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."

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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.