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.

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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?