It must be one of those chemical ice packs she decided as she held the large shell against her son's body, like the expensive hiking gear that recreational enthusiasts measured in fractions of an ounce.
It wasn't that cold, but the coolness seemed to suck the heat up and touching it felt comforting. She glanced at her husband and opened her mouth to encourage him to try holding their son and the shell for a while, but closed it again when she saw the despair in his face. She wanted to say something comforting, but there was nothing.
They had nothing left except each other. Her eyes lingered on his weary face. His eyes were closed and she wondered what he saw in that darkness. He'd always been a bit of an unreliable dreamer, but he'd never been idle or a layabout. They weren't sitting on the street right now because he hadn't tried. The timing of everything had just been awful.
Her hours had been cut, and cut again, and he'd abandoned another dream to look for anything he could get right now to carry them through the tough times… again. But this time there had been no last minute save.
Her heart jumped into her throat when she realized how quiet her son had gone. She had been terrified that he'd caught the virus, and the testing had been where the last of their money had gone. The horrible thing was that she'd been disappointed in a way when the test had come back negative. If he'd had the new virus they would have admitted him to the hospital, but because he only had a 'common flu' he was released.
She breathed again as she saw that he was just sleeping more easily than he had since getting sick.
"Things can't get any worse," her husband groaned suddenly.
She jumped at the sound of his voice, and shifted her gaze from her child to her husband again. "Don't say that."
He rubbed his hands over his face and then met her eyes. "Homeless people are giving us stuff," he explained wearily.
"We've given them stuff before," she pointed out uncertainly.
He looked at her expressionlessly for a long moment. She didn't know what to say.
"I'm afraid the shell is just a short term loan, but you kids can keep these," an elderly voice said dryly.
They both jumped. Their friends had always teased them about the synchrony between them, claiming they'd never seen two people so suited to each other. The weathered face of the homeless man who'd given her the shell was amused.
Her hand pressed the shell against her child too firmly and he stirred restlessly. 'These' appeared to be two jugs of beer, and she stared blankly as her husband reached for them.
"Thanks mister," he said, as though it was perfectly ordinary.
The old man glanced behind himself warily, as though he expected something to be standing there. Maybe he saw things. Maybe he drank to forget them. You heard all kinds of horror stories about the kinds of things that put people in the street.
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Or maybe he was just like them, and the rent had kept rising while the corporations had kept cutting hours and benefits until all he had left was debts. She wanted to complain that alcohol wasn't going to help anything, but her husband was right. At this point they could only be grateful for anything that anyone was willing to give them.
She couldn't even stop herself from bowing her head and asking the old man, "Can we at least borrow this until he gets better?"
The old man didn't reply right away and she looked up uncertainly, and was startled by the conflicted expression on his face. "Do you believe in dragons?" he asked a bit anxiously.
She glanced at her husband, and felt a burst of anger at the sight of him lifting the jug of beer to drink from, that faded at the surprise on his face. He met her eyes, glanced at the old man and nodded, while holding the jug out to her and announcing, "It's just cold water, it's good. Give it to him."
"I… don't know," she admitted. She couldn't bring herself to lie, even as she took the gift of water and sat her son up to wake him. "They said there were real sightings of dragons in Europe, and with all the news about endangered species coming out into the open while everything has been shut down for the quarantines, I guess it's possible? But…"
"This mountain," the old man said, pointing in the direction of the volcano that dominated postcards of the city. "Maybe they came from Europe, or distant places, but there's dragons living right here, and they are dangerous."
"We'll keep an eye out," her husband promised, as though he was agreeing to watch for raccoons which regularly came down the mountain and raided the trash cans and cat food dishes of the suburbs.
She and the old man shook their heads in unison, but she was distracted by her son's sleepy realization that cool water was being offered. "Drink slowly," she warned him as he grabbed the jug with surprising strength and gulped greedily at the contents.
"No," the old man said, "I mean that," he pointed at the shell, "is apparently a dragon's scale."
She looked down at the shell, and back up at the old man doubtfully. "But it's white," she protested without any reasonable explanation for why that made it unable to be a dragon's scale. The shell didn't have the ragged edge of a lizard's scale either, but it also didn't have the flared edges of a clam shell.
"It was given to me," the old man announced overly loudly.
"We appreciate you lending it to us," her husband said quickly, and reached over to take it from her.
She was embarrassed by her own reluctance to release it, and his surprise as he felt her resistance, and muttered, "Sorry," even as she forced her fingers to release what was probably just an expensive device.
Thinking of it as an expensive device made it easier to release. Whatever this old man believed about it, it was a valuable and useful thing, and she had no right to take it from him. He'd shown her family only kindness.
She felt humiliated when the old man held out a prepaid credit card after accepting the shell from her husband. That she could see the same emotion reflected in her husband's face even as he accepted the card only made it worse. He'd been right, things couldn't get any worse. But they couldn't refuse any help with a sick child.
The old man seemed to be able to read her mind as he said kindly, "Don't take it so hard. You kids are too young to know the truth of the old sayings, but it really has always taken a village to raise a child."
Tears began to flow, no matter how she blinked them back.
"Hey! Wait up!" a young woman shouted somewhere nearby.
A woman out of a fairytale or a movie strode around the corner and reached out to snatch the shell out of the old man's hands. Her hair was metallic copper and her clothes looked far too ordinary for her.