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."

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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.