all her searching, no bakery had been forthcoming as of yet, and the clothing stores had never returned. She suspected something was going on in the upper stories of some of the locked towers, but she had found no ways in yet She whistled as she went, enjoying the walk, as hard work as it was. Reaching the forest instantly made her feel better, greeting her with the sounds of birdsong and the sight of small, scurrying animals. It was like a great weight had lifted off her, as she realised she wasn''t alone in this world. Squirrels, small birds, rabbits, a glimpse of something with bright red feathers once. She wondered if she was the first human to ever set eyes on those creatures, the first human to ever walk this road. The snow was littered with tracks, and the trees dripped melting snow. "Did you muck the weather up too?" She asked the air, "just made it snow in the city, and the forest just has normal weather?" She walked along under the treeline, glad of her straw hat. "That''s gonna kill off all your trees, ecosystems are fragile like, they don''t do well with sudden breaks like that! "Ack!" There was a flutter of wings up above her, and a sudden drift of snow fell from above, covering her and somehow managing to get down the back of her shirt. "Okay okay, I get the message!" she yelled at the air, causing more birds to startle and several previously-hidden rabbits to make a break for it. Stolen novel; please report. She pouted for a moment as she walked, brushing the snow out of her clothes and grumbling about the cold, but it didn''t take long for her to perk back up. "Maybe I should head out, into the woods or somethin'', maybe there''s somewhere else out there that ain''t quite as broken. Maybe I''ll the village that this place is a backdrop for. "Seems kinda dangerous though, what if you''ve put wolves out there or somethin'', or dragons. I don''t wanna get eaten by either o'' those." The morning sun was cheerful, and although there was still snow on the ground (and down her back) it wasn''t too cold, and she swung her arms as she walked. "Man, I should stop saying man, I don''t know you''re a man, in any sense of the word, but man, you shoulda met my dad. He was the best." She kept talking, enjoying the sounds of life it inspired in the forest around her. "We used to go camping together sometimes, out in the woods behind our building. They weren''t real woods, o'' course, but if we walked off the path enough we could hide from all the old biddies and the dog walkers and pretend we were in the wilds." Her breath fogged in the air, and she stopped for a moment, breathing differently and trying to make the biggest clouds she could, holding the air in her lungs and letting it out slowly. Then, with a shrug, she carried on her hike. "We had a little tent and a camping stove, and we''d take flasks with us, and a picnic, it was fun. My ma never liked it though, said it was stupid and dangerous." She glanced up at the huge grey towers, looking for any changes, but they were all still identical. She would go over in a minute and check in on a couple, to see if they had void floors or not. "Then he got sick, and there was nothing they could do." - She walked for a long way in silence after that, feeling like she was walking on a treadmill. The endless trees, and the identical buildings, like the background in an old cartoon. "He wasn''t meant to get sick." the words came out without her bidding, "he was supposed to be big and strong and¡­" She kept walking, listening to the crunch of the snow beneath her feet and the shrieking of the birds, not seeing her path, but not needing to. It was all the same, anyway. She was dead, she was trapped in hell. She was a ghost, still in the real world but unable to perceive it. Maybe somebody had found her cellar and shanked her for her blankets. God knows, she hissed to herself, she didn''t have anything else worth stealing. She spent any money she got as soon as it came in, on food, on fucking laundry, and when she wasn''t begging, she was just trying to survive the days, letting the time pass by. She kept walking as the headache hit her, sharp and piercing, right above the eyes. But she wasn''t going to stop thinking, what good would that do? She was already dead. The world had ended. Her dad was dead. Her breath hitched in her throat, as she let out a sob, unsure which pain was worse, the headache or the grief. The world had ended, and there was no going home for her. She remembered now. Her eyes were filled with tears as she moved, the headache waning, but still grating. A dull knife through her brain, dulling ever more every moment until she would have sworn somebody was trying to break through her skull with a wood saw. She kept walking though, forcing her way through the pain, out of spite, out of grief. And that''s why it was a little embarrassing when she tripped over the cat. Chapter Seventeen - The Three Bears The cat was a big orange thing, almost like a miniature tiger. It was sleek and well-fed, but had a harried look in its eyes. It crouched low to the ground, looking almost as confused as she did, as they both tried to work out what had happened. "You were hunting?" she whispered, not trusting her voice to go any louder just yet, and then she reached out a hand to the cat. "c''mere, I won''t hurt you?" The cat hesitated for a moment, and then with a flash of its tail, it was gone. Rat watched it go, grief and disappointment warring in her heart. "Just wanted a friend," she muttered, drawing back her hand and clambering to her feet. She sighed and instead tried to find what it had been hunting. Maybe she could tame a wild bird or something, if she was here long enough. Teach it to parrot back words to her. Pretend it was another person. The tracks were easy enough to follow, hurried bird prints in the snow, little scuffs where it had brushed its wings against the snow. They headed forward for ten paces or so, before turning suddenly into the forest, and with a shrug, she started to follow them. Already they were starting to fill in, so if she wanted to find the prey she would have to be quick. She didn''t know why she cared. It wasn''t like she was hunting it herself, she wasn''t that desperate for food yet. And chances were, whatever it was would be long gone by now, but at least it was something different, something, anything to break up the endless monotony of the forest. Still, the thought that there were other living creatures out there was a lightness in her stomach, the joy of finding out she wasn''t alone only slightly tempered by the rush of bitter anger. - "Hello, little bird?" she called as she walked. She was following what appeared to be a well-worn path, now. There was less snow here, and although she had lost the tracks, she felt she was going the right way. "Was it you earlier, with the red feathers? I just wnna be friends!" She sighed as she kept walking. She had lost her quarry, but the path was both interesting and the first entrance she''d seen into the forest. Most of it was so dense with undergrowth that she couldn''t have gotten more than a few meters in if she''d tried, which she hadn''t. A minute more, and then the forest opened up ahead of her. - This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it There was no wall surrounding the cottage, but there was a demarcation line around it and something that might have been a garden, in better weather, with raised beds and well-established plants. Behind the cottage was a single oak tree, and she could see the bird''s footprints in the light dusting of snow, disappearing around the corner. "Is this for me?" She stepped forward, before hesitating. There was a thin whisp of smoke coming from the chimney, but other than that, all was quiet and still, with no signs of life. Human life, anyway, she could hear the chickens now, as she got closer. Chicken were a domesticated species, which meant somebody was feeding them, right? She tried to think if she had ever heard of wild chickens, but she was pretty sure that wasn''t a thing. But then, what were the animals in the forest eating, apart from the orange cat? Were they all slowly starving to death, as snow blanketed the land, as whatever callous god had placed them here, into her own personal purgatory, left them to die? Or did they lack hunger, put here only as a backdrop and a soundboard? She didn''t like the thought of either of those options, and made a note to talk to god about it later. "I guess I''ll just let myself in, huh?" She hesitantly tried the door, finding it unlocked. Inside was a large kitchen, with a big table in the centre and a six-ringed stove off against one wall. There was washing hanging from a sort of rack on the ceiling, and several pairs of boots by the door. The whole place had a cosy, lived-in feeling, and it was warmer than anywhere else she had been in a long time. Even in the before, she hadn''t been anywhere this warm, and she swore she could see her clothes start to steam as she pulled the door shut behind her. She glanced at the walls as she entered and spoke quietly to the house. "Well they''re not a meter thick, but it''ll do." She peeled off her coat and laid over the back of one of the chairs, and some fiddling later, she had worked out how to add more wood to the stove. "My gran used to have one of these." she fed in another piece of kindling, "she lived in the middle of bloody nowhere and had more money than sense. Used to get a new kitchen every few years, but this thing was too big and heavy and old to move. I don''t think she used it very often." She situated her backpack near the door, in case she had to make a quick getaway, and started raiding the cupboards. "Should I be worried that somebody''s gonna come home, that I''m in the giants kitchen?" she asked, as she started on the ones under the counter. "If I find a giant harp in one of these cupboards then I''m outta here. You''ve already given me enough dried beans for a lifetime, I don''t need no magic ones." She struck gold, or rather, food, in one of the high-up cupboards. It was almost like it had been purposefully placed out of her reach, and she had to stand on a chair to access it. But in there, were paper packets of crisps, pasta, oats, more beans, and a frankly ridiculous amount of sweets. She sat down on the floor in front of the stove, a huge jar of sweets between her knees, and started working her way towards a diabetic coma. - She spent a couple of hours in the cottage, enjoying the warmth of the stove and the jars of sweets, but she couldn''t stay. The whole place felt strangely lived in, from clothes hanging off the airer to the half-made beds upstairs. As much as she longed for company, she knew what people were like. She hadn''t had that many bad experiences, in her few years of living on the streets, but she had had enough. Plus, who knew what weird, horror movie monsters might own this house? She didn''t want to be eaten by the three bears. So, around midday, she tidied up the cupboard, put the chairs back, banked the stove, and left. Chapter Eighteen The last few weeks had been interesting, Rust thought to herself as she scattered oats to the chickens. A part of her mind still felt dazed and battered, but that feeling was fading a little each day, as she got used to existing again. Taking some oats in hand, she crouched down and let Jenny and Jeremy take them from her. They threatened to bruise her palm as they did so, but she was long used to it by now. "Good girls," she cooed at them, standing up and scattering the last of the food, "you know what''s up." Back in the kitchen, Quilt was griping at Shim over their missing sweets. They had found the jar empty and pushed to the back of the cupboard a couple of days before, and none had done it. "Maybe there''s fey here," Quilt was saying, "Sneak in the middle of the night and steal things, make shoes, eat all your sweets." "So we what, put milk outside for them at night, leave out our half-finished shoes?" Shim offered in return, face scrunched up in thought. "Fey. They''re the ones that sneak into your fields and eat your lettuces too, right?" Quilt stared blankly at him, her frown getting deeper and deeper as she stared at him. "Those are rabbits. You are thinking of rabbits." "No, rabbits don''t wear clothes, I''m pretty sure¡­" He trailed off as Rust made her way in, still brushing the last of the dust off her front. "You are thinking of rabbits," she headed towards the stove, where there was water warming, "I used to read those books to my kids, when they were young." Shim grunted, outnumbered, "I suppose? Maybe it was rabbits that ate our sweets?" Quilt leaned over and punched him, and he laughed. "Hey, I thought we had an amnesty on violence!" He rubbed his arm, still laughing, before looking over at Rust. "Are we looking for a library again today? We seem fine for food, we''re good for shelter, but I feel like Quilt is going stir crazy over here." Quilt nodded rapidly, and Rust shrugged, "Fine by me, we can always pick up some more food and wood on the way home, if we do need it." She eyed the empty sweet jar, "we can restock that, too." - "My grandkids would always clear me out of sweets whenever they visited," Rust mused as they walked, "I learnt to hide them in strange places, it was a bit like a scavenger hunt." She smiled to herself, "I once hid a few chocolate bars in the roof of the chicken coop and the kids didn''t find them, and I forgot they were there until they melted in the summer, I thought one of the birds was dying! Just couldn''t work out what was wrong." "Thought they were laying chocolate eggs?" Shim grinned, and she laughed. "Something like that!" - "We checked three blocks over yesterday," Quilt was holding their map, drawn in pen on the back of a chocolate wrapper, "so if we go four from here, we should be able to see a good portion of the road before we have to turn around." "And the snow is waning, finally," said Rust. She was right, what had come up to their knees a week before was now barely past their ankles, and there was the sound of dripping water everywhere. "What do you think the library''ll contain, if we find it?" Shim had his hands in his pockets, "I haven''t even seen magazines like, and technology here seems strange. What if it''s all like, medieval manuscripts and scrolls and shit?" Rust huffed at him, "nothing we''ve seen is that backwards, you''re just young. When I was a kid-" "Oh here we go again." Quilt stuck her fingers theatrically in her ears, and Rust glared at her. "Don''t you start! You''re almost as old as I am!" "I cannot hear you, old woman, go back to musing about the past!" Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. "Did you have a dinosaur as a pet when you were a kid, or had they not domesticated those yet?" Shim butted in, and narrowly dodged a badly thrown punch from Rust. "I''ll have you know I have five dinosaurs back home, and if I let them they would quite happily help me hide your body!" He snorted, "From what authorities?" She rolled her eyes at him, and they carried on walking. Soon whatever bizarre weather-rules this place was operating under would catch up with the thaw, and the lightly drifting flakes would turn into sleet and rain, but that hadn''t happened yet and the three of them were grateful for it. "There should be flooding." Quilt complained, kicking a chunk of snow out of her way, "I haven''t even seen any sewer grates, where''s all the water going." "Maybe there''s cracks in the pavement, that lead into nothing?" Shim suggested, "We''ve seen buildings with no floors, maybe the water just flows into there. Maybe it just ceases to exist? We are working on some weird video-game rules here." "I hope this isn''t a video game, my grandkids used to bring their gameboys with them and I never understood it." She sighed, "Except the one with the stealing and running into people, I enjoyed that one. They used to put it on the tv every¡­" Rust trailed off, staring up at the sky, and the other two watched her out of their peripheral vision, continuing to walk. Their memories weren''t really coming back, but what little they did know was starting to solidify. Ten minutes of walking later, Shim stopped, biting his lip. "I''m gonna regret asking this. But what''s a gameboy? I know the term, and it''s something I knew, but it''s gone from me." Rust shrugged, continuing ahead and leaving him behind. "What''s a video game? You started it." "Okay," he skipped forward to catch up with her, "you broke down at the end, so we''ll skip that, but you said¡­" Quilt stayed silent, letting them talk, watching out for wild libraries. She didn''t know what those things were either, and she was painfully aware of the gaps in her memories. Sometimes, she thought she had even less than Shim. He had started with nothing, but he was doing his best to compensate for it. What did she have? Some sort of care-worker degree and a love of books which no longer seemed to exist. She sighed as she looked around. There were no footprints or signs of passage in the snow, apart from a few animal tracks. The creatures of the forest were moving further into the city each day, despite the fact there couldn''t be anything there for them to eat. She was a bit worried that one day they would find rats or mice infesting the Store, and then what, where would they get food from? But the reality was, right now, food still wasn''t all that important. Sure they got hungry, but if they didn''t eat then they didn''t get hungrier, and if they didn''t drink then their thirst wouldn''t worsen. It was an annoyance, more than anything. But eventually, that would change, she was sure of it, as more of the world settled towards normalcy. Already the void in the distance was receding, being replaced with a long, flower-filled meadow, bordered by mountains. They had gone back to her old apartment building and looked out from the roof to check. She had mixed feelings about that place. It was where she had been happy for so, so long, but it had also become a prison, a Sisyphean limbo. If she never had to go there again, never had to eat another pancake, it wouldn''t bother her. She made note of one of the buildings up ahead. It wasn''t much different to the others, but here even a small change indicated something. "Ahead." The other two looked at her as she interrupted their discussion, and then ahead, trying to work out what she''d seen. "Oh!" Shim saw it first, "the windows are all the wrong way up." Quilt hesitated, and then looked closer, "ah, hey you''re right. I thought they were just off somehow." She tilted her head ninety degrees, "huh, we should look inside." The other two agreed, and they made their way over to it. - It wasn''t a building without a floor, but it also wasn''t a library, which was disappointing. Instead, the building defied reason. The internal structures were all made out of beer bottles, melted into differing forms. There were bottle walls, which wasn''t that unusual, but also bottle seats, tables, sculptures and even facsimiles of machines. It was like an art gallery, dedicated to one particularly alcoholic artist. Rust licked her lips, staring around, "I don''t recognise any of the brands, but maybe if we look there''ll be a storeroom, and some of these bottles will be full? That would be nice." Shim agreed, but Quilt was more reluctant. She wanted to find the library, not be distracted by this modern-art nonsense. They could see that there was more than one floor, and it would be just their luck if it went up all the way to the top. She liked reading, but she did not enjoy museums, especially not this kind. At least with the regular sort of museum you could admire all the stuff dead people had made, pretty paintings, and stone carvings. This was just¡­ Beer bottles. Capitalism calling itself art. "Did a student design this?" she asked, and the other two startled as she spoke, and then looked around again. "I wouldn''t know?" Rust offered. "I''m only sixteen, I haven''t gotten into any of that yet." Shim shrugged, and Quilt rolled her eyes at the both of them. "You''re both so sheltered. Come, we''ll go look at the first floor, hope it''s more interesting, and then we can go somewhere else." There were nods, and they headed off towards a great glass staircase they''d seen on the way in. - The first floor was dedicated to chocolate wrappers. Paper and foil twisted into shapes, used as wallpaper, used as a floor covering, and unused and uncut blocks of paper, stacked together to make display stands and surfaces and stairs. The third was biscuit tins, half of them battered and worn from age, the others looking as shiny and new as the day they were made. Some of the battered ones even had writing on, ''screws'', ''blades'', that kind of thing. They tried to get a few open, the ones that weren''t beaten flat or warped beyond use, but they had, upon closer inspection, all been tack-welded shut. None of the brands were recognisable, even though the tins were definitely stolen from somewhere, but that was just another oddity of the world they were living in now. They had a brief look at the fourth floor, but to their combined relief it appeared unfinished. Nothing up there except bare concrete and empty space, stretching up towards the roof, far far above. The three of them retreated back to the entrance, talking idly and pointing out the weirder sculptures to each other. Time was getting on, and they still hadn''t found their library. Chapter Nineteen - Woods Rust considered her life, as they walked together through desolate streets. She hadn''t also been this isolated. Her cottage was out of the way on the edge of the village, sure, but at one time in her life, she had only returned there to eat and sleep. There was the gardening club, of which she was the chairperson and the knitting circle, and she had helped clean the church when she wasn''t busy. She had given out the leaflets and gone out to visit the parishioners who could no longer make it there themselves. She had cooked for the local school, for a time, and had generally kept busy. Then there had been that drama with the gardening club and she had lost her position as head, and then her knees had gotten bad, her bike had needed repairing, and it all sort of crumbled around her. Now she was one of the parishioners that the younger people came out to visit. The children she had cooked for had all left for the big city, and more than one of her children had escaped overseas. Still, they did visit sometimes, and they did think of her. The chickens had been a gift from them, years earlier. She hadn''t wanted the creatures, but the whole lot of them had gotten together and decided on it, whether she wanted it or not. "You''ll at least always have some food in, mum, you just gotta clean them out now and again. You don''t even have to get a fridge, we know how you are. You can just keep the eggs on the counter." "You can bake cakes using the eggs!" the grandchildren had thrown in, and she had rolled her eyes and let them set up the coop in the garden. It was, now that she thought about it, the last time she''d seen them all together. That night she had read the stack of books they''d left behind, sorted out the food-safe pens and egg cartons and boxes and leaflets and god knows what else, and despaired at the lot of them. The next morning she had released the birds and collected her first egg, terrified that she might get bitten, or that they''d resent her for her theft. She had soon learnt that they had no care for their eggs at all, leaving them in strange places or breaking them in their attempts to muscle each other out of the nests, and gradually her fear had waned, until she was almost fond of them. Not that she would admit ever admit to her children. They were a burden, riddled with lice, either not laying enough or laying too much, eating her out of house and home! She had gone through a few different chickens in the decade since, making friends with the breeders and keepers in her area, but now she had only a handful left, and they were likely to be her last. Still, it had been a hobby, and when her kids tried to take them off her, worried that she was getting too old to care for them now, she had firmly resisted. And then the world had ended. - "You alright over there old woman?" Shim grinned, nudging her out of her reverie, "you zoned out on us there for a minute." She huffed at him, working out if she was close enough that she could get him in the shin with her boots. He grinned and danced backwards as she tried it, and she rolled her eyes at him, rubbing a phantom ache in her back. "Let''s go to the end of this street and then head home. It doesn''t look like our library is forthcoming today." Shim shrugged, skimming his gaze over the walls as they passed. "You never know, maybe if we shut our eyes a bit and then walk into one of the building, it''ll turn into what we want, like with the hotel that one time." "It''ll turn into a void and you''ll fall straight into the nothing." Quilt shouted from across the road, where she was checking the doors on her side. "Don''t even try it, you daft sod!" This street was one of the ones near the outer edge, and it was narrower than the ones further. There were even ripples in the road where it had bunched up, like the waves in a rumpled blanket. "I''m more liable to agree with that," Rust said, and Shim sighed at her, feigning innocence as he closed his eyes, stumbling towards the next set of doors. She could see from here that it was an ordinary hollow, something about the way the light reflected off the windows, but she wasn''t going to stop him. "Don''t fall in!" Quilt shouted, and he raised a middle finger in her general direction, staggering as he tried to navigate over the bumpy ground with his eyes shut. "I wanna find the greatest library," he intoned, his voice like the priest at Sunday mass, "I want to find the library of Alexandria. I want it to have the biggest shelves, and the juciest books. I want the romance section to span a whole floor, so that Quilt may never run out of things to- ouch" Rust had reached out and knocked into him gently, and he stumbled into the wall laughing and blinking his eyes in the light. She suspected that when the End happened, she had been older, or her body had been¡­ Different, more broken down. Her knees twinged now and again, after a hard day of walking, but that was the thing. She could do a whole day of walking now, when before she remembered having to lie down after just sorting out the chickens, or after digging the garden. Her knees never would have allowed her to come even half this far, and she would have been in pain for days afterwards if she had. She had been considering turning the parlour into... Shim reached out and poked her again, and she blinked at him. "Lost you again." He looked a little worried now, "you doing alright?" She shook herself off, "yeah I just¡­" Already the dream was fading, something about chickens and gardening? "Worried about my birds, is all. We''ve been seeing more animals in the forest, and all my fencing is gone. What if a fox gets in, or a raccoon? And I should start setting the garden up for Spring, it''s already starting to thaw" He huffed out a laugh, "and ere I thought you were thinking about important things." Walking backwards now, he raised his arms to the heavens. "Oh great World Rebuilder, bringer of BRICKS and BLOCKS and occasionally BARS, please send upon us some carrot seeds, some dried peas, and some pansies, ready to harden-off now and only four ninety nine for six! Great Rebuilder, I implore-" This time, she did push him over. - "Hey, I got something!" Quilt called out a few minutes later. The other two walked over, and she pointed down a side road. "Over there, some big animal came through I think." They looked over, and sure enough, there was a ditch across the road, as if something large had been dragged between buildings. The trench was already mostly filled with snow, whatever had passed by there, it had been a couple of days before. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Rust shuddered and pulled Shim back as he started to head towards it. "Be sensible, lad. Whatever came through it doesn''t look like people, but if it''s still around, we don''t want to alert it." Quilt bit the inside of her cheek, realising now how loudly she had shouted. "But what if it is a person, if somebody else has woken up? Surely it can''t be just us?" She swallowed, wrapping her arms around herself and staring at the distant track. " What if it''s a person, and they''re alone out here? She stared at the trench and then shook herself. "There was that big cat thing we saw a while ago, what if bigger wildlife is waking now, do we need to build up some defences, like?" Rust opened her mouth to speak, but Shim got there first. "Don''t give grandma ideas, we can protect the chickens from a couple of foxes, but I ain''t taking on a lion, no matter how good the eggs are." "It shouldn''t come to that." Rust said, "But we should see if we can make their house more secure. I never needed it before, but things are different here." She stared at the track with worry, and a minute later they all pulled away, back to hunting for wild libraries. - "Hear me out." Quilt proffered, "If we moved into the city-" She raised a hand at Rust''s as-yet-unspoken objections, "If we find a good building, somewhere central like, then there''d be no animals. We could go back to my apartment block, there was places in the ground floor we could live." Shim pointed wordlessly back towards where they had seen the track, and she winced but carried on. "Ok so, less animals. Not like living in the forest anyway, and we''d be closer to places we haven''t explored yet. We could set up a huge indoor place for the chickens, give them their own apartment or something even." "They''d have no food." Rust''s voice was clipped, "they eat bugs, and grasses, and plants. They would starve inside an apartment." "They keep chickens inside sometimes, right?" Quilt''s question was a little more unsure, as this wasn''t her field of expertise. "We''d make do? We could liberate oats for them from the Store. We could even keep them on the roof maybe, long as we fenced it off right?" Shim was staring at the sky as he walked, not a part of this conversation. They had given up looking for the library and were heading home, along the middle of the road. "I used to look out and there was a building across from me which had a vegetable garden up there, and bees. We could make it work." Rust gave her a baleful look. "And do you fancy climbing up a hundred flights of stairs, multiple times per day?" Quilt opened her mouth to object, and then shut it again, thinking. "Huh, yeah. I guess you''re right. There used to be ways to get up and down without stairs I''m sure, but I guess they went away with everythin'' else." "I thought so." Rust nodded, and that was the end of that. Shim kept his hands in his pockets and his eye on the sky as he walked. Maybe they could take the axe they used for firewood and liberate some fencing from the forest. He had never built fences before, and it would be hard without nails, but he thought he''d spotted a... A long-twig tree at some point. Maybe they could do something with that. Still, it wouldn''t stop a lion, but what would, maybe a stone wall? But where would they get stone¡­ He winced as Rust leaned over and nudged him, "I was just thinkin'' about the chickens!" he protested, rubbing his arm. "You do it all the time!" - Going into the forest to get the material for the fencing had freaked him out so much that Rust had had to accompany him. They were only a few trees deep, but they may as well have been a thousand miles from home now, for all he knew. Even the sounds were different, the birds sounded wilder, and there were some sort of monkeys or something up there. He had caught a glimpse of one once, he was sure of it. "Come on now," Rust cajoled him, arms full of sticks, "I used to play in this forest when I was only knee-high. Nothing ever harmed me." "That''s cause it was your forest, normal and civilised, not, not whatever this is!" He would have gestured around, but his arms were also full, the axe hanging off his belt. He sighed and adjusted his load. They would have to come back at least once more, and he wasn''t looking forward to it. "I used to build little houses out of sticks like these, when I was a kid," Rust tried to fill the silence, "One of my friends in the village had a big, uh, stick tree behind her house, and we used to hang out there sometimes and play house." Shim shot her a baleful glance, and then jumped as something screeched overhead, almost dropping the sticks. "I used to like walkin'' home through the woods, I said that. But this isn''t those woods, this is like being lost in some horror book." He peered ahead, even only this far in, he already felt lost. "This isn''t- this isn''t that. This is some jungle or some shit. This is what forests were before there were people. This forest, this forest is some crazy shit. I looked out saw a bird the other day like one of your chickens but like four times the size. What the fuck was it? I have no idea, I certainly ain''t seen it again." He was shaking now, glaring at nothing. Overhead the animal, whatever it was, screeched again. "and you, whatever you are, you shut up too!" he shouted. Rust stared at him, looking around for somewhere to put her sticks, before eventually dropping them at her feet. "C''mere" He tried to get away, but she dragged him into a hug. "No, get off!" he grumbled, trying to twist away, but she wasn''t having any of it. "This situation is shit. For all of us. It''s shit and none of us should be here." He tried to fend her off with his bundle of sticks, but almost tripped in the process, dropping half of them and still failing to dislodge the hug. "I have a whole life of memories," she wrapped her arms around tighter him, and he made a noise like an unhappy cat. "I know I had a family, and children, and grandchildren, and I know they might be out there somewhere. But if they are, they don''t need me. I''d like to find them, but I was old, they didn''t need me anymore." She took a deep breath as Shim lost the rest of his sticks. "This isn''t really an End for me, it''s just a second chance. I was prepared to go." He grumbled something, but it was muffled by the hug, despite her being a head shorter than him. "But for you, it''s not a second chance, because you never got to live out the first one. Or if you did, you don''t remember it. That-" She gave him one last squeeze, and then let him go, pushing him back. "- That''s the worst, and I''m sorry it happened. I know that ideally you wouldn''t be hanging out with people of your mothers and your grandmothers generation. You''d have friends your own age, you wouldn''t be stuck in¡­ In whatever this is. This purgatory. But-" She rubbed her cheeks and then knelt down to pick up the dropped twigs. "But we''re here, both of us, if you wanna talk, we''re all going through the same thing." Shim shrugged and stared up into the canopy, holding back tears, blindsided and not knowing how to respond. - "I dunno." He said almost five minutes later, as they were dropping off their loads in the garden. "I''m scared. Right now everything feels stable and ok, but what happens when that changes." He grabbed the axe and started whittling down the ends of the branches into points. "What if in the end it''s still just the three of us and you two get old and I have to look after you and there''s no like, hospitals or whatever. There''s no doctors here, we''re using a wood fire to cook and the forest, for all we know, is full of bloody monsters." He huffed, "I feel responsible for the both of you, like I have to step up and be the man around here or whatever." Rust gave him a long stare, and he withered a little. "I never said it was smart, alright. That''s just how I feel. But I also feel like, what if there is people out there and we''re just, I dunno, castaways on a deserted island. Except it isn''t deserted, what if there''s a big beach resort nearby and we''ve simply walked the wrong way, missing it every time we go out." He ruined one of the sticks he was attempting to sharpen, and almost lost his finger as the axe slipped. With trembling hands he placed it on the pile, rubbing his hands together. "I miss my ma and I''m scared she''s out there somewhere without me. Your kids may be grown up and you were ok on your own, but I wasn''t, and she relief on me. I miss my own bedroom, and my friends. I don''t even remember my friends, but I was buildin'' a life, and I never got to live it." He swallowed loudly, surprised to find tears tracking down his face. "We should go back and look at those tracks, just in case there was a person. It looked like it went through the doors, the animals wouldn''t have done that. Then I wanna look proper for people. I wanna leave messages in paint, I want to, I don''t even know. I want to find a store which sells spray cans and graffiti every single piece of concrete I can find." He sniffed and rubbed at his face, leaving grubby trails behind, and Rust was struck again by how young he was. She hadn''t even thought about it lately, just thinking of him as Shim, but compared to her, he was barely out of the cradle. "We can do that." She picked up the axe, having much more experience with it than him, "I think I saw a house-paint section in the Store. We can look tomorrow." Shim nodded, suddenly exhausted, as if he hadn''t slept in days, and together they started putting up the fence. Chapter Twenty "I think art is important." Shim proffered as they explored the next day. It was around noon, and they hadn''t been out for very long. He gave Rust and Quilt a moment to argue, but when they didn''t take it, he carried on. "Not just to us, you know. Although it is important to us. But I think it''s also important to whatever is making this place?" He gestured around at the grey buildings, "Like, okay whatever''s up there, it''s made all these stupid buildings. But that''s only the blank canvas! It also made that weird art gallery the other day, and I feel like sometimes the buildings with no floors, or the way the Store shifts about, or just the buildings that''re a little different, that''s somebody trying to create something, you know?" The other two took a moment to digest this. "I wasn''t an artist," said Quilt, "I never got much out of it. I liked my books and fabrics, but I never had, like, that awe for that you seem to have?" "They seem pretty bad at it," said Rust, at the same time. "So I''m not sure I''m getting it?" continued Quilt, "I mean, I get the art being important to us. It''s human nature. But for all we know, this whole world is just some process. Perhaps we weren''t meant to wake up, and-" She bit her lip and ground to a halt, struck by a sudden, dangerous thought. "Hey. What if, and hear me out on this¡­" She had stopped walking, biting her lip until it hurt, and the other two stared at her. "Are you ok?" Offered Rust, and Shim turned around, heading back from where he''d been walking ahead. "Mm." She kept biting her lip, "Give me a moment, this is bad." "Alright." Rust resisted the urge to reach out, glancing worriedly at Shim. Quilt took a deep breath in, bracing herself mentally, before speaking the terrible thought aloud. "What if, like, we were in heaven, hear me out, hear me out. What if we were in heaven and I dunno, what if we broke free of it." Shim squinted at her, "I think I''ve read this book, a lotta people in pods right, but it was too good for them so they rebelled and woke up?" "What?" Quilt blinked, thrown off, "No, no I mean like proper biblical heaven, not¡­ Not whatever it is you''re referring to. What if we straight up died, and after we died, our souls or whatever, those went to heaven. We got to live out our best day, for eternity. What if this is like, outside of heaven, and we''ve fallen into the guts of the machine and now we''re bouncing around in here, until eventually we''ll get jammed between some gears and we''ll break everything, for everyone?" Rust drew a deep breath in through her nose, but Shim looked sceptical. "Ok, assuming that there is a heaven, and it''s that shoddily built, how does that explain me? Both you and Rust, fine, you had a good time. Fed your birds, read your books, I get that. But I never had a good day. I don''t even remember if there /was/ a good day. All I know is I woke up and now I''m here and I remember some things, but it''s all piecemeal, it''s nothin''." They started walking again, Quilt still anxiously biting her lip and Rust silent, thinking. "But what if¡­" Quilt''s voice was almost a whine, and Shim huffed at her. "I don''t know if I used to believe all that," Rust butted in, preventing the argument before it could start, "but I used to go and listen to all the¡­ The sermons? Is that the word? I used to go to church once a week and listen to the woman talk about God, about a higher power, and what happens after you die." She swallowed thickly, adjusting her basket over her arm and looking at the surrounding buildings without actually seeing them. "I don''t know if I ever believed in it, but sure, let''s go with this. A philosophical debate. What if we''re dead. Turns out we were good in life, we went to heaven, and then something happened and we accidentally fell out of our pods. Now we''re, what, literal ghosts in the machine? The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. "What does that mean for us?" Rust gestured around, "Why would this exist, what is this, and does it matter either way? We''re here and that''s all we can say about it." Quilt shrugged, "maybe they''re other peoples heavens? Maybe each apartment has somebody in it, somebody we can''t perceive, who''s each livin'' their best day. The hotel, somebody behind the counter who truly loved being there. The art gallery, an artist who''s finally gaining some recognition, having the best day of their life." Shim huffed again, and Rust glanced at him, before looking back to Quilt. "Did you believe in all that, when you were alive?" She shook her head, "fuck no, bugger that shit. But that shouldn''t matter, right? Long as I did my best to be good or whatever?" Rust frowned, trying to remember things she hadn''t even bothered holding onto back when they might''ve mattered. "I think, I think depending on what you believed in, it did? Non-believers, or people who believe the wrong thing couldn''t go to heaven." "That''s a loada shit." Shim interjected, and Rust shrugged. "I didn''t make the rules, son." "Ok." Said Quilt, dragging the conch shell back. "So I didn'' believe in any gods or whatever, which would have excluded me from your¡­ Your whatever, big building, loud woman, loada shit. But what if there is a belief system out there, a correct one, which says anyone can get into heaven, as long as they live a moral life?" Shim took his chance to step in. "Then, what counts as a moral life?" he paused, "cause you know," he waggled his eyebrows, "I was considered very good looking, back in highschool. I''m pretty sure that one discounts you." "Rust, punch him for me." Quilt intoned, and Rust did her best, sighing melodramatically as he dodged out of the way. Giving up on trying to hit him, Rust spoke. "Okay, so you are a disguting child, and that one''s out. I don''t know, did either of you give to charity?" A "never had the cash for that," from Quilt and a "same" from Shim put that one to rest. "Helped out at your local church?" "Nope" and "My what?" She scrunched up her forehead, "I don''t know, helped an elderly person across the road?" "Why would they need help?" Shim asked, and Quilt frowned, moving her mouth as she thought. "Nope." She came up with eventually, "I also thought about killing my boss at least twice, I think, and I once slept with a married neighbour. Nobody tell her husband!" Rust stuck her tongue out, and Quilt sighed. "Ok so that one''s out too. Sex before marriage, big check, converting your neighbours wife, check, being a charitable person," she made a noise like some sort of siren, which apparently indicated a ''not that one either''. "So with that, we''ve determined that out of all of us, only you might have actually got into heaven. Which kinda makes sense? You were the one who woke us both up, after all." Rust thought about this, and they walked together quietly for almost an hour, the world around them unchanging, the snow slowly coming down. She started to speak several times, but never quite managed to get the words out. Finally, it was Shim who broke the silence. "It might be bunk, it might not, I guess it doesn''t matter. Like you said, ghosts in the machine, bits of sand in the gears. Minds without bodies, or somethin''." He stared upwards for a moment, blinking as snow landed in his eyes. "So the question becomes, not how''d we get here, but how do we, I dunno, get in touch with the manager? If heaven is a machine, and we''re trapped in the machine, how do we find the engineer?" "Do we even want to?" Quilt, "What if they try and brush us out?" Rust frowned, "I''m not sure I want to go back to this ''heaven'' either, I didn''t like it. She paused. "I mean, I liked it, it was a perfect day, but I was trapped. I knew I was trapped, it was like I was dreaming and every time I woke up, I was still in the dream." She pinched herself on the wrist, before giving a full-body shrug. "I''m not sorry for waking you two up." Quilt looked away, but Shim leaned over and nudged her. "I''m glad you did." - "Maybe you had regrets?" Quilt asked Shim. "If this is uh, the machine of heaven, maybe we''re how we wanted to be, not how we were in life?" "I was older, when I was, um, in the before." Rust added, and Quilt nodded. "Me too, I think. Maybe you were older also. Maybe you regretted your choices, in life, and you wanted to be sixteen again, so now you are." Shim looked unimpressed at this. "If that''s true, then the least my older self coulda done is leave me some memories, to know exactly /what/ I regretted." Quilt shrugged and ran a hand through her hair, wincing at how unkempt it felt. "Yeah, but then it wouldn''t be a clean start, would it." She wiped her hand off on her trousers and made a note that she would have to wash them later. Maybe Rust had an old tin bath somewhere? Her place was old-fashioned enough. "Speaking of clean starts, hey, Rust!" Rust looked over at her. "Did your place ever have running water, and like¡­ The other thing that places had, uh¡­ Sparks, you know?" She stalled out, screwing her face and rubbing her hands against her legs. Rust stared at her, confused at the sudden change of subject. "I guess? My kids had a pump put in some years back, said it was a health hazard for me to not have running water¡­ Uh, it ran off the other thing so I must''ve had it, but I otherwise didn''t use it much? The house was never properly set up for it, so it was easier not to bother." She hesitated, "oh, yeah I see what you''re getting at. Maybe we should stop by the store on the way home, pick up some soap?" There were furious nods from both Quilt and Shim, and together they rapidly made their way back home. Chapter Twenty One - Puzzle Pieces It turned out that Rust not only had a tin bath, but she had a whole bathroom to go with it. "I wasn''t that backwards," she muttered, as she adjusted something or other on the stove. "I didn''t grow up in the middle ages." The cottage had some sort of system in place to heat and pump hot water, which neither Shim nor Quilt even pretended to understand, but supposedly it would be up and running later, if Rust had anything to do with it. For now, they had made do with lukewarm water, heated on the parlour stove. Shim stood shirtless in front of the kitchen stove, rubbing his hair with a towel. He had scrubbed his skin with cool water and laundry soap until he shone like a fresh tomato. It was so good to be clean! He hadn''t realised quite how bad it had gotten, why had it taken them all so long? Quilt was sitting at the table attempting to weave together some twigs into a basket shape, more to keep her hands busy than anything else, and Rust was still fiddling with the stove. "So how do you explain the chickens?" he asked, and Quilt looked up, the twigs in her hands springing apart. "Shit," she grumbled, looking down at the mess, and then up at Shim, "what do you mean explain? They''re chickens." He nodded, jumping and attempting to hang the towel on the airer, almost causing the whole thing to come crashing down over him. "Sure, they''re chickens, but why are they here. Did they do good deeds in life?" "They were very good girls," Rust''s voice was muffled. She was down on the floor now, half-inside the stove, "they laid me a lot of eggs. All chickens should get to go to chicken heaven." Shim shrugged, lowering the airer and hanging his towel properly over the rail, checking the dryness of his shirt. It had suffered over the previous weeks, getting stained with grease and sweat and muck, but it wasn''t until this morning that he''d actually thought about it, that any of them had thought about it. It didn''t look much better now, for all the scrubbing he''d done, but it would do until he found a replacement. "Ok sure, all chickens go to heaven." He started to winch the rack back up, the shirt still not dry, "and I suppose they do have a very nice life here. You to feed them every day, oats, bugs, all the birds of the world as their friends. But is that¡­ Are you telling me chickens have souls, souls which go to the afterlife?" He thought about it for a moment, tying off the rope. "Cause I ate a lotta chicken nuggets as a kid." He waved towards the door, "sorry old girls, you probably don''t wanna hear this, but, and I''ll put this bluntly: people eat a lot of chicken. I couldn'' give you numbers or anything, but surely they''d need their own heaven? Do other birds also go to heaven? Songbirds, kiwis, parrots? Where''s the cutoff? Are we stuck in bird heaven?" Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. "Does heaven have layers?" Quilt asked in return, leaning now on one arm. The evening sun lit up her still-damp hair, which was now tightly corralled back, rather than the cloud it had been before. "And if we escape this one, we end up where, cat heaven? Dog? What''s the next layer down?" She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, and then sighed, shrugging and leaning back, pulling her knees up against the edge of the table. Rust crawled out of the oven and Shim backed away. She had gotten a flea in her bonnet the moment they came back and declared the stove "needed cleaning, now!" and by the looks of her, she had done so by transferring all the grime and soot to herself. "I''m gonna go burn my clothing." She stated, reaching out for Shim to help her up, before shaking her head and getting up on her own. "If you could give the floor a mop, that would be good, I hope you left me some warm water." She grumbled her way off towards the bathroom, already undoing her shirt, and the other two watched her go. "I dunno," Shim sighed, sitting down and starting to mess with the pile of twigs. "I don''t this is like, the outside of heaven or whatever you''re thinking. I agree it''s a cute idea, but we can see that the machine is changing. Just look around us." He gestured towards the hanging washing and the buckets of filthy water, waiting to be discarded in the woods. "We can see that stuff is changing more every day. More animals wake up, we remember more of ourselves. Who''s to say that this isn''t just¡­ I dunno, some higher being finding an old jigsaw in a cupboard and slowly putting it back together. Except it''s a metaphor, and the jigsaw is our fucked up, broken world." Shim stared down at the twigs, before scooping them all up into a neat pile. "There." He declared. "That''s us." Quilt leant her chair back further, the bottoms of her feet against the edge of the table, and had to catch herself as it started to tip too far. Instead, she slammed it down onto the stones, and pushing herself up from the table, headed towards the sweet cupboard. Shim watched as she walked over to the side, hesitated, and then returned for the chair. "I swear we''ll find that stepladder one of these days," she said, trying to open the door without knocking herself off the chair in the process. "But okay, so if we''re not souls who''ve fallen out of paradise, then, what are we? I guess we have no way of checkin'' the perfect day theory without finding other people or whatever, but we could do the ''talk to the manager'' thing?" Shim nodded at her to continue, and she did. "I dunno how, you tell me. But we could go up to the top of my building and shout at God? Do the thing you wanted to do with paint, spread it everywhere, see if anyone notices?" She tucked a jar of some sort of strawberry caramels under her arm, and slowly clambered down off the chair, knocking the door shut as she went. "If the ants make enough mess of the farm, somebody''s gotta notice they''re starving eventually. "I''m hoping there''s other people out there, and we just ain''t found ''em yet. It can''t be just us, surely. It''s- it was a big world, billions of people, more if we''re like, all fucked up in time." "Mm." Shim made a noncommittal noise, taking the jar from her and twisting the lid open as she sat back down. He offered her the open jar, taking two for himself. "We never did find the paint, did we. But we can look again tomorrow. Maybe write some books while we''re at it." Quilt reached out and took a handful of sweets, sorting them out into a line on the table in front of her. A death row for strawberry swirls. "I ain''t much of a writer, like I said, shit at art and all that crafty stuff," she gestured at the twigs for emphasis, "but I reckon even I can splash some paint about." Shim smiled, and the conversation moved on. They sat together munching on sweets and talking about nothing. The weather, what they would do once they found the paint, little snippets of memories, moments in time. All in all, it was nice. Chapter Twenty Two They went back to the store the next day and found a small paint section, nestled between bread and pasta. It mostly contained metal paint, tins sized for painting dollhouses, and fence-stain, but it was a start. Some of the metal paint came in exciting colours, at least! What did not cooperate was the weather, and after two days of attempting to explore, the three of them elected to stay at home instead. It didn''t seem as bad in the forest as in the city, but it was still raining and stormy, if not flat-out icy. - A week in and Shim was on a mission. Tidying out the parlour. He had, upon starting, insisted they rename the room to "anything less weird and cold". Living room, sitting room, lounge and break room, Rust had rejected all suggestions. Still, he got going, stripping the sheets off the furniture, disturbing the dust, and generally making a mess of things. Rust watched him, from where she was perched on the edge of an extremely nineteen-sixties sofa. "I''m not sure I''ve ever had the sheets off it," she said worriedly, running her hand over the fabric. "What if it gets dusty, or one of the kids spills something on it." Shim tugged another sheet off a mystery object, this one turning out to be a small green-felted table. "Didn'' you say you bought up a mountain of children in this house, what did they do all day if you wouldn'' let them sit on any of the chairs?" Rust shrugged, "they were outside most of the time, or in the kitchen, or in their rooms. We also had this room redone after they moved out. It''s a guest room, it''s for guests!" She ran her hand over the fabric again, staring wistfully into the middle distance. "I did used to have the ladies from the bridge club over once a month and we''d pull out that table. Not my favourite game, but it passed an evening." Shim glanced over at her, before shrugging. "Just seems very wasteful to me, you know. A whole room nobody''s using. So what if the sofa gets a bit worn, you can always get another one." She narrowed her eyes. "Can we? I''d like to see you drag a whole sofa home, out of whatever hole we''ve pulled it out of, if there even are any more out there. There''s certainly nobody who knows how to make one." ''I could reupholster it for you'' Shim thought to himself, but he didn''t say it out loud. He''d need the tacks for one thing, and a sewing machine for another. Plus knowing his life now, it''d be a weird treadle machine and he''d have no idea how to use it. Rust stared back down at the hideous orange and brown fabric, and then carefully extracted a single feather, the filling trying to escape. "That''s how you ruin it, pulling out all the stuffing," Shim quipped as he removed another sheet. This one revealed a large cabinet, made of wood and with a big space in the middle, a space he knew was supposed to contain¡­ Something. Knowledge? Books maybe? They''d have to be all stacked up¡­ He shrugged, stuck his head into the gap, found nothing interesting, and carried on uncovering the rest of the furniture. The room was dimly lit, but he was saving the curtains for last. For the big reveal. Rust got slowly to her feet and moved across the room, placing some more wood, and the feather, into the wood stove. She waved a hand over the top of it, before sitting down on the edge of an as-of-yet-uncovered armchair. "I just don''t see the point," she grumbled, staring around. "It''s not like we have guests coming. What''s wrong with the kitchen?" Shim gave a tortured sigh, folding up the sheet and placing it with the others, before going once again on the attack. The next object turned out to be another armchair, although he had suspected as much before he went in. There was something big against one wall which he was hoping would be a piano, but he was saving that one, his second guess was a sideboard. If it were a piano, then chances were it would be out of tune, and he had no idea how to play the piano in the first place, but maybe a piano tuner would turn up. "It''s the principle of the thing." He started folding, "I grew up in a one bedroom apartment, sleepin'' on the sofa. Took us until I was six until I even had my own room. Even then it was a box-room, barely big enough to fit the bed. I had to move the desk if I wanted to open the drawers, like." He placed it with the rest as he looked around for his next conquest. He had shaken out the first sheet, and what a mistake that had been, his chest still felt a little tight from that. "And here you are with a huge big room you don''t even use. Chairs that ain''t seen the light of day since before I was even born." With a careful flourish, he revealed a set of nesting tables in dark brown wood. There was a deep scratch going all the way across the top table, and it was the most damaged thing he had seen in the room so far. "Why''d you even have all this, if you were never gonna use it. It''s just such a waste." Rust stared at the tables for a moment, before jerking herself back to the present. Her insistence on sitting on the direst edge of the chair looked precarious, and Shim worried for her knees. "We had it redone when the children had grown up a bit. A man from the town came and designed it all." She blew out through her nose, and her eyes strayed towards the big empty box. "It was all very modern, at the time." Shim grunted, revealing what turned out to be a stack of dining chairs, he had been expecting another table, from the height of it. "Of course," Rust carried on, "we made our own changes over the years, but it won an award, you know." The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Shim stopped to think about this for a moment, folding the latest sheet, and then continued the assault, heading towards what appeared to be a long table, situated behind the sofa. "Okay," he began to attack the table. There were ornaments underneath, so he had to be careful, "so you got this room designed, you paid for it all, you stood there, you looked at it, and then you decided just to never use it again?" Removal of the sheet revealed a couple of vases in the same orange and brown as the rest of the room, and some kind of faux-roman lamp, artistically placed and extremely modern. That would come in handy, maybe! They were sorely lacking for light in the evenings. There had to be some spare lamp wicks somewhere. Rust was silent for a minute, watching him work in the dim light, and then she gave a sort of sigh, leaning back awkwardly. A moment later she sat back up, grimacing. "It, honestly, just wasn''t very comfortable. I always ate in the kitchen, especially after¡­ Once I was alone. And during the day I was never in much anyway, it wasn''t worth firing up the stove to sit in here when the kitchen was already warm." She stood, and with a sigh, started to uncover the armchair. "It was different when I had people over, you know. You can''t be having the children in the kitchen, touching things they shouldn''t, climbing into the flour, but," she gestured around, sheet in her hands, "this was always safe enough. There should be a fire-guard somewhere, it might be in the cellar." Shim nodded and was beginning work on yet another armchair, when a crash sounded from the kitchen, the noise of clattering pots and pans and no small amount of swearing. They both looked up in surprise. "Sorry, sorry!" shouted Quilt, as she pushed her way into the room, "it''s all shit don''t mind me, came to bring you these." "What was the crash?" Shim asked as she placed down two buckets of steaming water. She shrugged, gave them two thumbs up, and then walked backwards out of the room, the door closing behind her. "But what was the crash!" he shouted, and then sighing and laughing, he started on clearing the piano, ignoring the water for now. "We should move all the furniture, uh¡­" He was about to say ''outside'', but not only had the weather occluded that one, they would also have to pass through the kitchen to do so. "I guess we can pile it all up on one side, wash the floor and everything down, and then do the other?" Rust watched him owlishly as he uncovered the piano, and then with a sigh, got up to help. "It''s always better to do this kind of thing in spring, when you can pile everything in the garden. If you''re going to destroy my parlour-" she hesitated, "or what did you want it to be, lounge, living room?" "I dunno, whatever is fine, parlour just sounds like¡­ ''Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly'', or like, a room that''s never used. Which this is!" "Lounge just sounds so lower class," she complained, helping him fold the sheet and eyeing up the piano. "Do you know how to play that thing? Because I certainly don''t." He shrugged, "maybe Quilt knows?" He thought about that for a moment, after he said it, "nah you know what, probably not. She ain''t one for the arts." There was another crash from the kitchen, and then a distant "I heard that!", which Shim proceeded to ignore. "Should I go check on her?" Asked Rust, but he was already heading for another table, this one in the corner near the door. Much like the stack of chairs, this shrouded object was at odds with the design of the room, and he figured it''d just been dumped there when somewhere else in the house outgrew it. It looked like one of those old-fashioned writing desks? He attempted to pull it forward and was surprised at how heavy it was, a moment later, Rust came over to help. "Lower class, what does that even mean. Some hoity-toity way of saying ''people who work for a living'' or ''people I''m better than''? Or is it just ''people who like things that everyone likes''." He tugged the sheet forward, discovered it was still trapped somehow, and moved around the back to unsnag it. "This room was the height of fashion when you had it built, right? Wouldn''t that be lower class, common, even?" She glared at him, and with a tug the sheet came free, showering them both in a cloud of fine dust. "It was-" she coughed, backing away from the cloud, "it was, I''ll have you know, very expensive. It won an award! There was nothing lower class or common about it, and I''m sorry I said anything." She could have stopped there, but she didn''t, fuming quietly. "One of the women in the bridge club worked in a florists, another ran the local bookshop. One of them was a lesbian, and she used to bring her girlfriend along sometimes!" She glared at Shim, who was frowning at her in confusion, unsure what ''Bridge'' was, he had assumed it was some sort of architectural committee. "So don''t say I looked down on people!" she finished. Rust coughed again, starting to angrily collect the sheets. A moment later a curtain was pulled aside revealing a back door Shim hadn''t even known existed. "Was that there all along?" he asked as she slammed her weight against it, the door apparently only agreeable to opening under duress. "It used to be the front of the house," she tugged her weight against it again, "but we had renovations done when they did the room. Never got much use out of it, after that." The door burst open with a crash, and Rust fell backwards into the room, followed by a slew of rain. The white of her shirt instantly darkened as the dust was rehydrated into a paste, and she barely caught herself with the door handle. She stood still for a moment, one hand on the door, breathing in the cold air, letting the rain dampen the floor. Shim sucked in his lips, waited a moment, and then moved to pick up the dropped sheets. A minute later they were all dumped on the extremely overgrown doorstep, and he helped her shut the door again. It wasn''t easy, the wood had swollen in the damp, and it required the application of a mop handle and some brute force to get shut, but they finally managed it, leaving behind two sodden people and a large puddle on the floor for their efforts. There was a boarded-up hole in the bottom panel, where a cat flap had resided in the past, and Shim nudged it with his foot as he thought about what to say next. As she pulled the curtain shut, Rust spoke for him. Her hair was damp around her face, having escaped from its normal confinement in a bun at the back of her head, and it was the most dishevelled he''d seen her. "I''m sorry, I shouldn''t have shouted at you. This whole, this whole thing," she gestured to the room, "I just shut it up, once I was on my own. The only reason I ever had to use it was when my family would come round." She stared around the room for a while, and he let her speak. "I''d get it all neat and clean, when I knew they were coming, set up the fire, uncover all the furniture. Sixty years it''s been, since we had it done, and it''s been less a... A living room, and more a place I visit. And now we''re clearing it all up, but my family isn''t coming back. Might- probably will never come back." She sighed out through her nose, one hand on her hip, the other clutching the curtain. Shim shrugged awkwardly, unsure what to say. "I guess you lost your family, but when the weather improves, is ''less shit'' as Quilt would say, we''ll help you look again. We''ll comb through the city, and head through the woods, to where your village should be. Just pick a direction and keep going, I dunno." He scratched at the back of his head, finding it damp, and then his eye caught on the writing desk. "Oh hey, is that what I think it is?" He headed over to it, and Rust blinked at him, coming over to have a look too. "Ah, it''s a sewing machine, I think. I''d forgotten I even had that, I never worked out how to flip it up, and I think it might need a new belt? It was my grandmothers, bless her soul." She fiddled with the table for a moment, revealing a hidden drawer in the side. "Must be a hundred years since this thing''s seen use, but the grandkids used to love finding all the secret compartments, that''s about all it''s ever been good for." She messed with it a little more, revealing a hidden section in one drawer, and a coin slot in one of the legs. The hidden drawer contained one of the strawberry candies, and Shim frowned at that, but ate it anyway. It tasted like spring. Chapter Twenty Three - Icicles Rat was cold, and very, very sad. The snow had changed. It was no longer asbestos or soap powder, instead, it was proper, real snow, and it soaked through her clothing and into her blankets, leaving everything damp and cold. She had stopped going out days ago, but she was getting both stir-crazy and sick. She had been trapped in the shop for what felt like weeks now, but even before that, she had stopped keeping track of time. Before, there had been cycles to the weeks, crowds on the weekend, pensioners on Wednesdays, little festivals and markets. Small things about the city that changed day by day, that she could use to mark time. It should have been coming up to... To the festival with the trees and the lights and the food markets, she always liked that time of year. It was cold, but people always put an extra coin or two in her cup, or would buy her a sausage bap and a tea if she asked. Here she didn''t even feel like the light was changing, the days neither lengthening nor shortening. Each day was the same, devoid of people, only the miserable weather for company, and even that was monotonous, never letting up, but also never coming on stronger. On top of that, there was no heating in the shop, and the combination of concrete walls and massive, empty space meant that any warmth she did manage to generate was leeched away almost immediately. She had considered several times making her way either back to the laundrette or out to the cottage, or even over to the giant''s clothing store, but food was already starting to be a problem, and would be even more so once she left her dwindling supplies behind. She had never managed to cook the dried beans, and they taunted her in their inedibility. She had found no matches or lighters in the shop, and she wasn''t a survival expert, generally making do with staying inside and keeping a couple of pocket warmers to hand. Setting a fire in the city was a good way for the authorities to come have a word with you, she had found it better to find an all-night cafe or supermarket if it was that cold. Miserable, she sat in the window of the shop wrapped in every piece of clothing and every blanket she could muster, staring out at the sleet. This was the absolute worst. The glass fogged up with every breath she made, and she resented the warmth that went with it. She knew she should sit away from the draughty panes, but was unwilling to move. Misery makes misery, her dad would have said. Stop wallowing in it! It was so difficult though when she was so cold. "I should go back to the washing machines," she whined to the air, "or that cottage. That place was warm, that''s the only place you''ve given me so far with an actual stove." She shuddered and tried to burrow deeper, hating that her blankets felt so damp and musty. "I hoped it would stop if I waited. That it would be spring already, but this is the worst. Why does this suck so much?" She shuddered again, pulling the blanket up over her head and burying her face in her knees. "Am I gonna die here?" She bit back a sob, aware of just how cold and alone she was. She might be the only person in the world right now, and she had never been so lonely. Even after her dad had died, there had still been family there. Her mum, her grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. It wasn''t their fault she had run away. "I should go back to the cottage, it was warm there," she mumbled, "But it was also creepy. Felt like I was invadin'' somebody else''s space, like they''d all gone out and they were gunna come back and find me and shout at me for being in their home, eatin'' their sweets." She buried her face in her knees even harder, wrapping her arms around herself and trying not to full-on cry, controlling her breath. She never cried, never ever. She was a tough, strong rat, and she could look after herself. Had looked after herself. "I wouldn'' even know how to find my way back there." A deep breath, "or what if I did, and it''s gone then I''d be stuck and even colder." She held her breath for a minute, pulling herself together. If she didn''t start crying, then she wouldn''t cry. The tears didn''t mean anything. Breathe in, count to seven, breathe out, count to seven, breathe in, until she was back under control. "You can do this, Rathtyen. You survived all the shit before this. You''ve been cold before, you''ve been alone before, this ain''t nothin'' new." She pressed her eyes into her knees until she could see colours, hating how it made her even damper, breathing in and out. "You''ll get through this." Taking one last deep breath, she rose to her feet in a single motion, ignoring the tears streaming down her face. It was even colder in the shop once she started moving, but she would be fine. She would survive this. She would be ok. Her planning until now had been bunk, though. She should have gathered everything she could find from the junk clothing store, while it was there. Looked for more places while the snow was warm and spent less time sitting in the garden, staring at rocks. She should be a proper rat with a big nest made of rags, but it just hadn''t seemed important at the time. She had been on vacation, transported into a strange land where there were no consequences. She knew differently now. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! - It didn''t take her long to pack. She had learnt to travel light whilst living on the streets, and old habits die hard. Wear what you could and leave the rest somewhere safe, a heavy backpack will only slow you down, make you freeze faster, let the authorities catch up. She had two mystery tins left, both ones that sloshed like soup rather than rattled like beans, and she placed those into the bottom of her rucksack. In with those she put an old-fashioned tin opener she had found under one of the shelves. It had been almost unreachable, as if somebody had hidden it there, hoping it would never be found. In went her favourite blanket, folded carefully into a little square, and then, because she had run out of things to pack, she threw in a handful of dice, a small folding knife, and a pack of playing cards she''d found on one of the shelves. The blanket had come with her, when whatever had sent her here had sent her here, and it was like a little piece of home, if home was another world. She had picked it up in a charity shop for a pittance during her first winter on the streets, and it was dark green and soft with age. One of the women at the launderette had told her it was wool, and that she should wash it with special powders, but she could never afford to do that and it didn''t seem to have suffered much for it. Then, that was it, that was all she needed to take. The rest of her nest she would either wear or leave behind, she was pinning all her hopes on finding a better place. The shop had some interesting objects in it, but nothing worth hauling through the landscape. Staring at her half-empty pack, she shuddered, and then wrapping herself up as best she could, set off into the weather. - She wasn''t stupid about how she travelled, making the most of the paths between buildings, but there were more locked doors and impassible areas than you might expect. Also, things were changing all the time now, and the paths she could take differed every day. Snows-Through, for example, had transformed from an eldritch collection of snow drifts into a flooded, swampy mess, and the long wooden planks in the next building now sprouted twisting vines, which caught at her legs and arms as she tried to push past. The next building was locked, so she turned and headed down the road instead, hunched against the sleet and eyeing up the grey walls as she passed. The concrete was starting to crack, and she wasn''t sure if that was an aesthetic choice on the part of whatever was putting things back together, or the repeated cycles of frost and thaw doing rapid work. She would have asked out loud, but she didn''t have the energy, focusing instead on keeping one foot in front of the other. It wouldn''t be audible over the howl of the wind, anyway. She wondered if she should have stayed inside, given it a few more days for the weather to clear. She was used to being hungry, the two tins of soup would have lasted her another couple of days, and she could do without food, but that was a slow death, and she was just so sick of it. Sick of the smell of dust and the bizarre collection of junk that the shop contained. Sick of the same walls and the draughty windows. Sick of her lack of agency, trapped in the relic of a shop. Another part of her had worried about damp. Concrete was semi-porous, and the windows were only single-glazed, rattling in the wind, and she had seen enough cellars filled with black mould, and read enough ''Keep Yourself Safe This Winter'' pamphlets that she knew those were a bad combination. Even back home, black mould had been a problem. Their house had been at the bottom of a hill, and in the winter sometimes the water would flood right in. "Can mould even exist here?" she grumbled into her collar, coat pulled tight up around her face and her arms hitched to stop it dragging in the wet and muck. "I ain''t seen any insects, but I''ve seen birds, and I''ve got like, good bacteria right, that keep me alive?" She ran her tongue over her teeth but didn''t come to any conclusions. Stuff like that was difficult to keep together out on the streets. A gym membership was beyond her budget and you could only do so much in the public toilets. She tried the next door and found it unlocked. Stepping inside revealed another hollow, but at least the windows were intact, the air cold and so very still. The walls were letting out a worrying groaning noise, though it was difficult to hear over the wind outside, and she made her way quickly through, not wanting to voice her thoughts and disturb the almost church-like silence. - Several hours later, she finally reached the edge of the city. She had only been out this far the once before, preferring to stick to the area around the general store, but she was on a mission now, and she would see it through to the end. She refused to think about what she would do if the cottage was gone, or flooded, or inhabited. What if she turned up and there was merely a ruin there now, missing roof and half walls? No, she would burn those bridges when she got there, and not a moment before. The cottage would be there, and it would be warm and safe. No other options. She stopped in one of the final buildings, breaking out one of the cans of soup and shivering as she knocked it back. Some sort of vegetable medley, not her favourite, but beggars can''t be choosers. She had eaten worse. Huddled in the corner of the huge, hollow building, she stared upwards and tried to drag back the good mood of her first few days in the new world. What had upset her was what always upset her, the main problem with being ''unhoused'', unsheltered, ''homeless'', or whatever else you wanted to call it. Weather. Weather sucked, and hold on, these buildings were getting weird. Far above her, the ceiling appeared to be made of glass, arranged into a rose-like pattern, but it was too far away for her to make out the details. Still, it let in a diffused light, making this building a little lighter than the others she''d been through today. There were flakes of something, she hoped snow, drifting down, but they melted and disappeared a few floors above her, glittering in the thin light. Interesting. At least in the city, the place she really did think of as home, she could have hung out in the library or a supermarket, or gone to a museum. The museums were free and the staff never asked questions, used to wild children. She would have hung out, stared at the exhibits, read all the little cards, and dreamed about what might have been if she hadn''t fucked her life up. Those had been good days, despite the Weather. If it was nice, which it so rarely was, then she would walk down by the canals and out into the countryside, or just sit in the centre and watch the people pass by, begging for coins. Those had been good days too, lazy and warm. There had been some attempts from authorities to help her, to get her into shelter and school, but they had quickly learnt that she would run when approached. Hadn''t stopped them from trying, though. A few too many coins in her cup at the end of a bad day, chocolate and blankets thrust into her arms, which she would later find to be filled with leaflets and lists of places she could go, people she could contact. There were opening hours for the shelters and kitchens, and letters from the man claiming to be her social worker, asking how she was doing that week, wishing she would speak to him. The letters had named him¡­ They had named him, and she had enjoyed reading the letters even if she had never let him get close. He had red hair, though, she remembered that. "It wasn''t so bad," she whispered, quiet enough that the void above couldn''t steal the words from her. She hadn''t even meant to run away, not initially¡­ She groaned, doubling over and clutching at her head. The headaches had been less frequent lately, but that just made them all the worse when they did reappear. It took a minute for the spike to pass. Just breathe, in and out, think about how good it''s gonna be once you''re home. You''re going home, to a warm place, it''s gonna be fine. Sighing and still holding her head, she clambered to her feet. Then, after going out of her way to stow the empty tin in the corner of the empty building, she prepared to face the world once again. Chapter Twenty Four The floor of the morning room, when washed, turned out to be a beautiful, multi-grained parquet. They had scrubbed it down with a mixture of bleach and cleaning solution, before dragging a large tin of wax up out of the cellar. With nothing better to do with their time, the three of them tackled the job with abandon. The furniture had mostly been moved upstairs or into a corner of the kitchen, and Rust, at last, seemed enthused to help, now she''d finally come to terms with what they were doing. "I haven''t been able to move like this in donkey''s years," she smiled, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, rubbing wax into the wood with a cloth. "I never thought I''d be able to do this again." "You were older, right?" Quilt asked, and Rust nodded in acknowledgement. Quilt nodded back, "I used to do uh," she paused, "community nursing. Visiting the elderly, makin'' sure they weren''t lying on the floor, that they hadn''t run outta sausages, that kinda junk." She took a scoop of wax, shuffling backwards a little as she did. "Poor old birds the lotta them, and it was mostly birds mind, don''t see many blokes at that age out living out on their own." She sighed, "Those that did make it to that age never outlived their old women." Rust didn''t say anything in response to that, taking another dollop of wax for herself, and they worked in companionable silence for a while. "My ma used to work in a hospital," Shim finally said. "She did reception in A and E four days a week." He stopped to look over his section of the floor, before shuffling sideways. They were working the wax in first, and they would buff it properly later, at least that was the theory. Rust was the only one who''d done it before, and that had been decades ago. "Never paid well, and wasn'' what she wanted, but she never had the time for nothin'' else. She wanted to get a nursing degree, but..." He gestured to himself with the rag and then with a shrug continued working. Rust took a touch more wax and moved a little. She was doing each piece of wood one at a time, making sure it was all worked in, and it was satisfying to see the colours change. She knew all her children had jobs, that was why they''d moved away, but what they were eluded her, and she had never worked herself. If you didn''t count raising a gaggle of children, running several clubs, and helping out with all the little things a village needed to function as ''working'', anyway. What they did may have even eluded her in life, there were a lot of them, and once you added on the grandchildren... She frowned to herself, there might even have been a couple of great-grandchildren, by this point? The days went by so fast. How was she meant to keep up? She stared around the half-empty parlour, curtains gone and windows bare to the thrashing rain outside. They''d had some great parties in here, over the years. D¡­ Da¡­ One of her sons, he always helped her choose a tree each winter, together they had made a tradition of it, and the whole family would pile in. It was also him that delivered the firewood once a month and made sure she was well stocked up on flour and sundries. She wondered if the others had designated him with those jobs, or if he''d chosen to do it himself, and if it was him who''d inherit the house when she was gone. Or would it stand empty, or would her daughter and her¡­ Her¡­ Rust blinked as a strawberry candy ricocheted off her arm, skidding across the floor and finding a new home underneath the piano. "What was that for?" "We lost you again." From Quilt, who had been readying another sweet, and was now instead unwrapping it for consumption. "What''s on your mind?" Rust shrugged. "I was thinking about my son. I think about them- my children- a lot." She rubbed harder at the floor, putting her all into it. "If we aren''t outside of heaven. If this is the real world somehow..." She paused for almost a minute, buffing the floor and thinking about how she wanted to word it, before giving up. "No, nevermind. I''m younger now absolutely, and the more I remember, the older I think I was. If there is a real world out there, and this is some, some fuckery, then I''m dead now and I should stop worrying about it." She hummed under her breath, a long, monotone sound, trying to work out what she had been going with this. "I was never at the point the nurses were coming out." She nodded towards Quilt, "But my kids were always about, nagging me to move closer or in with one of them. They didn''t like me being out here in this draughty old cottage on my own." She huffed, "But I had my chickens, I had my garden, the windows were new, and I was happy." She sighed, still feeling the pang of loss in her heart. "My family will either find me or they won''t. They had me for a long time, and nothing lasts forever. I was prepared to go." She moved to a new patch of floor. They were almost done with this half of the room and would have to work out how to do the other, soon. As she shuffled over, she gently nudged Shim, "Plus, I have you two, for as long as you both want to stay. Even if you are turning my house upsidown!" Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. She stretched up onto her knees, one hand on her back, and looked around again. "What do we keep? The armchairs were never so bad, the chintz one was always the best, but we may as well put the sofa in the kitchen. I don''t know what sort of duck they stuffed it with, but it''s still trying to get out, I reckon. I never did manage to find a comfortable spot on that thing." "And you want it in the kitchen?" Shim laughed, "where we''ll end up sitting on it even more often?" He smiled, eyeing up the floor as if considering how far he could slide across it on his knees. "But sure, we can clear out the all those boxes in the dust-corner, it might fit there." - Two days later and the room was ready for habitation. They had decided, by committee, to refer to it as ''The Living Room''. They had polished the floor to a sheen and rearranged the most comfortable of the chairs around the stove. The smell of dust and disuse had been replaced by the warm smell of wax, woodstove, and a faint hint of cooking from the adjoining kitchen. They had even pulled a couple of rugs out of one of the spare bedrooms, and the resulting room was warm and cosy. They hadn''t managed to fit the sofa into the kitchen, so it had instead been layered with blankets and cushions, until it was, if not comfortable, then at least semi-functional. Most of the chairs had been covered with blankets, actually. It was almost reminiscent of the sheets, but the light colours brightened the room. They''d dragged in the big oil lamp from Quilt''s apartment and made it at home in one corner, and the fancy dining chairs and other miscellany had found new haunts throughout the house. The old dining chairs, on the other hand, had found a home in the stove, may they rest in pieces. Rust sat perched on the edge of the sofa staring around with wide eyes and watching Shim mess around with the sewing table. He was trying to work out the mechanism for flipping the machine out, something she had never done. The chicken, Gertrude, was snuggled on her lap, but the others were confined to the cleared corner of the kitchen, having finally remembered the first tenet of chickendom, Poop on Everything. Under normal circumstances she would have left them outside, a little rain or snow wouldn''t hurt them, but this was too much, she had been afraid they might drown or get blown away, and it had been hard to even get to the coop to feed them. Beside Shim, Quilt was polishing the top of the piano with what remained of the wax, and outside the wind howled and rain lashed. They had left the curtains soaking in the bath, trying to do something about the sixty years of ingrained dust, and she wasn''t sure she wanted to put them back up. Luckily the place was well insulated and the windows double glazed, so the storm was providing atmosphere more than anything else. Her kids had insisted on getting the windows put in only a few years previous, probably because they didn''t want to find, come spring, that poor old grandma had frozen to death. Plus, she suspected that when she did finally go, there would be schedules and timeshares written up about who got to holiday in the house and when. It made her smile to think about what might have been. The parlour would have been the first thing to go, though, if she was being honest with herself, which she was forcing herself to be now. It had been old-fashioned and uncomfortable. Now it was still old-fashioned, but Quilt and Shim were rapidly sanding off the hard edges. She ran a hand over Gertrude again, the feathers soft and clean against her skin. The walls were painted a light, salmon pink, and she made a note to repaint them in white once the weather finally cleared. The store should have paint, and they''d have to go out soon either way, they were running out of food and one can only survive on eggs and sweets for so long. "We ought to repaint the walls." She stated, and Shim looked up from the machine, glanced around, nodded and went back to his fiddling. "The pink ain''t too bad, it makes the room a little warmer." He said, " I think I''ve almost got it. it''s not a mechanism at all, but it is held in by¡­" A moment later the sewing machine was sitting on the floor, and the table was being examined again. "Oh, there is a belt in here!" He pulled a rawhide leather belt out of the space where the machine had been, and after that a small needle box, which Rust recognised as having belonged to her grandmother. She''d always wondered where it had gone, but not enough to ever look for it. He inspected the belt for a moment, and then with a shrug handed it over to Quilt. "We should oil it or something before we use it, probably?" He sounded unsure, and Rust reached out for the belt. A moment later it was in her hands. "I''ve cleaned enough tack in my life," she said, running her fingers over it, "to know how to deal with leather. We had a stable out the back, at one point..." She frowned a little, feeling her brow scrunch up. "Fish oil, beeswax and a little lard, generally, if my memory isn''t failing me." She bent it a little, feeling the roughness of it with the pads of her fingers. "It doesn''t look like it''s ever been used, there''s no wear on it, It''s just dry. I guess maybe my mother wanted to get the thing working again at some point?" She gave a small shrug and handed the belt back, stroking the dozing chicken. "A little of the floor wax might do it, and we have some vegetable oil left in the kitchen. We can probably skip the lard." "That sounds like a plan," Shim grimaced, taking a small glob of wax on his fingers and heading towards the kitchen, "let''s skip the fish oil too, thanks." Quilt laughed, "it''s good for you, lad, plenty of vitamin¡­ Uh, sun vitamins, to keep you nice and healthy." He turned and made a face at her and she swiped at him with her cloth. The piano gleamed under her ministrations, but the rest of it wasn''t in such good condition. There was a hole in the stool, which she was blaming on mice, and Shim on somebody with a very pointy bum, and that was to say nothing about the actual sound of the thing. Wincing, Quilt opened up the keys and ran her eyes over them, but not her hands. "Looks clean enough in here, but god, the sound of it." "Don''t do it!" Shim shouted from the kitchen, although he was hard to hear over the howl of the wind. Quilt hesitated, one hand over the keys, and then with a vicious grin ran her hand across the whole thing. Clink clonk clink bong clink! Rust put her hands over her ears and there was laughter as Shim returned, a cup of warmed wax and oil in his hands. "Do you think we can tune it somehow?" he shouted over the racket, and Quilt shrugged, grinning and ceasing her banging of the keys. "Maybe we can find a book in our fantasy library, if this bleedin'' rain ever stops." "At least it''s not actual ''bleedin'''' rain," Rust said with a sigh, standing up and moving to return the chicken to the kitchen. "Let''s hope it stops soon. I''ll go put some beans in the oven, they should be ready by dinner." Quilt nodded, cracking open the upper lid of the piano and peering inside. "Oh hey, BRICKS," she exclaimed, and a moment later she pulled out three more bars. "Oh, and a BLOCK, score one for dinner!" She hopped down off the stool and took off after Rust, bars in hand, leaving Shim alone in the drawing room, gently rubbing wax into the belt. He could hear the two of them in the kitchen together, Rust grumbling good-naturedly over the stove and Quilt showing off the BLOCK, insisting they make a stew. The fire next to him crackled quietly, and as he looked out the window, he realised the wind had stopped. A moment later there was a quiet knock at the back door, and he placed the belt and wax down, meandering over to have a look. A few violent tugs later and it swung open, he should oil the hinges, the rest of the wax would work for that. He looked down at the girl on the step. Half his height and soaked to the skin, her hair was soaked flat to her head and she was shivering violently. She wasn''t even looking at him, staring at his feet with vacant eyes. He stepped back from the door and gestured for her to come inside. "Ah," he said, "you must be here about the piano." Chapter Twenty Five - Floating As her senses slowly returned, Rat found herself in an unfamiliar room. It looked like something out of an old magazine, all smooth lines and vintage furniture, the wood stove next to her an actual honest to god relic of the past. She stared at the cup in her hands, wondering how it had got there. The mug was filled with hot water, flavoured with- she took a slow sip- lemon and sugar. There was a strange foamy scum floating on the top, but it wasn''t bad. Very sweet. She took another sip, staring at nothing. There was a chip on the rim, but it wasn''t new, and the exposed ceramic was worn and darkened with age. She gave another sip tilting her head. There was writing on the inside, across the bottom, but she couldn''t quite make it out. She dipped the mug a little, trying to read it. ''this mug needs a refill!'' it read, in a sort of jaunty, handwritten font. Rat considered this as she took another sip. Did the mug need a refill? It seemed alright to her. Somebody was talking nearby, but their voice was far away and indistinct. There was a thick, warm blanket wrapped around her, and she realised her coat was gone, that she was down to her base layers, and that there was steam coming off her knees. She watched the steam rise, and considered this. - She awoke in the armchair, either minutes or hours later. Her eyes were already open and staring out of the storm-swathed windows. How long had she been asleep, and where was she? She gave a surreptitious glance around, blinking her dry, gritty eyes. It was night, and the room was dark, but she- she remembered this? Something about steam... The dream had been a pleasant one, she thought, but no, she was both awake now, and by the looks of it, in somebody''s sitting room. It wasn''t as old and weird as the general store, but there was something ancient about the room. Maybe it was the cast iron stove beside her, warm but not pumping out heat like she remembered from her dream state, or could it be the lines of the furniture? Somebody had draped a second blanket over her at some point to compensate for the lowered stove, tucking it in under her sides. The thought weirded her out, the idea that somebody had been in the room with her and that she hadn''t been aware of them at all. There was nobody in the room now though, that she could see, but there was a sliver of light emanating from a half-cracked door to somewhere. She lifted her head. The little piece of floor she could see looked like stone, a kitchen perhaps? There was the low hum of conversation and laughter coming from that direction, and she pulled the blankets in tighter, stretching upwards to have a better look around. Her backpack was on the floor by her feet, but it looked flat and empty. Her folding knife and the dice were on lying on the side, but there was no sign of her other belongings. Her heart tore a little. She had liked that blanket, and the coat had kept her alive. It was possible they were in the other room, but there were people in there¡­ She pursed her lips, trying to gain focus. She knew she wasn''t welcome here, wherever she was. The cottage she had been searching for, maybe? Sure, whoever had taken her in obviously felt sorry for her, with the blankets and the warm fire, but that wouldn''t last. Once they realised she didn''t have a home to return to, that she was their supposed responsibility now, then things would turn sour, and within a couple of days they would demand she leave, faster if they were hard-up for food already. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Rat rested her head on her knees, taking slow, deep breaths. What did she have left? She had her backpack, she had her knife. There were two warm blankets around her shoulders. For clothing, she was wearing only a button-up shirt and thin trousers, neither of which she recognised. Had they undressed her? Her stomach tied itself into a monkey''s fist, a leaden weight in her middle. Deep breaths. In and out. She would be fine. You can get through this. You survived this far; you can survive again. Deep breaths. As slow and quiet as her namesake on a rough night, Rat slid out of the chair. As her feet touched the floor, she noted that the wood was warm and smooth, and also that she''d lost her socks. Probably for the best, to be honest, they were worn through even before she had done the walk through the city. The knife went into a pocket, and one of the blankets into her bag. The inside of it was still a little damp, and a traitorous part of her wondered if she couldn''t wait just a little longer, sit a little closer to the stove for a while? But no, she was an invader here, she didn''t belong. They would find out as soon as they saw her awake, and would realise they hadn''t taken in a lost child, but a rat. A nuisance. Trouble. But what if I waited, if they''re going to kick me out anyway. What''s the difference to me, except a few hours more warmth? She shook her head. No, that was asking for trouble, and she wasn''t stupid. Drug addicts and worse lurked on the streets, just waiting for her to slip up. It only took one wrong move for everything to fall apart. They would kidnap her or hurt her or send her back to her family. Plus, although she didn''t know how she''d come to be here in this warm, soft room, nothing ever came for free. She let out a soft, slow breath, casting her eyes around the room once more. Only one of the windows had the curtains shut, but there was a door over by a dark shape, what she thought might be a piano. Somebody had said something about the piano, hadn''t they? She couldn''t remember. It was all so cold and fuzzy. She didn''t remember her trip through the forest, for all that she must have made it. There was¡­ A cat? An orange cat? Or was that the last time? She let out a quiet hiss, trying not to react to the violence of the oncoming headache. Deep breaths, think about anything else. There was another blanket spread over one of the chairs, and she wrapped it around her middle, to replace the one she''d secreted away in her backpack. She thought it might have been blue if the light were better, but here in the moonlight all colours were grey. She stared back, out of the window and at the storm outside, wishing she still had her straw hat, but the wind had taken it from her, a price paid for entering the forest. She remembered that. She shivered and stepped away from the chair, backpack under one arm. It was colder now, away from the stove, and she wished she knew where her socks and coat had gone. She''d liked that coat. She trailed one hand over the lid of the piano, enjoying the smoothness of the polished wood. Hopefully, there would be a porch or a mud room, and her boots would be there, maybe even her coat too. She tried not to think about the fact she was wearing somebody else''s clothing, wrapped in their blankets, standing in their house. That she was stealing from people who had taken her in. They were rich, they could afford it. They had a piano. She had never been a thief. Ok, the odd bit of lifting, but that was simply the reality of how she had to live, and it was always from the big chain stores, and only when she had no other options. And she only took food, or socks, or the odd pack of hand-warmers. Never anything expensive, and never from anywhere that couldn''t take the hit. And here she was, planning to steal two blankets and a lot of warmth, to reject a host''s hospitality and disappear into the night. Rat looked back and out of the window again, touching the door handle, gazing at the raging storm outside and hearing now the howling of the wind for the first time. Would she survive, if she went out into that? She was arguably worse off now than when she''d reached the edge of the city. She had warmed up, and that instilled weakness. She would feel the cold easier, and she had less clothing, no shoes. She''d lost most of her protective layers, the rain would go right through her, but what other options did she have? She didn''t know who lived here or what their temperaments were like, what they would expect of her, what they would ask her to do. She bit her lip so hard that when she forced herself to relax a moment later, she could feel the imprint of her teeth indented into the back of her lip. Why did there have to be people here? It would have been so much simpler if the cottage had been empty. That was where she was, right? She could have crawled in and warmed up by the stove, eaten the sweets, and made the place her own. It would have been as simple as that. Easy. But nothing was ever easy, she knew that by now, but it was a lesson she never quite finished learning. She looked around the room again one last time. She didn''t recognise this room from her brief look around the cottage. There had been a sitting room, but it was a closed place filled with dust and damp. This was warm and cosy, homely and dry. Maybe she was elsewhere. "Did I die in the forest, and you took me here?" she whispered to the air. "Like I died in the cellar?" She pursed her lips, and then opened the door to the outside. - From across the room, Shim watched as their small guest got up, staggered about for a moment, and then attempted to leave via the broom cupboard. This was gonna be a long night. Chapter Twenty Six Rat almost died when the cough sounded behind her, darting out into what she thought was the outside world, and instead ending up flailing forward, one foot inside a metal mop bucket, head knocking into a shelf. A moment later two hands tried to grab her, and she slapped away at them, kicking the bucket towards the attacker and trying to get deeper inside the cupboard. Shit shit shit, she was caught. She hissed, like a cat, turning over to face whoever was coming for her, and the figure backed off, arms up in front of themselves. Good, make them scared, Rat. You can get outta here. You can make it. She finally managed to get her foot out of the bucket, kicking it at him and making a terrible racket. "Whoa!" he shouted, taking another step backwards, before lowering his arms and reaching to pick up the bucket. "No need for-" She slammed into his legs, and a moment later was past him, making for the door she had seen before. Her rucksack was under one arm and she had scraped up her ankle in the scuffle, but she would be safe soon. Her bare feet skidded across the floor, but she managed to stay up as she ran, keeping her centre of gravity low and grabbing something from one of the tables as she passed, hurling it behind her to slow him down. There was a crash of breaking glass as the object hit the floor, followed by swearing from her attacker, and then she was out, slipping into the kitchen and slamming the door behind her. A hurried glance showed that it didn''t have a lock or bar she could throw, but it would hold him off for a moment. She took a deep breath and spared a moment to look around the kitchen. It was as she remembered it, if a little tidier. Stone flag floor and expensive stove, lit by a hanging lamp. What was new was the woman sitting at the table, a bowl in front of her and a spoon half raised to her lips. "What-" she started to say, but Rat was already rushing towards the outside-door, throwing open the bolts, bracing herself for the weather. Somewhere behind her, in the dark room, there was another loud crash, and the swearing got louder. The woman at the table placed her spoon down, looking between her and the living room, as Rat struggled with the bolts. She had managed to get the first one open, but it hadn''t opened the door, merely unshackled it from the¡­ Why was this door in two parts anyway, what even was the point? She hissed again, quieter this time, crouching small and flattening her back to the locked door, staring around with wide eyes. There was another exit off to the left, but she knew from before that it only led to a pantry. She hadn''t really investigated to the right the last time she was here, but she thought there might be a cellar that way, as well as stairs up. Cellars in fancy old places like this always had exits, right? The woman at the table pushed her chair back, her features and expression indistinguishable in the archaic light. "You''re awake then," she said as she stood, hesitating a moment, before heading towards the door to the sitting room. "What did you do to Shim?" The stream of curses grew louder as the door was opened, and the woman stuck her head inside. "You alright in there mate?" This was it, the right time to either flee or try the lock again, but a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over her, the adrenaline leaving her system all at once. She hadn''t realised until this moment- until seeing the untouched food, the light and the warm stove- she hadn''t realised just how very tired she was. The floor was cold beneath her, and she found herself on the flags. When had she sat down? A shadow loomed over her, and she stared up, not really seeing. Had somebody made the lamp brighter? "Here-" the woman knelt before her, gently pressing a bowl into her hands. "We don''t know where you''ve come from, ya little mite, but you''re too damn skinny." Rat stared down at it, feeling the warmth soak into her hands, contrasting with just how cold the rest of her was, and a moment later she started to shiver. "C''mon," with slow movements, the woman took the bowl away again, and Rat resented her for it immediately, tightening her eyes and preparing to fight, but the woman shook her head. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. "C''mon, with me, you''ll get it back in a moment. Can''t have you freezin'' to death by the door though, we ain''t managed to get the draught excluders up yet." She went to place the food on the table but hesitated as she saw the man from before, his foot taking centre stage, exactly where she wanted to put the soup. "You''re getting blood all over the table, lad," she sighed, "Can''t you- you''re gonna scare the kid. Get your bloody foot down you animal." "Gimme a minute, gimme a minute," he was tearing something, tape maybe, "I''m gonna have to go fire up the big lamp and wash up before the blood soaks into the floor. After we just made it all nice too!" He shot Rat a glare and she shrank back, she hadn''t meant to hurt him, she just¡­ She could leave, she could go right now and then she''d be out of their hair and they wouldn''t have to bother with her. She bit her lip, resisting the urge to speak. Stay quiet, stay small, take long, deep breaths and say nothing. You can get out of here. It''s gonna be fine. Deep breaths. He took a second to finish applying the bandage, before, with a pained expression he put it on the floor, looking around for a cloth to wipe the table with. "I''ll fix it up, get the kid a chair." She realised with a start that he was probably only three or four years older than her, the age of the teenagers who used to hang around the¡­ The¡­ She sank back to the floor, holding her head in her knees, trying to fight back the pain. A moment later there was a concerned noise, and somebody was picking her up! She struggled through it, sinking her teeth into their arm, and a moment later she was free once again, skidding across the smooth wooden floor of the living room and towards the couch. "Watch out, there''s glass!" the boy shouted, and she adjusted her trajectory, narrowly avoiding doing herself an injury. The couch was raised up on stick legs, and if she could wedge herself under it, hide until they¡­ Rat considered, as she skidded across the floor on all fours, that maybe her brain wasn''t working quite right. She should be sensible and calm, ingratiate them, try talking, asking to be let go. She was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It had worked in the past. She would find another arch to sleep under, another cellar. She jammed herself under the sofa, cutting open her arm on a fleck of broken glass, but barely feeling it, only noticing the streak of darkness across the floor. And then, silence. Blessed silence, the only noise the patter of the rain against the windows. They had shut the door to the kitchen, and a face looked through at one point, but nobody attempted to pursue her. She was simply left alone, in silence. There was a creak of floorboards from above, and the quiet crackle of the woodstove off to the side. She wondered if they had gone to bed, it was still dark out after all. Rat curled up under the sofa, watching the door and wishing she''d gotten a chance to eat the soup. It was so warm in her hands, why had she run¡­ - Outside, a cockerel crowed, and she heard the footsteps pause for an instant. What little she could hear of the conversation from the kitchen was getting louder, the tone more worried. There was no laughter now, but it was still undertaken at a four-am volume. A creak from stairs hidden somewhere off the kitchen, and the light coming from under the door brightened as more lamps and candles were lit. "Are you in there?" asked a woman''s voice from the doorway, not the same one who had spoken before. The woman before had a deep accent, but this was was clipped, more southern, old money. Rat stayed quiet where she was, taking deep, silent breaths. If they couldn''t see her, they might assume she had left. She had lost her blanket during the fight. There was an exaggerated sigh from the doorway. "You didn''t cut yourself, did you?" the voice asked, "you better not be bleeding all over my couch. A hesitation. "Or do, I don''t care, I never liked it anyway." There was quiet laughter from behind her and words spoken too softly for Rat to make out, and then the room brightened as a light was carried in, a candle, maybe? "There should be a brush in the cupboard," the new woman spoke, and Rat shrank back deeper under the sofa, away from the approaching light. "Come outta there, child," she said, before kneeling down with a groan. "I swore when we last had to move this thing that I was done moving furniture, so please don''t make me bring in the lad to lift it up. Please?" She extended a hand, and Rat resisted the urge to snap at it, but the hand was quickly drawn back, the blood Rat had left on the floor coating her fingertips. A sigh, quieter and more genuine than the one from before. "Come on out, little one, we''re not gonna hurt you. I promise." Rat held her breath. Deep, slow breaths. They didn''t know she was here. There was silence for a while as the woman got up, then footsteps, and all of a sudden the weight of the couch was lifted off her back. Rat tried to run, but there were already strong arms holding her up, her feet weren''t touching the floor, and they weren''t in biting range this time. With vivid clarity, she remembered the first time the social worker had approached her, and how she had panicked. She had ended up leaving everything behind and climbing up a wall, fleeing across the rooftops. She didn''t remember how she''d done it, but her fingers had been raw and bloody afterwards, and when she went back, the wall was over three times her height. He had never tried to approach her like that again, instead relying on throwing gifts at her and getting out before she had a chance to run. She knew from his letters that he had been pretty freaked out about it, and that there had been blood on the wall afterwards. He didn''t say he was freaked out, of course, but it was there in the subtext, and his next three packages had all contained antiseptic sprays, bandages, gauze and plasters. She didn''t have the heart or willing to tell him that she had nowhere to store that stuff. She thought about those rolls of bandages, as she struggled to escape being dragged across the room. She had ended up wrapping it all in carrier bags and tape, leaving it stored under an abandoned commercial bin. An emergency first aid kit, should she ever need it. She wondered if it was still there, or if the rats had gotten to it yet. She would never find out. Chapter Twenty Seven - Sneak Rat was sitting in an armchair, legs pulled up and a half-bowl of soup warming her lap. Somebody was talking to her, using their outside words, but it was muffled, the only real sound the pounding in her head. She picked the bowl up with both hands and took a sip, noting that her palms were rubbed raw and that she had a long cut down the side of her thumb. When had that happened? There was blood on her sleeve too, which made her a little lightheaded to look at, so she didn''t look at it. She looked up instead. The teenager was sitting on the chair nearest the lamp, his foot up on his knee, and the younger woman was examining him, wielding a pair of tweezers and a little bottle of something or other. They both looked tired and worn out. Rat took another sip of the soup, and watched. "You gotta clean it properly," the woman sighed, "the glass is probably still in there" "But it huurts," the boy complained in return, "I thought this was gonna be an easy night and now look at me, I look like I''ve been through a warzone!" "Ah you ain''t that bad, we''ll get you patched up by morning." "But what if it gets infected!" "That''s why we''re cleaning it you idiot." She stuck the tweezers in the wound, more carefully than Rat would have expected from her words, and the boy, Shim, she remembered now? Hissed in pain. A moment later there was a rush of blood and the glass piece was extracted. Some mopping up with a cloth and the bottle, and in no time his foot was clean and wrapped. "There, ya see, now stop being such a baby and let me look at your arm." Shim sighed, holding up his forearm to the light. "I don''t think she even broke the skin, just scared me, was all." Rat inspected her own teeth marks from a distance. Red blotches against his pale skin. Served him right. She went to drink more of the soup, but realised the bowl was empty. When had that happened? For a moment, so fast she almost missed it, his eyes flicked over to her, and then away. Prey acknowledging a predator. She pulled her blanket around her and sank deeper into the chair, wishing she had more soup. She hadn''t even noticed herself eating it, but it had been very good. Outside the sun was starting to rise, casting in dappled light through rain-spotted windows. The storm was still ongoing, but most of the ferocity had gone out of it now, the winter gales finally blown out. His eyes flicked to her again, and then to the kitchen. "Man, it''s a good thing we''ve got all that extra soup in the kitchen." He said, a little too loudly, and then, very pointedly not looking at her, he staggered to his foot and started hopping out of the room, steadying himself on the furniture. "If you could grab that bowl from over there, Quilt," he nodded in her direction, but not directly at her, "that would be great." He made a pained noise as his foot hit the floor at a bad angle, and Quilt watched him go with an unimpressed expression. "It''s not that bad you baby, you barely scratched it." He tried to make a rude gesture at her but almost fell instead, and she snorted laughter after him, before looking at Rat. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Rat shrank back in the chair, trying to make herself small. All the doors were locked, but there were stairs off the kitchen, maybe one of the upstairs windows would be open and she could get either out or onto the roof. She just had to- "- with us?" Rat blinked, and realised the bowl was gone from her hands, missing the residual warmth. An extended hand from the woman, Quilt? But she shook her head, shrinking back, and then, that was it. No confrontation, no more questions, she just left. Was it that easy? - The soup returned, this time carried by the older, still unnamed woman. "You gave us quite a fright, back there." She said, handing over the bowl. Rat took it with nervous hands, resisting the urge to throw it back, to flee. She was gonna use her person-brain, not her rat one. Food was important. Eat, establish rapport, then flee when their guards are down. "We''ve been looking for others, but we must''ve missed you," she continued. After the soup came a handful of sweets, wrapped in bright paper and taken from a trouser pocket, slightly warm. "Here, you look like you need the sugar, and my grandkids always liked these." She scattered them on Rat''s lap. "Do you have a name?" Rat hesitated before shaking her head. She did, of course, but she wasn''t willing to give it, couldn''t speak. The woman shrugged. "We lost ours too, when we came here, but we picked names for ourselves. Strange ones, looking back at it, but we weren''t exactly in the best state of mind back then. I''m Rust by the way, the other woman is Quilt, and the lad is Shim." Rat made no reaction, and Rust hesitated, before looking around, and then out of the window. "Weather seems to be clearing up, I guess you bought the sun with you." She bit her lip, "wait here a minute." - A few minutes later and she was back, a big orange cushion in her arms. "This here is Gertrude. She''ll keep you warm, but don''t let her into the soup, she''s a greedy old bugger." Rat flinched at the contact as the cushion was tucked in next to her. It was warm though, and feathery? "And don''t let her off the blanket, we can wash that, but the chair is another matter," Rust continued, and Rat stroked one hand across the cushion. It burbled a soft noise. A chicken? There had been chickens back when she was a kid, but they were all red or white things, and they weren''t pets. She''d tried to catch one once and it had taken three of them to corner it as it shrieked alarm. She patted the chicken warily, eyes darting between it and Rust, her other hand trying to keep the soup away from its inquisitive beak. She wanted to say something, to speak, but she couldn''t. Not right now. It was like the words were trapped inside her, locked up, and to release them would break something important. A body thrown through a wall, shattered. Her arm itched, and she resisted the urge to scratch it, wondering instead how she was going to drink the soup with only one hand. Rust sat and watched her for a second, and then awkwardly got up. "I''ll be in the kitchen, if you need anything. We were preparing to go out into the city today, pick up some food and paint, if the store''s still there anyway." She looked around, "but you''re welcome to come with us, if you feel up to it, or you can stay here." She bit her lip, "The bedroom upstairs with the green door, you can have that room if you''d like. There''s some clothing in there that was for my- my-" she held still for almost a full minute, before carrying on, "- my grandchildren, for when they stayed over. There should be something in there that''ll fit. Quilt can look at your arm, if you want?" Rat shook her head very slightly, and Rust gave a final, awkward, shrug, before heading off towards the kitchen. "Suit yourself," She paused as she reached the door, seemed like she was about to say something, but then she shook her head and left, closing the door behind her. Rat sat alone in the brightening room, drinking her soup and stroking the chicken. The stove was warming her feet, the soup her hands and the chicken, Gertrude? her lap. She couldn''t remember the last time she''d been warm. The blanket was a little itchy around her shoulders, but it was clean and fresh, smelling very faintly of wood. They didn''t seem like bad people, for all that she''d fought them. There were no drugs on display, the place was clean and well looked after, what little she''d seen of it, and they''d even tidied away all the glass and blood already. But, appearances could be decieving. Beside her the chicken dozed, and there was the sound of rain against the windows. Behind that the faint sound of birdsong. A chicken was laying an egg somewhere outside, and there was quiet conversation coming from the kitchen. She heard the sound of somebody ascending the wooden stairs, and then above the squeak of floorboards. What would her dad have wanted her to do? She hadn''t thought of him in so long. What would he have done, if he was one of the people in this big, rich house, and he had found her on the doorstep in the middle of a storm? He had been kind and warm and loving. He would have taken her in and asked no questions, he would have given her soup, freaked out about how close she was to the chicken, and then tried to call her parents. He would have told her to stay as long as she needed, but he had been unique, and now he was gone. She thought about this for a minute, knees against her chest. She missed him, and he wasn''t here. She would wait until they left and then sneak out, that was the plan. Chapter Twenty Eight Rust sat at the kitchen table, watching the sun rise above the distant city. Shim and Quilt were sitting with her in companionable silence. Shim with his head resting on the table, and Quilt not looking much better, her face tight and tired. "That is not a child." Shim said, his voice muffled by the wood, and Quilt reached over and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Just ''cause she bit you doesn''t mean she ain''t a kid." "You said it, she bit me!" Shim waved one arm in the air briefly, not moving his head from its place against the table, "and she threw a glass at me, and she knocked me over, coulda killed me!" Rust leaned over and patted him on the other shoulder, and he grumbled something incomprehensible, shrugging them both off, lifting his head blearily. Quilt leant back on the chair, her arms hanging loose behind her. "Are we still goin'' out today?" "Not me, I just wanna sleep," grumbled Shim, "let me go back to bed and wake me up in another thousand years." "Come on," Rust said, "you''re young, you can go one night without sleep. Didn''t you used to work nights?" "Yeah, but I also used to sleep during the day to counter it, and I wasn''t being attacked throughout the night." Shim paused, "well, not normally. There was that one time where my boss wasn'' expecting me to be in and thought I was a robber." The two women looked at him expectantly, but he didn''t elaborate. "She''s probably just been on her own a long time, poor little thing." Quilt said finally, "must be traumatic, kid can''t be more than ten right? If she''s been awake and alone half as long as we have¡­" She trailed off, expression sad, and Rust nodded. "She didn''t bite me, so I guess I''m doing better than you two." Rust glanced towards the door to the living room, "I left her with Gertrude, but she''ll want to be back outside with the others sooner or later." "Are you sure that''s safe?" Shim spoke over her, lifting his head again and leaning back on his chair, "What if she attacks her, the kid attacks the chicken, I mean. I''m pretty sure she could take on even Gertrude. I''m so bleedin'' tired." Rust shook her head. "She''s been through a lot, I think. I hope. I didn''t get the impression of uncontrollable violence from her." Shim snorted, "sure, just tell that to the twenty different bruises I''ve got goin'' right now, and my poor foot!" This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He waggled his foot somewhere under the table, and Quilt yawned. Rust resisted the urge to do the same. "We can skip goin'' out for one more day, we still have uh, eggs and at least meals worth of beans left, although it goes less far with four of us." He squinted towards the pantry, which was mostly unused and filled with boxes. "I oughta clear that out, but not today. I feel like trash." Rust resisted the urge to pat his shoulder again. "Do you really think she walked here through the snow?" she asked instead, and Shim nodded. "She was wrecked when she landed on the doorstep. Didn''t know if I was lookin'' at a kid or a mop. She basically passed out as I opened the door, and she was soaked to the skin." He sighed, holding his head in his hands and exaggerating his tiredness only a little, "She was freezin'' too, and I found snow on her, so she must''ve come from the City." Rust looked at him, and then over at Quilt. "I got her into some dry clothes," Quilt nodded, taking over from Shim, "but she was barely concious. I dunno if she was even aware what I was doin''. Shim pulled the clothes outta his room, said there was a whole box in there." "My kids clothes, stuff they grew out of decades ago." Rust said, "made it easier, come holidays, for them to stay over with the grandkids, and it didn''t matter if they got mucky during a day trip." Shim leant back, mimicking Quilt and looking out of the window at the dawn-lit city. "Bet it was like, the best thing, comin'' over here to grandmas. You had what, horses and chickens and a whole forest to play in? I bet it were like magic." Rust laughed under her breath, "One pony, and he was older than the gods, but probably, they were all city kids so they weren''t used to any of it. Thought the chickens were gonna bite them, never seen grass, fascinated by the trees." She smiled, and Shim squinted at her blearily. "I''m gonna go back to bed," he decided finally. "Shout me if our little wildcat wakes up and does something interesting." He stood, wobbled on his feet for a second, and then hesitated. "We should look again at gettin'' something to sit on in here that ain''t just the wooden chairs. The sofa was a good idea, then I could just sleep in here." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "If you can get her to stop freakin'' out, she might appreciate a bath, the chicken seems good as long for calmin'' her down, as you don''t think she''s gonna neck it" "She''s not." Rust stated, and he nodded. "Ok, good, I''ll see you in a couple of hours" A minute later he was gone, the slow creaks from above pinpointing his path. "How''re you doing, with everything?" Rust asked Quilt, and the other woman shrugged. "Been worse, been worse. Didn'' like how scared the girl gets every time we so much as look at her, but I guess trauma is to be expected, in this kinda situation." She sighed. "Do you think there''s others out there, or parents who''re lookin'' for her?" Rust bit her lip, looking away, and Quilt sighed. "Maybe other people''re wakin'' up, that means. Like your family. I hope there''s people lookin'' for her, it''s a bum deal, being'' stuck here with us otherwise." "I looked at her, and I saw my grandchildren," Rust finally said, and Quilt nodded. "I figured. Is she one of yours, ya think?" "No," Rust stared out the window, "I don''t recognise her enough for that to be the case, but she''s around the right age. The thought of one of them being trapped in that big empty city alone¡­" She placed one hand on her chest, looking at nothing. "Makes me sad to think, that they might be in that situation. They''re just kids. They don''t deserve any of this." Quilt reached over and touched her hand, and Rust blinked at her, before smiling a melancholy smile. "Oh, it''s ok. We''ll keep looking, and if the are people out there, there''s nothing I can do except look after those who turn up on my doorstep. It just... It''s hard to imagine, a kid going through all this, and alone." Quilt nodded, yawned, and got to her feet. "I''m gonna leave you with the wildcat then, and try an'' get some sleep too." With a nod, she was gone, heading up the stairs after Shim and leaving Rust alone in her kitchen. Chapter Twenty Nine - Washing Day After some deliberation, Rust locked her basket over her arm, left a note on the kitchen table, and started out for the City. She had left some beans in the stove and a second note for the mystery child. She had been asleep in the chair when Rust looked in, backpack clutched in her arms like a teddy. Rust hoped she could read. It was a funny thought, that those hastily written scribbles were the closest thing they had to literature. Hadn''t there been a bookcase in the store? She really ought to check that out. Poor kid, though, who knew what she''d been through. Waking up alone in a strange city was bad enough, waking up in one with your memories missing and about the End, she couldn''t imagine what that would be like. It made her heart ache and her eyes tear up to even think about it. - The rain was still coming down, but it was a fine mist now rather than the monsoon it had been only hours before, and her boots squelched in the mud. It felt like the city got further and further away each time she visited, but she''d never bothered to check. Maybe she could mention it to Shim. Knowing him, he''d go out and count their steps or something, measuring it daily. He was a practical kid, more than she''d ever been as a youngster. Most of her practicality was born of necessity rather than any real enjoyment. Shim though, he seemed to genuinely enjoy making and fixing things, and watching him tackle jobs with abandon brightened her days no end. Rust looked up as she walked, marvelling at the sheer life within the forest. Before the storm, the woods had felt like a placeholder, something to fill space between other patches of world, but now it was a space in its own right. She could hear a myriad of birds and animals, all shouting and crying for attention. She could see movement in the branches above her, and the trees themselves were brimming with spring growth. Everywhere there were small green shoots, tiny leaves, tiny white flowers, and the joy of spring. The smell in the air was different, too, earthy and correct. This wasn''t the sleepy forest she had known her whole life, but it also wasn''t the dead thing it had been a month earlier. An orange cat flashed across the path as she walked, in pursuit of some kind of small rodent, and she smiled, happy. - The FEUD MARKET- as the sign proclaimed- was still where she''d left it, which was a relief, but the city around it was changing. There were big cracks running through the buildings, and small signs of decay, as well as little bits of greenery taking root in every split and crack. She only recognised a few of the plants, and had names for none of them, but they were thriving in the post-storm world. The roads were filled with deep potholes as if they''d undergone years of wear, and each of those was filled with water, plants, and small wildlife. She had slowed her walk and knelt by one. It was filled with tadpoles and frogs and little drips of algae, and she remembered how her children would bring such things home in buckets. The store was the same as ever, except for more cracks in the facade. The sign had also taken a beating, the paint having run in the rain until all that was left was bare, twisted wood, and streaks of colour down the side of the building. Inside, it was more humid than she remembered, but nothing seemed damaged, and no animals had made their home here yet. The odd lighting the place had always had was still there, coming from no source she could discern, and the ceiling had lowered some, but those were the only differences. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. She headed towards BOATS, patting the cashier''s desk as she passed. She would pick up something for the chickens and something for dinner, that was a good plan. - She considered taking the whole trolley home with her, but eventually stowed the impulse. If others were waking up now, then they might need it, and it was only the one that she could find. Plus it would be more of a hindrance than a help, what with the state of the roads now. She would come back with the other two, or three, tomorrow to restock properly, but for now, she had chicken feed and dinner, and that was enough. She had inspected the bookcase and found it as she remembered it. Crudely painted wood with one extremely obvious lever to open the "secret door". Behind the door had been candles. Advertised at a 50% discount, yesterday only! It was a useless sign, but she had put some into her basket anyway, you could never have too many candles. Now she stood outside the market and stared down the road, thinking. The hints of green and the mist gave it a wild look, unlike the sterility of before, and she knew it would get only more so from now on. Trees and bushes taking root, animals moving in. The child had been out there on her own. What if there were others, wandering lost and alone in this huge place? Slowly being subsumed by the jungle. What if they hadn''t been lucky enough to be left in the city at all, and were lost in the endless stretches of forest? She pursed her lips, placed her basket gently on the step, and then walked back into the store. - "What''ve you been up to?" Shim raised an eyebrow at her paint-splotched appearance, and Rust grinned, handing him the basket. "I thought about what you were saying before and decided to get a start on it. Started painting main street. How''s the wild-child doing?" Shim shrugged warily. "She was still asleep last I checked, so I let the chicken out, but she might''ve worked out how to open the back door by now." He made a gesture towards the living room, "might be a good time to check on her, see if she''s hungry. Maybe now it''s daytime she''ll be less¡­ Aggressive?" Rust shrugged and headed towards the parlour. "We can only hope," - Well, she wasn''t hiding under the sofa, and she hadn''t fled yet, so both were good signs, but Rust was a little at a loss about what to do next. She had tried talking to the girl but got no response, and talking in the other way, which got harder to do every day, didn''t seem to work either. She wouldn''t even make eye contact, and after a few minutes, Rust gave up and headed back towards the kitchen. Maybe she was approaching this the wrong way. Rust had tamed cats in the past, when she was very young and her parents had had their smallholding. The trick was to not look at them, to place the food nearby and pretend you hadn''t noticed they were there. If I can''t see you, you can''t see me. A child was generally smarter than a cat, but you never knew what trauma could do to people. Hopefully, she would learn to trust them, in time. She should have a decent enough life to fall back on, it would just take time for those memories to reassert themselves. Rust carefully set down the food on the coffee table, glancing towards the stove. The room was starting to chill with the windows exposed, but was it worth firing it back up right now? It was almost midday, and the weather did seem to be improving. She stopped to look around. This was the first time she''d seen the room in full daylight, and she barely recognised it. Warm woods and cosy blanket-covered chairs, all clean and fresh. The pink of the walls offset the creams and pastels of the covers, and might even be worth keeping. Why hadn''t she done the room up years ago? She had clung on for so long. Her kids had even suggested it on several occasions, offering to pay for new decor and furnishings, but she had resisted every time. "You were such a stubborn old woman," she muttered to herself, looking around. With a grimace, she shook off the self-deprecating thoughts, and instead pulled back the curtain to the back door. A minute later she was outside. The sheets were still there, piled up on the grass, and she rolled her shoulders in resignation. She would probably have to revive the big copper pot in the basement for this one, God help her. She hadn''t used the thing in donkey''s years, but it was too much of an effort to get rid of, some custom job, built into the house two hundred before and barely used since. She had only ever fired it up under dire circumstances, and always with a little apprehension. The day she got a washing machine had been one of the best days of her life. It should have still been in the utility room, but investigation had proved it was not, a conspicuous gap where it had once stood. Another one of the strange, missing things. She was noticing them more lately. There was an outside door to the cellar, but she was going to have to cut the greenery away so she could access it. It had been wild even before she died. She hadn''t been doing as much maintenance as she should, in the last couple of years, and she bit her lip, trying not to think back on that. Oh well, there was time now to make up for it, and she knew where the secateurs were stored. Grumbling, she marched off to fetch Shim, leaving the back door open behind her. Chapter Thirty The older woman had spoken at her for a while, before deciding, much to Rat''s relief, that she wasn''t worth bothering with. She reminded Rat of a badger, or what she imagined a badger would be like if you were writing one into a story. Big and solid and grumpy, but not unkind. Probably. Rat couldn''t really say about the last one, she didn''t know any of these people yet, but she seemed nice, on the surface at least. She had bought her some food, at least, and she had left the door open, which was either a sign of trust, or a sign that she wanted Rat out of her house already. The words had been fuzzy and far away, and she had been doing her best not to listen. The cool breeze coming in through the open door was calming, bringing with it the scent of spring rain, and she could see the chickens scratching up the yard. She could see Gertrude out there, and the thought that somebody had moved the chicken while she was dozing upset her, that she hadn''t woken up or noticed. She had to do better. Being cold and tired was no excuse. She kept looking out of the open door, snuggled up in her blankets. The weather was better now, muddy and damp but no longer life-threatening. She could easily make it back to the general store, and she had spare boots there, as well as a spare set of clothes. Her coat was still missing, but she could replace it. Her eyes darted towards the bowl of stew on the table, lidded with a slice of bread, and then to the kitchen door. Was the food a trap? What would she lose, if she accepted this gift? Her human brain was gradually reasserting control, and it told her that the food wasn''t a trap. It told her that they wanted to feed her because she was a guest, and that was what you did with guests, or because she was a child, and that was what you did with children. You didn''t poison guests or children. The animal side of her said it was likely to be a bowl of pure poison, with some extra sprinkled on the bread, just in case, and she shouldn''t touch it. She hadn''t seen it prepared she had no idea of the provenance. If it wasn''t poisoned purposefully, then it might be old, or expired. Leave it, find something else, something safe. If it somehow wasn''t poisoned and past it''s dates, then they were luring her in, it said, so that they could... They could... The logic broke down a little at that point. All the things that it would normally accuse them of wanting to do impossible in this new world. That was all that was allowing the human part to reassert itself at all. These people; they couldn''t make her go home, as home no longer existed, and they couldn''t put her into foster care, because that didn''t exist either. Her ''support team'' was gone, there were no local authorities. There were no institutional homes for troubled youths and no young men with soft voices and understanding eyes, writing letters she would never respond to. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. If she wanted to leave, she could do so at any time. All she had to do was walk away. She told herself this as she uncoiled from the blankets and reached for the food, fully ready to bolt should the knot slip and the box come down atop her. As she moved, one of the chickens stuck its, her? head through the doorway. She was a tiny thing, with bright eyes and feathers out of a children''s colouring book, each one a vibrant orange, outlined in thick black. The chicken spotted the soup, and took a careful step into the room, looking around as if she knew she wasn''t supposed to be there. Another careful step, towards the coffee table. Rat drew back, returning to her previous position, as the bird traversed the room more boldly now. A few steps more, and then she darted towards the slice of bread, grabbed it in her beak and rushed back outside, feet sliding on the waxed floor. Rat watched her go, bemused. She could hear a scuffle from outside, and she watched as a fight broke out over the bread. It took almost a minute for things to calm down again, the prize torn into pieces. Rat ate the stew slowly, trying to talk her rat brain into allowing her to stay. There was food here, and shelter. A bedroom, even, all of her own. And there was people. Social bonds were important, even to rats. But, for all they seemed nice, would they be like the family she had been placed with, shortly after she had run away that first time? That had told her when to come and when to go, that she couldn''t go out at night and that she had to attend school each day and obey the rules they set down. She had left within a week, slipping out after their poorly enforced curfew. She wondered, sometimes what the fallout had been for them, but she didn''t feel too bad about her choice. She hadn''t wanted to be there in the first place, and it had been a learning experience all round. The base of the food was the same as her earlier meal, but there were spices in it now, and she savoured each bite. She had missed hot food deeply. She could always test the water, she told Rat. Go out during the day, come back at night, see how they reacted. If it worked out, then she could stay on her own terms, and if it didn''t, she had leeway to find herself a new den without dying of exposure or starvation. They could show her where they were getting supplies, maybe she could move in there. Rats are social creatures, she said again, trying to drive the point home. That''s why you enjoyed sitting in the crowds, it''s why you lived in the library and tried to do the schooling stuff on your own, even if you couldn''t face going to the building. That''s why you miss your dad so bad. She bit her lip so hard that she was afraid it might bleed. Deep breaths. The sun had moved in the sky by the time the attack passed, and the chickens were long gone, the bowl cool in her hands, all residual heat gone. With an inward sigh, she placed it on the table, and went to check out the forest. - Outside it was almost like late spring, if not early summer. If she hadn''t almost died the night before, she never would have believed it could change so fast. The ground was cool and soft beneath her, as her toes sank into the forest mud, and she enjoyed the sensation of it. Even when she was a kid in the woods with her dad, they had always had to look out for bits of broken glass and other, worse things amongst the leaves. The idea of being able to walk around barefoot was a novelty, and she decided to make the most of it. She would explore, find a potential place to sleep, and then come back at nightfall. If they wouldn''t let her back in, then at least she''d have options, and maybe she''d find something cool, out there in the woods. Smiling to herself, trying not to think too hard about her still half-empty stomach, or how close she had come to death only hours before, Rat set off into the forest. Chapter Thirty One - Bored Quilt was bored, bored out of her mind. She had always lived an active life. She had trained to be a nurse directly out of school, and after a decade on the wards had fallen out and into district nursing, doing agency work on the side. She had always considered going back into hospital work, but had never gotten around to it. She missed the camaraderie and the business of it, but she didn''t miss the pay, or the racism. At least out in the community she had a regular set of clients, and she could pass on those whom she didn''t get along with. Or who didn''t get along with her. When she wasn''t working, she had been hanging out with friends at the pubs and clubs, going on holiday, or more rarely, reading. She had been considering training to be a midwife, it was only a two-year course. She had been on three dates, in the month before the End. None of them had come out to anything, but she didn''t mind. She enjoyed the process of the dates, the rush of getting to know somebody, but she didn''t enjoy the longer prospects so much. Still, she had made some good friends, and it was always good to keep your options open. To expand your mind, and meet people from different social circles. But here, there was nothing. No people, no pubs, no bars and no work. She didn''t even have books. God help her, she was getting into gardening, that was how far she had fallen. Her, who couldn''t even raise a houseplant. Sure, they had to do it because without they''d starve, and they''d somehow managed to rustle up seeds and get some starter plants going, because that was apparently what you did when gardening, but it was absolutely not her scene. She had also tried knitting, Shim had shown her how to use the sewing machine, and Rust had given her a whetstone and all of the gardening equipment and let her go wild, but while it filled a couple of hours, none of it was interesting. There was no stimulation there. Even the arrival of the little wildcat didn''t do much to spice it up. She mostly hovered about until they let her leave in the morning, and then tracked mud in again at night. She didn''t speak, and her emotional responses were muted to a frightening degree, although she was getting a little more open as time went on. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Quilt had considered following her a couple of times, seeing where she went, or even asking to tag along, but there had never been a good moment to ask. She wouldn''t let any of them near her, that much they had found out early on. She didn''t like being woken up in the mornings if she''d slept in, and getting a positive response to any question was like pulling teeth. The only way to interact with her was to ignore her as best you could, which did not make for an interesting relationship. She was mostly just another mouth to feed, although Quilt suspected that she might have helped with the house and garden if asked in the right way, as she had started collecting the eggs for them in the mornings. She sighed again, so very bored. The weather had settled into ''late spring, early summer'' over the past couple of weeks, and the chickens were making the most of it. She watched as they scratched up the yard and tried to find a way through the fence to the newly planted vegetable garden. She had also made the most of it, for a while, sunbathing in various places, but you could only be on holiday for so long before you wanted to go home She had even, at one point, traipsed all the way back to her old apartment, hoping to find the book from her Day, but it hadn''t been there. Nothing had. Where her apartment had been there was only an empty room, the white curtains flapping in the breeze. It had freaked her out a little. She hadn''t told the other two, but the thought that it was simply gone, that the place she had been found or born, that she had defined, the place that was so much her that it had come with her even after death, was gone. What did that mean for her? She had stood there for a long time, staring at the empty room, and then she had left. As she descended, there had been vines growing up the stairs and shoots pushing their way through the cracks in the walls. The concrete steps had been slippery with algae, and birds were flying in and out through the broken windows. She hated it. Maybe somebody who wasn''t her would have found it beautiful. They would have spoken in poetic verse about the beauty of the green, about the plumage of the birds and the metaphorical bullshit of a world returning to nature. They would have written songs, whittled a guitar from twigs, become an unknown star. She hated it. She wanted bars, she wanted libraries, she wanted clean concrete. She wanted human spaces, maintained by human people, who would serve her a drink and show her to a nice clean table, where a human person she didn''t know awaited her. She wanted to go to human houses, along well-maintained and human-sized streets. She wanted to stand in peoples living rooms and see to the sores on their legs, on their arses, in their minds. Instead, all she had was nature, and her and nature had never been friends. Rust and Shim seemed to both be thriving, and the wildcat was neither here nor there, but her, she just wasn''t built for this. She wanted to go home. Chapter Thirty Two The child was gone when Rust next checked, the back door open and the bowl empty on the table. She didn''t know how she felt about that, except maybe a little sad, But she didn''t have time to wallow in it, there were things to do. She had sheets to wash and food to cook, a garden to tame and a city to paint. Shim had declared earlier that he knew how to sew, which was news to the rest of them, and he was going to get the machine going once the sheets were clean and dry. She looked forward to seeing what he came up with, even if they weren''t short for clothes yet. Quilt was wandering in and out of the kitchen, glaring at the chickens and muttering about books, so she needed some attention too. The girl would come back or she wouldn''t, and it was already mid-afternoon, the day was getting on! - Wildcat, as they''d decided to call her amongst themselves, came back that night. She was both muddy and damp, and Rust refused to let her into the kitchen until she had washed in a bucket, but she had come back. She was still mute, which the three of them discussed later, but all they could do was give her space. She stood there, awkward and freshly scrubbed, unsure how to act, and after a minute''s silent deliberation Rust handed over her food and pointed her towards the stairs. "The green bedroom is yours, if you want it." She paused, not making eye contact, and then grabbed the food, charging off up the stairs like a startled cat. All was quiet in the kitchen. "It could be a trauma thing." Quilt murmured, "Or it could be like, her brain ain''t right." "How''d you mean?" asked Shim, and Quilt shrugged. "We lost our memories but kept our selfs, maybe she lost some of her self too, kept more memories, but she''s only a kid." She hummed a thought, "Rust-" she nodded at Rust, "no offense, but you were old." Rust nodded back, curious where this was going. "So you were like, real old, and because of that maybe, you have the most memories out of either of us. You remember your kids and your grandkids and your chickens and like, small men who came to look at your attic." She raised her arms. "Me, I''m like, in the middle. I remember some stuff but it''s all disjointed an'' weird." She nodded at Shim, "and him, he''s young, like a baby young-" "Hey!" "-like a baby, and he remembers nada, nothin'', only little bits, and only when they''re dragged to the surface kickin'' and screamin''." "I see where you''re going with this." Said Rust, and Quilt sighed. "Kid''s even younger, like, barely in her teens I reckon? She probably didn'' even have much memories in the first place, and if she''s been through trauma, stuck on her own in the dead city, maybe she doesn'' wanna remember the rest, and that''s broken her or whatever." Rust leant against the wall and stared up at the sheets hanging from the airer, thinking. "She seems to understand what we say well enough, so I don''t think it''s a language barrier, and she wouldn''t speak in the- the other way either. I think all we can do is give her space and see if she comes round. God knows, it took us long enough." Quilt nodded, and Shim looked thoughtful. "Do you think it''s safe, lettin'' her out there alone? For all we know there''s predators and who-knows-what else in the forest now. What if she gets eaten by a bear?" Rust shook her head, "I''m going to be harsh here, and it sounds like the sort of thing they''d take my kids away for nowadays, but I don''t think locking her in like a prisoner is going to help any of us, least of all her. All we''d end up doing is driving her out. Plus, she made it this far on her own." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. "She was almost dead when she knocked on," Shim countered, "you were in bed, you din'' see her. She was soaked to the skin and cold as ice. On top of that, she''s super skinny. I think if anyone''s been testing the ''can we survive without food thing'', then it''s been her." Quilt fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth. "I was a nurse sure, but I always worked with old people, never kids. You want a social worker for that, not me, but- but we can always get more food into her, that''d help with the skinny thing. Regular meals, high calories. We''re going out tomorrow anyway, right?" There was agreement all round, and the conversation moved on. - "Do you want to come with us?" Rust asked the next morning. There was no response, and she watched instead as the girl pulled on her boots, preparing to go out on her own. They had been drying by the stove and didn''t seem to fit her, but they were better than nothing. A moment later she hesitated, and then removed the boots again, placing them over by the door. Children were incomprehensible sometimes, Rust thought. - The routine lasted a week or so. The three of them would go out, exploring the ever-greenifying city, and the girl would disappear into the forest, only reappearing at dusk. "You must get hungry durin'' the day though," said Quilt to her one evening, "we can pack you up a lunch or somethin'' if you''d like? We picked up a load of the weird lemon bar things today, too." Wildcat made her usual, non-committal emotionless response, which they were all getting used to by this point, but then she paused, which was new. A brief nod of the head and an attempt at eye contact, before a look of nervousness flashed over her face and he schooled it back into blank indifference. That''s progress, thought Rust. Now we''re getting somewhere. The next morning she took half a loaf of bread and two lemon bars with her, and when she returned in the evening her pockets were empty. They would get through to her eventually, she was sure of it. - The city had changed over the weeks of the storm, and it changed even more so every day that passed since. Each day they went out, and each day they found something new. Trees where there hadn''t been trees, an ever-evolving ecosystem of animals, and other little things that made the world feel more alive. A few days in, street signs started to appear, rusted and nonsensical, but there. A few after that some of the buildings started to fill in with empty shopfronts, hotels, and empty rooms that could have held anything. They were strange spaces, lacking furniture, as if placed there for people to inhabit and then forgotten about. Left to rot. The air continued to be humid and damp, although it dried up somewhat during the middle of the day. None of them were used to such a temperate climate, and they were all suffering. Apart from the child, she went out each morning and returned each evening, and with proper food and a distinct lack of supervision, she seemed to be thriving. It was three weeks after her arrival that the first building collapsed. It happened as they were having breakfast, Rat itching to be gone and the other three of them working up towards going out for the day, griping good-naturedly about the weather and discussing what they wanted to do that day. Rat had the best view of it, being closest to the door and she let out a noise as the first building came down, causing them to look up. It wasn''t a fast process, like you might expect, but instead it started as a low rumble, a horrible grinding which filled the air even at this distance, and then all at once it was gone, a tooth out of the skyline, an empty space. The others stood behind her and watched, Quilt with her hands over her face, Rust with her arm over Shim''s shoulders. Two more buildings came down before the rumbling stopped, and Rat wondered how many others might have gone with it that they couldn''t see. The first, the missing tooth, had been the one with the curtains that Quilt had pointed out days earlier as being the place she was found. Rat wondered if something about that had made it more real, and more prone to physics. She wondered if her cellar was still there, or the laundromat. "Holy shit fuck." Said Quilt, finally breaking the silence. "Well that ain''t good," from Shim, at the same time as a "we can''t go back in there, it''s not safe," from Rust. Rat bit her lip, staring at the destruction. "If the shakes din'' bring down t''others, then they''re prob''ly strong ''nough to stay up on their own." She bit her lip even harder, hating herself for breaking her silence, for slurring her words, for not being strong enough to stay quiet, and then Rust sighed, and it was ok again. "You''re probably right, but we have to be more careful. I feel like some of the buildings are held up with barely more than ivy at this point, and ivy is not a good structural support." "We should take as much as we can from the store then," Shim cut in, stretching. "If a buildin'' falls on top of that, we''re boned, plus we don''t have much longer until something moves in an'' ruins it. The garden ain''t growing nothin'' yet. We don''t have enough to feed ourselves if that goes." Rat considered asking if the store restocked itself, or if was locked in, but she had said enough already, exhausted despite it being only morning, worn down by the sheer effort of saying a single line. As she slipped her daily bread into her pocket, she considered what to do next. If she should stay in the safety of the forest, or if she should go explore the ruins. Around her, Quilt, Rust and Shim discussed their plans for today, and Rat kept watching the dust cloud. May as well check out the ruins, she decided at last. She was pretty sure it would be safe at least for now, but it might be less so later. It was a good thing nobody else had awoken yet, because she hated to think what it would have been like, had those buildings been full of people. Chapter Thirty Three - Beans Rat had been back to the city many times over the last few weeks. She had even made it back to her old store at one point, but had found nothing there worth taking, except for the beans. Rust knew how to cook the beans. She had spent a long afternoon looking over all the little bits and bobs and tools. Now that the weather was improving and she wasn''t in imminent danger of starving to death it was a much more relaxed affair, but still. There wasn''t much there she wanted, and she hadn''t gone back again. Her laundromat was gone, but the cellar was still there, even if it took her two days to find it. There was some sort of slime growing down one of the walls, and the rats had moved back in. She didn''t stick around there either. The little garden under the building was untouched in form, but mosses and lichens were starting to creep their way in, and would eventually crack the stone and take it over, but it would be a slow process. Rat had suspected that the building might come down before that ever happened, and now that they''d lost the three on the southern side, she was a lot warier about going back there. Right now she was heading towards the fallen structures. The dust cloud had settled fairly quickly in the humid air, but she could taste the grit on her tongue and feel it settling in the corners of her eyes. It tasted of brick dust, and stained her fingers an iron-oxide red when she wiped it away. Strange. - Three buildings had come down, and a fourth had been damaged but hadn''t fallen. She could see where it had been scraped though, part of the facade torn away revealing the nothing within. It reminded her of a child''s toy, blocks knocked down, a sandcastle stood on by accident, but on a massive scale. Destruction on an unimaginable scale. There was no way to describe it, as she stood there and stared up at the mountain of shattered concrete, all she could think of was safety glass and the sheer¡­ Homoginy of the heap. It was all small pieces of concrete, no broken reeds of rebar, no belongings in the rubble. There wasn''t even glass, that she could see, just piles and piles of grey concrete. She poked around the edge of the mountain for a while and considered scrambling up the shale, but there was nothing here for her to find, and the other building looked dangerous, so she left. - She hadn''t spoken to the being making this place in weeks now, since before her journey. It was like she had left them behind in the old store, left them lying on the shelves amongst the papers and dust. She had tried, a couple of times, but the lock in her brain had engaged, the same one that prevented her from going home, from fitting in at school, from pressing the button on the gifted phone and saying she needed help. She ignored the headache, the constant dull throb in the front of her head. They had tried, they really had. Rat was pretty sure there was an entire support team dedicated to her case out there, sitting in a building somewhere. The fact that she had managed to stay on the streets as long as she had was more a testament to her talent at escaping, than to any lack of effort by the state. She knew they were spying on her. She knew they sent people to the laundrette to make sure she was clean, that there were probably special deals worked out with every place she went into regularly. That the woman in the library who had questioned her one time had changed her shifts only a week later. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Help was only a call away, all she had to do was shout, but she never could. Rat stopped walking, staring down at the mossy green concrete, touching one of the pools with the pads of her toes, as if she could walk on water. She had spoken today, and it had gone well. They hadn''t commented on it, which was a relief, although maybe they were a little in shock from the collapses and would question her later. Her rat brain flared up at the thought of that. It had been calmer lately, and she had enjoyed the peace. She had managed to convince it that the house was a mostly safe place, a good nest with food and warmth, and it had accepted that somewhat, but she had never managed to convince it that the people were to be trusted. Still, she accepted that. Her rat brain existed to keep her safe, and to trust was to weaken yourself. She should move her backup den. It was on the upper floor of a not-hotel, five stories up, in what should have been a storage closet, but which was actually, when you opened the door and then peeked around the corner, an extremely long room, taking up the space behind the bedrooms. It was a good den. If you followed the long room to the end, it turned again, making the whole thing a big C shape. Nobody was going to walk that long through darkness in the hopes of maybe finding something at the end, and she had felt safe storing things there. But it was too close to the collapsed buildings. She could¡­ She started walking again, towards the not-hotel, and as she walked she tried to talk some sense into her inner rat. She could take the food back to the cottage, contribute to the communal stores. The few tools she had there wouldn''t go amiss either, Shim would appreciate the saws she had found. The shinies, the baubles and stones she had collected she could keep in her bedroom- Or, you know, she could do the sensible thing, set up a new den over on the other side of the city, and then stay there. Or she could explore the woods more. There was bound to be somewhere out there where she could live safely. The cottage couldn''t be the only dwelling, surely, there had to be other places out there. If she needed a friend or companion, there was no shortage of animals around. She could tame some rats, or a monkey or something. Become a fairy tale princess with a flock of trained birds. She had seen crows, and ravens over on the north edge, they were supposed to be smart and easy to tame with food. Grapes, maybe? Hmm, grapes would be hard to source. Maybe they would settle for oats or dried peas? She could soak them first. - As night rolled in, she returned to the cottage. She had moved her den, as much as it broke her heart to do so. Half the food and tools had gone there, and she had bought the other half back with her, as a peace offering. The kitchen was warm as she slipped through the door, double-checking that her feet were clean. She pursed her lips as she stood there, unsure of how to approach this. She had bought stuff back before, sure, but she normally left it on the doorstep like a cat. Complicated. There was also the issue of the morning, although she was trying to put it out of mind. After a moments paralysed deliberation, she took herself off upstairs. They had given her the bedroom with the green door, and as far as she could tell, they respected her privacy with it. None of the traps she had set were sprung, everything was the correct orientation and exactly where she had left it. It wasn''t a big room, large enough for a single bed and some odd bits of furniture, but it was hers for now. She let out a sigh of relief as she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking around the room. The bag had been heavy, and she was glad to be off her feet and back in relative safety. The walls had been bare white when she first got the room, but she had brightened them up with the most vibrant paints she could find. She had collected things when travelling, too. Shiny rocks, bits of quartz and brightly coloured leaves from the forest, all arranged on surfaces or plastered to the walls. From the city, she had old tools, coins, paper wrappers and nonsensically branded tins. It would break her heart when she had to leave it all behind. She emptied her bag carefully onto the bed. She had brought back some of the ever-present BRICKs and BLOCKs, but also a new one named GIRDER, which she had found in an otherwise monotonously stocked sweet shop. She had four of those, and she stacked them off to one side. There was a small bag of rice, and the dried peas. It was possible Rust would like those, she had mentioned that dried things would sometimes grow. Maybe the rice would also grow? She frowned, realising she didn''t actually know what rice was. It was¡­ A grain? Right? Or was it like a sort of pasta¡­ If she''d been back in the real world, she could have looked it up, and the loss hit her as a now familiar pang. Even if they did well here, even if others woke up, what sort of society would they build, here in this broken world? Could it ever be as it was? Would others even wake up, if the buildings were collapsing now? "What happened?" she whispered. She continued to empty her bag, the things she was keeping going onto the dresser and shelves, and when she was done, she bundled up everything that was left back into the bag and headed downstairs. Chapter Thirty Four It was rare that their little wildcat came back downstairs after going up for the evening, but maybe she was hungry, Rust thought as she heard the quiet creak of the stairs. She had scampered away a lot quicker than usual, and it had been an eventful morning. Rust had noticed the words this morning, but they hadn''t spoken about it even between themselves, too busy with planning and hauling back what they could, before the city deteriorated further. She had known that the city was becoming unstable, but had never expected that it would begin to collapse, not really. She looked up as Wildcat slid into the room, her ever-present backpack in her arms. Rust wondered if it had come with her from the last world, or if it was something she''d found here, but either way she seemed very attached to it, never leaving it further than arm''s reach. She turned back to the stove, plating up the child''s portion of dinner. They had done well today. Shim had finally cleared out the old pantry and washed it all down, and they had hauled back enough food to call it reasonably stocked. The garden was starting to settle and there were greens to go with dinner, if not proper vegetables yet. She turned around with the food, only to find the girl emptying her backpack onto the table. Quilt was out and about somewhere, probably locking the chickens in, and Shim was standing already, helping her out with the emptying. "Oh, these''re new!" he exclaimed, holding up a familiar red and silver bar for her to look at. The label read "GIRDER", and Rust put the food down, reaching out to take one, as he unwrapped a second. Backpack empty, Wildcat hovered for a moment, and then very gingerly took a seat at the table, looking like she might bolt at any moment. "For you people," she muttered, gesturing to the pile, "got ''nuf, for the uh-" She hesitated, biting her lip hard, and Rust wondered about her accent. "For the food, like." Stolen story; please report. Her eyes darted to the stuff on the table, and then the food, and a moment later she''d grabbed it and run, back upstairs and away from any scrutiny. "Twice in one day, Quilt''ll be sad she missed it," Shim said, biting into the corner of the GIRDER. He grimaced, and then looked confused, drawing the bar back and looking at it. "You know, I think this might actually be chocolate? There''s somethin'' weird in it though." He started picking it apart, and Rust opened the one she''d grabbed. By the time Quilt finally joined them, they had opened all four. Rust''s turned out to be white chocolate and freeze-dried raspberries. Shim''s was one of the darkest chocolates she''d ever tasted, with dried blueberries mixed in, and finally, the last two were milk chocolate and cashew. They were all labelled the same on the outside, so the differing insides were a novelty. Normally the BRICKs and BLOCKs were identical, even down to the swirls in the material. "What''ve you got there?" she asked, picking up one of the bars and squinting at the wrapper in the dimming light. "GIRDERs." Grinned Shim, breaking off a piece of the white chocolate and handing it over. "We should give the kid some, she did find it after all." "Oh?" said Quilt, and he nodded. "Came down, dumped this on the table, said something like "it''s for you" and then fled again. Didn''t make a whole lotta sense, to be honest." "Ah, nice," Quilt took a bite of the chocolate and then made a fainting motion. "If we hadn'' been living off sweets for the past month, I''d say this was pretty fuckin'' good. As it is, it''s still pretty good." "I wonder why there are so many sweets," Shim wondered, "found a whole dedicated sweet shop the other day, but I didn''t really look in it was all BRICKs and BARs anyway." "The BRICKs can be useful," Rust stepped in, "we could grab them next time we''re in the area." She took a nibble at one corner of the dark chocolate, "You know, I don''t think there''s any sugar in this at all. Can you make chocolate without sugar?" Quilt put the white back and reached out, and Rust handed it over. "I''m glad she talked, I can''t place the accent though." Rust said. "Might come a bit clearer when she''s not freakin'' out," Shim nodded, also taking some of the dark chocolate, wrapping the other GIRDERs back up. "It''s all good though. Wonder if she''ll pick a name, so we can stop callin'' her Wildcat." "But it''s such a cute name!" Quilt chimed in. "She bit me!" returned Shim. "Bah. Just jealous yours sounds like a prison knife." Rust smiled at the two of them and then started to heat the stove back up. Maybe they could make a drink out of this stuff. Chapter Thirty Five - Civic Infrastructure She had managed to speak, and then she had made it all the way upstairs and into her room, where she had stayed all night, without freaking out and running away. She was proud of herself for all of those things. Or at least that was what she kept telling her Rat brain. She was even still there come morning, and that was real progress. Her Rat brain, on the other hand, was not happy. She had lain awake late into the night, watching the moon pass by, wondering if it had been there on previous nights, or if she just hadn''t noticed it. It was so hard to remember sometimes. She had tried to reason with herself. It had been a good social interaction, normal almost. She had contributed to the swarm, to the family dynamic, and had not been rejected or punished for it. This was a good thing. She was in a good place, it was safe here. The people liked her, they gave her food, they didn''t attack her when she spoke. But still, it screamed at her, this was weakening her, this would make her vulnerable, and this would make it harder for her to leave when everything inevitably went wrong. She should pack her bag and go before they realised their mistake. The air in here was too warm, she would be better outside, under the trees, she hadn''t hidden her new den well enough, she should- Why did her brain have to be like this all the time? It was exhausting. She was so, so tired of it. - By the time she awoke the next morning, the other three were gone, leaving the house empty. There was some food on the stove and a note for her on the table, weighed down with a square of something that looked almost like chocolate, and she nibbled on it as she sat, enjoying the novelty of having the place to herself. Theoretically, they went out every day, so she always had the chance to have the house to herself, but she was normally gone herself by now, coming back only after they returned. She didn''t spend much time indoors if she could help it. She looked around. The kitchen was bright and cosy, the washing folded in one corner, the stove as off as it ever got and all the doors and windows thrown open. Even the back door was open, and the through-draught ruffled her hair. She was clean, with new clothes on, and happier than she had been in a long time. She hadn''t realised how alone she''d been. How long since she''d spoken to... To anyone. Even in the Before. The buildings had collapsed yesterday, and things were changing in the City, but the woods seemed stable, if maze-like at times. She should find herself a den there, for if the city became uninhabitable. But she wanted to explore the city more, before it fell apart. She had found a shop selling bikes the other day, except there were no tires and the wheels were all in pieces. She had found another which at first glance looked like a cafe, the walls plastered with pictures of food, but there had been no kitchen, no serving counter, only tables. It was very strange, and she had eaten her lunch sitting in one of the booths, admiring the pictures. She finished her breakfast and chocolate, swinging her legs from the chair. She briefly considered rummaging through the house, exploring the cellar, which was still mostly filled with junk, or seeing what the others kept in their bedrooms, but... They respected her privacy, so she would respect theirs, no matter what her inner rat said. She also didn''t want to be indoors, the breeze was nice, but the walls around her were stifling, the humidity building as the morning heated up. She would check out the City more tomorrow, she decided. Today she would see if she could reach the other edge of the forest. - The three of them walked through the city, occasionally ducking into new buildings or pointing out the more interesting flowers and structures. It was almost a jungle, by this point, and they were walking down the centre of the road, avoiding the puddles and ponds which now littered it. "Kid has the right idea of it," Shim stated, watching his feet, "shoes are a mistake." Rust snorted, and Quilt looked down at her shoes. "No," he continued, "I''m serious, you guys should ditch ''em, it''s so much easier." "I''d rather not stand on a bit of glass or sharp rocks," Quilt yawned at him, kicking her own shoed feet along the ground, and Rust nodded in quiet agreement. "Nah, have you guys seen any broken glass since we got here? Even where the buildin''s came down yesterday there ain''t nothin, it''s all just concrete. Nothing else. I went and had a look last evenin''." He briefly described the uniform mound of rubble, and Rust frowned, "that''s weird. I wonder what we would have seen if we were there as it happened. Would it have been a normal collapse, instead of this strangely sanitised thing?" Shim shrugged, wiggling his toes, and they kept walking. Over the past few weeks, they had covered the whole of this area in paint. The more they took from the store, the more they seemed to find the next time, and they had liberally splashed the buildings in bright primary colours. Mixed with the plants, it gave the whole area a sort of bohemian feel. They had repainted the outside of the store, and tried to make use of the twisted street signs, pointing towards it so that other lost souls might find their way to safety. "I don''t think we''ve ever been to the end of the road, all the way to the other side," Rust said, "I wonder what''s out there." "Probably more forest," grumbled Quilt, "more bloody trees and plants." The other two ignored her, Shim splashing through puddles and staring around. It reminded him sometimes of those late-night walks home through the forest, but that had been a tamed thing, surrounded by buildings and houses. Permitted to exist, cultivated and maintained as much as any public building. Sometimes- he never told his ma- but sometimes he would walk home across the disused railway bridge, sliding down the embankment at the end. It was where the addicts and homeless hung out, supposedly, but although he had seen the signs he had never seen the people. That was the closest he could get to a true wilderness, a forgotten place in the heart of the city. A place of loose stones and twisted metal, a place existing on its own terms. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. His ma would have killed him if she''d found out, but she never had. He blinked, eyes watering in the morning sun. He had so few memories. Such small nothings to build his whole personality off, but wasn''t that just part of being a kid, when it came down to it? He wondered how the Wildcat was doing, inside her head. She had spoken twice yesterday, her words thick and hesitant, but she knew how to speak. What else did she remember, was she having to rebuild herself from nothing, like he was? He couldn''t be that much older than her, five or six years at the most. Maybe she had rebuilt herself, out in the City. She had gone from being a normal kid with a ma and a dad and a life, a nice home somewhere, to being here, with no memories and nobody to help bring her back. She had become wild. Somewhere behind him, somebody shouted his name, one of his school friends maybe? They met him outside sometimes, when he was working the earlier shifts. They probably wanted to pick up dinner and hang in the park for a bit, but he had to be home for- Curious who it was, Shim turned, and then staggered as the past few weeks came crashing down on him. He stared back down the empty road, and wondered what he had heard. - "It was probably one of the monkeys," Rust said, as they retraced their steps, "but it doesn''t hurt to look. You''re sure you heard a voice?" "I''m sure," he said, "I think. I was so sure, but I was also a bit in my head, I thought¡­" He trailed off, and Quilt patted him on the shoulder. "Don''t worry, if there''s somebody out there, we''ll find ''em. And if there isn''t, well we''ll find whatever parrot or monkey''s eaten their voice!" He laughed a brittle laugh, and they walked on in relative silence. There was no such thing as silence in the city now, the constant shriek of the birds and animals around them, the groan of the trees and the rustle of the bushes. The frogs in the ponds and the way the wind twisted around the buildings, they all had their own unique sounds. If somebody had shouted him, it would be a wonder that he''d heard it at all. They came to an intersection, standing at the crossroads and looking down the four directions. "Hmm." Rust made a sound in her throat, "They could have gone either way, but if they were trying to attract our attention, why run." "I don''t know if we''ve been down any of these roads," said Quilt, "but is it possible it''s just the city fuckin'' with us? You said you heard music, when you found me, and I was also cookin'' on a stove that didn work, so you know. Place is weird sometimes." Shim wiped his brow, the day was heating up around them. "It was probably just in my head. I thought it was somebody I knew, I thought I was comin'' outta work, or on my way home. For a moment, I was back there, then¡­" Quilt bit her lip, then took a deep breath but didn''t say anything in response, and he glanced over at her. "We''ll find people, maybe not today, but some time, we gotta. We can''t be the only people here." "I dunno," she countered. "If we are people who''ve fallen out of heaven, and we ain''t managing to get hold of the person in charge, what if nobody else falls out." "You''re still on that? How do you explain the city changin'' around us, then?" She shrugged, "just our influence. Us being here is making reality go ''oh shit, these people need heaven junk, I better give them heaven junk to make ''em happy''." Rust glanced over, "doesn''t seem to be making you happy, though, and what about the kid, she almost died." "She seems fine now though, she didn'' die, in the end," Quilt said, and then sighed, "and she has us to look after her. She looks happy. You and Shim are happy, right? It''s just me that''s bein'' a grouch, don''t mind me." She stuck her hands in her pockets and started walking purposefully down one of the side roads, and the other two jogged to catch up. "I wasn'' made for this kinda life. I want people, other people- not that you two aren''t great- but I want pubs, bars, company, sex, all that good stuff." Shim coughed and looked away, and Rust rolled her eyes at him. "You''re as bad as she is, don''t pretend to be coy now." "Sorry but you''re not my type," Quilt nudged into him, and he staggered away, one foot landing in a pothole, scattering frogs in all directions. "See," he said, changing the subject and untangling the duckweed from his toes, "this is why not having shoes is great." "Are you gonna become one of those health nuts?" Quilt asked, and then she frowned at Rust, "are you vegetarian?" "What?" Rust blinked at the non-sequitur, unsure how the conversation got here. "No? I used to raise meat chickens, I lived on a farm, why?" Quilt shrugged, "Just keep meaning to ask, figured if we''re influencing this place, it might be why we don''t find much meat." "It''s ''cause finding meat would be weird," Said Shim, "vegetables and grains and stuff, sure, I can see that, but meat is like¡­" He gestured at the ecosystem surrounding them, "somethin''s gotta die for meat, nothing''s gotta die for vegetables." "A carrot''s gotta die," said Quilt, and he narrowed his eyes at her. "If you''re sayin'' that carrots have souls- and we''ve already determined that chickens have souls- then I am gonna bloody starve to death, and it''s gonna be entirely your fault." "Look, I''m just saying, if-" Rust tuned them both out, looking around instead, hands in her pockets and her trousers rolled up. Maybe she should ditch the shoes, she was only wearing sandals anyway, her boots entirely unsuited for the tropical weather. She had spent much of her childhood barefoot, running around in the forest. Her mother had believed that children should feel the earth beneath their feet, and her father had been too cheap to buy shoes she was only going to grow out of in a few months. Hippies before their time, she thought, health nuts, as she slipped the sandals into her bag and hiked up her trousers. She would have to get Shim to shorten them, once he had the machine going. There simply hadn''t been the time to do it so far, and the light in the evenings was so poor. - She caught up to them a minute later, smiling at their bickering. Children, the both of them. "-So we''ve agreed that carrots don''t have souls-" Shim continued, -"and that cabbages are the devils lettuce, but we haven''t agreed on-" She looked around. He was right, or she, Rust couldn''t remember which of the two had said it, but they hadn''t been down this street yet. There was none of the telltale marks of paint that they tended to leave behind, and the greenery was pristine and untouched. They often had to fight their way into buildings, Rust was carrying the axe and secateurs in her pack, but there were no signs of that here. She dipped her feet into a puddle as she passed, letting the water wash over her ankles, and then stuck her head through an overgrown doorway. It wasn''t a hollow, but it looked like¡­ Offices? Council chambers? She didn''t have much experience with city buildings. Shrugging, she pulled back and headed towards the next one, stepping over twisting branches and ducking around the scrub that was starting to take root in the cracks of the pavement. Overhead two birds briefly squabbled, before breaking up and going their separate ways, and she wondered what would be here in a month, in a decade. She had spent so long hurtling towards death, that to be young again, to not have that inevitability hanging over her, was quite something. Although, they had been lucky so far with sickness and injuries. The girl had been the closest they''d come to danger. Maybe that was a part of the place, and they would just exist here now, forever, as they had done after the End. It was a strange thought, and not one she particularly liked, but let future Rust sort that out. It wasn''t a now issue. She tried the doors on the next building, only to find them bound shut with vines, and decided to pass on that one. The next one though, the doors there stood open, inviting her to enter. That was new, as she hadn''t seen any open doors before, they were always the same, two doors of shiny steel and glass, closed shut and heavy to open. She waved to the others and then stepped inside, sighing at the immediate temperature difference. It was always cooler inside the buildings, the concrete a good heat-sink, and it was a relief to be out of the sun. There was a distinct smell of dust in the air and she could feel grit sticking to her feet as she walked, making them feel strange, both wet and dry at the same time. The inside consisted of a long, low corridor, with doors off to either side, and she could see a glimmer of light which was the other side of the building, far off in the distance. She tried one of the doors and found it locked, but the next was open. It looked like a storage room, all dust and gloom, and she shut the door again, carrying on. Halfway down the corridor, she found a set of stairs leading up, and grumbling about the lack of accessibility, she ascended to the first floor. - The first floor was unlike anything they had found before, and entirely unlike the ground floor. Instead, it was a high-ceilinged, wide-open space, with big windows on all sides. She could see a glass dome, far, far above, the mid-morning light filtering in as beams, and around the edges of the space she could see floors, stretching up, and up, and up. The shelving was all dark brown wood, and there were small, superfluous ladders scattered about, seemingly more for atmosphere than any real function. Wrought iron railings and small chairs and tables completed the look, and what a look it was. Rust stared up for a minute, and then nodding to herself, descended to fetch the others. At long last, they had found their library. Chapter Thirty Six "Weeks, weeks of searchin'', and we almost walked past it!" Quilt griped, waving her arms around. "And I swear it didn'' have those windows from the outside." She was grumbling as she stood in the centre of the space, staring upwards, but her face was lit up and she was smiling widely. Rust watched her rant, and next to her Shim leant back against the balustrade. "We''re gonna have to splash so much paint about if we ever wanna find this place again," he mused. "Looks exactly the same as all the others from the outside." He ran his eyes over the shelves, and then bit his lip, but didn''t say anything more, looking over to Quilt. Quilt, on her part, stood there for a moment, happy, before sighing loudly. "Alright, exultation done. Let''s see if all these books''re blank, shall we." Rust glanced around, and then watched as Quilt headed towards the nearest shelf. "Thing is," Rust said, starting to follow her, "while it''s beautiful, there doesn''t seem to be many actual-" "You will shush right now." Quilt cut her off, "you''re not gonna ruin this for me by jinxing it, making it so all the books that are there are blank, or so that they''re all the- shit. Now you''re making me do it! Just shut up!" Rust laughed, and Shim pushed himself away from the railing, following behind them with his hands in his pockets. "Maybe they''ve got a children''s section?" Rust offered him, and he stuck his tongue out at her. "Maybe they''ve got a book on carpentry," he countered, "I have no idea what I''m doin'' with that junk." She nodded. He had tried to make a chair the other day, and while it had looked alright at first glance, for something carved with an axe anyway, it had collapsed the first time he had tried to put weight on it. But, she figured he would sort it out, books or no. The second chair had looked much better. Quilt reached the first shelf and grabbed the single book sitting there. In fact, Rust reckoned, throughout the whole floor there might be twenty books total, that she could see anyway. Barely enough to fill one shelf. "Ah, it has words in it!" Quilt shouted, waving it at them, and then having to dance about as all the pages began to fall out. "No, no you cannot do that!" she shouted, "you can''t! Get back-" She shuffled the book back together, and Rust came over to inspect. It was less a book, and more a pile of sheets between two loose pieces of leather, but she didn''t seem upset. "It''s not like, glued or- or bound or whatever, but it''s all there," she said, "even got page numbers. Ain''t in a language I can read, but it''s a start." "Is it a real language, though?" Shim reached out to take the ''book'', but Quilt clutched it to her chest dramatically. "You can''t have it, boy!" she shouted, and then ducking under his grasp, trotted across the floor to the next non-empty shelf. Shim gave one last glance over where she''d taken the book from before shrugging towards Rust. "Well, she seems happy. I''m gonna go explore." He looked around, and then headed towards the stairs upwards. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Rust took herself off in the opposite direction to Quilt, enjoying the serenity of the place. She couldn''t decide if it looked like it''d been stolen from the real world, or if it looked like it had been built from a dream. It reminded her of somewhere she''d been once, but she couldn''t say where. She was pretty sure she would remember going to a giant library. It wasn''t the one from the village, that was for sure. The village library was a short, squat place, built in the 1960s. It was a place of artificial light, concrete and sharp corners, nothing like this naturally lit cavern of iron and wood. She ran a hand over an empty shelf, leaving the big central area and entering the stacks. It was almost claustrophobic in here, under the floor above, and she admired how the shelves were a part of the structure, holding up the level above. If they had been filled with books then it would have been dark in here, but for now, the light filtered through, and she could see well enough to navigate. She picked up a book from its lonely spot almost on the floor and flicked through it as she walked, carrying it back to the light. Nevermind. She quickly put it back on the shelf. It had been a long list of all the arrivals and departures from one particular train station, over the course of a year. What time trains had arrived and left. Nothing else. The book was dated 1974-1975, and it wasn''t even a place she had never heard of, probably some small village somewhere up north. She supposed they could come back and use it as toilet roll, if they ever got desperate enough. - Further walking revealed two books, both in languages she didn''t recognise, but she carried them into the light anyway. She found Quilt sitting at a table near the central plaza, three books on the table in front of her, another in her hands. She was writing something on a sheet of paper, using what appeared to be an actual honest-to-god goose feather and a bottle of ink. "I think it''s in code," she said as Rust approached, not looking up, "but it''s only a substitution cipher, so I can probably learn to read it given enough time." Rust blinked at her, "I never took you to be so dedicated" "I-" she stared up at Rust "-have literally nothing better to do. Let me have this." "I didn''t mean anything by it," Rust backed away, "I''m glad." "Hmph," Quilt made a noise in her throat, and Rust decided to leave before she took any more offence. Shim had to be around here somewhere, right? - She spotted him eventually, standing on one of the higher levels and waving down. He gestured for her to come up, although he didn''t shout, and she squinted up at him, flummoxed. How on earth was she going to get all the way up there? Twenty minutes later, panting and exhausted, she joined him at the top of the library. It was narrower up here, but well-lit so close to the dome. There were fewer shelves here and a variety of soft furnishings instead, and she wondered how they had gotten them up the stairs. "What-" she gasped, leaning against her knees, "-is so important you have to drag an old woman up so many bloody flights of stairs, I swear-" Shim laughed, "wow, I don''t know if I''ve heard you swear before." he gestured around, at the seating, at the windows, and over the edge, "just lookit this place, and I haven''t even been deeper in. Can we live here?" She squinted at him, still catching her breath, but starting to straighten up. "Are you mad?" "Probably," he shrugged, "it''s just so bright. There ain''t shit for books, but we should at least come back. Maybe we were asking for the wrong thing, and we need to ask for second-hand bookstores instead." He leant over the edge, looking down, and she was struck by a horrible sense of vertigo and the urge to drag him away from the edge. "If we do find other people who''re awake, this is gonna be a central place, assumin'' it doesn''t collapse anyway. It''s empty now, but we can build it up. I found like, conference rooms and reading rooms, little offices and hidden places and shit, and I wonder what else is on the ground floor. I feel like I could explore here forever and never see it all." Rust looked at him, at his shining eyes, and then out over the void. Quilt was somewhere below, a spec in the distance, and this close to the dome the beams of warm light were broken into stardust. She leant gingerly on the railing, trying to spot Quilt down below. This high up, the distance didn''t even seem real, terraces of floors, space for every book in existence. "Maybe whoever''s making this place is still vetting the books," she suggested. "Although by this point I suspect they don''t know how to read, and they''re trying to sort out which are books and which are paintings, unable to tell the difference." He laughed under his breath, and they both moved at some unspoken cue, heading back towards the stairs. "We''ll come back tomorrow." She said, and he nodded. "Maybe the kid''ll help us explore, we should tell her when we get back." Rust nodded in agreement, already feeling the strain on her knees, and together they descended.