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.

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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.