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.

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-

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.