“We should check out the inside of the shack, maybe they left something behind?” suggests Tango. Pen gazes at the screen, looking into the windows of the dilapidated building and at the tiny door. She realizes something.

“You can’t fit through the door,” she notes.

“Yeah, you’ll have to check it out alone,” responds Tango, rather emotionlessly.

“Uh, I’m not going outside,” she protests. “It’s freezing out there!”

“You have a point. But that’s why we should look," he says. "A small one or two room building like that? There might be some old cold-weather gear stashed away.” He looks around the empty space. “Who knows how fast they had to leave.” Pen crosses her arms. Her body hurt enough as is. She couldn’t even walk right anymore. “Maybe there are even some old rations left?” says the man. “Food,” he adds.

“Food?” asks Pen, her ears sticking upward now at having heard the magic word. But then they droop again, as she realizes something. “That’s dumb. Everything here would be too old to eat. There’d be nothing but dust.”

“Not necessarily…” replies Tango.

Pen grumbles, still not convinced to leave the warm safety of this new nest. It's perfect. Why should she go outside? Then again. Her stomach hurts. Her body hurts. She's tired. She needs rest. But what rest will there be to find in there? If his words are true, then some warmer clothes would be nice. She hasn’t had real clothes in a long time. Just this. She looks down at herself, at the dress she made from an old thing that was more or less a sack. It was originally supposed to be her bed-linens. It's cold. It's filthy. She hates it. She had made it herself, it's hers. But she hates it nonetheless. It reminded her of them. It reminds her of the cold metal floor of her old cage.

She doesn’t really think that there's any food, despite her ravenous hunger edging her to try and believe it. But if there is something that she could wear… Something new. Something that is hers and hers alone. That might be worth the effort of going outside? Maybe then… maybe then these bad feelings will go away.

- Maybe there was a crystal? Maybe there are other things that she could have? She leans back. She's never had things before. She wants things.

“Okay, I’ll look. But you have to stay right outside and you have to let me back in the moment I come out, okay?” she asks tentatively, still unsure if she is allowed to ask for anything.

“Deal,” replies Tango. “It looks like it's only two small rooms, it should be easy enough. You have a good eye, you’ll see what’s good and what isn’t.”

Pen shifts uncomfortably at the compliment, but takes it nonetheless as she turns to open the hatch. Her fingers graze the handle for a moment. It really is warm inside here. Safe. Soft. Does she really want to leave again? She could just sit in here where it's warm and die of hunger eventually. That wouldn’t be so bad, right? At least it's warm and everything hurts.

She feels the old ring pressing against her chest. A thing... It is a thing that is hers. She wants more things.

“No rest for the wicked,” she says to herself, spouting the mantra.

“People still say that?” asks Tango.

“What?”

“Nevermind,” says the man.

Pen shrugs and opens the hatch, sliding out of it and falling down to the cold, stone floor. There is no wind here and no ice. But the stone itself is still freezing cold and as her tattered, bare feet touch its icy surface, a deep sting shoots right up and through her body, crawling through her bones like spiders in her marrow. Pen yelps. It hurts. Her hand grabs on to the latch and for a moment, as her mind races with the frenzied thoughts of climbing back inside.

“The city,” says a man’s voice, ringing out from the inside of the hollow cabin. She looks back at it. “Think about the city,” says Tango.

“...The city,” she mouths. Understanding, Pen lets go and falls to the floor. Before the frost can stun her again, she moves with a jolt over the icy stones. It hurts. A fire stings on her still raw soles, as if she were walking over glass shards.

Pen wonders what the temperature in the city is like; is it cold? Or is it warm?

A sharp rock slices into one of the already open spots on her foot, she winces. What did their houses look like? She liked to think that they were big. Massive. Absolutely gigantic. Maybe the view from up on high atop them looked like the one from the top of the mountain. Yeah. She liked that idea.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A small, three high set of stairs leads up to an empty doorway. The door, long since removed, lays sideways against the nearby wall. It is filled with dents, as if the metal rectangle had been beaten in from the outside. The room is dark, but a stream of light shines in through the windows as Tango stands outside before the structure. It's dark. It's cramped.

Her heart strikes in her chest with dire impulse. Her breathing becomes more rapid. Pen wonders what they eat in the city? Her stomach growls, almost bringing her to her knees. When was the last time she ate? She doesn't remember. They rarely got food. Not enough for most to survive. Only the smallest, the runts like herself, pulled through off of that meager diet.

- She bet it's something huge; the food in the city. Giant. Just giant pots of stews and soups and cakes every day. They were probably all hot. Everything is hot, even the milk. Her eyes scan the darkness. The small room is filled with rectangular, metal cabinets. All are lined up neatly in a row against the walls. Several of them are damaged, the inside of the room is in relative disarray, as if something strong had punched into the metal surfaces, into the concrete and left great dents and holes wherever it had struck. She let out a breath that had been held for far too long, releasing the last warm vapors once more out of her thin body.

Pen grabs the first locker and opens it. Nothing. The second one. Nothing. She slams it shut. The third one. Nothing. This goes on until she has completed the entire first row. Her body hurts, nipped on by the cold. Her head aches. All she can feel is a sensation of pressure in her mouth, as she notices that she is biting her own tongue. Pen goes to the other side of the room. Do people share houses in the city? Or does everyone have their own? She bets everyone has their own. Why not? Surely they could just build one more every time a person was born, right? She wonders if they'll be able to build one for her when she gets there? She’d pay for it of course. That’s why she needs the crystals, after all.

She isn’t naive. She knows how the world works. Her eyes narrow as she opens the next one on the other side. Nothing.

Pen stands now before the last locker that is dented inward and broken. Grabbing it, she pulls. It's stuck. The scrunched metal is tightly jammed together. She strains herself, grunting as she heaves. The door of the locker screeches as she pulls again. It swings open, flying open wide. The top hinge was already broken off and now at this new movement, the door bends fully outward as it opens, crashing down to the side and bending off the lower hinge as well, with a loud snap as it comes crashing down.

A voice calls from outside. “You okay?”

The light shifts as Tango's giant body moves beyond the windows. Pen stares at the little thing looking back towards her. The small skeleton, tucked into the bottom of the locker. She looks at it. It's a young person’s, close to her own size. It's huddled together, down as low as it could have gone, hunkered for a warmth that it appears to not have been able to keep. Pen steps towards it and looks.

“Hey?” asks the voice from behind her.

She turns around, and calls out with a shaking voice. “I’m f-ff-fine!”

Looking back, she hastily examines the small thing. The ancient body is wearing a set of clothes. They looked warm. Except for the legs, the pants are tattered and torn. The metal of the indented locker had crushed its legs flat and pinned it here, inside. She reaches forward, the corpse doesn’t need them anymore. Right? So she might as well… It was just like with the ring. It's no different. She needs it. Pen grabs the fabric of the shoulder and the pile of ancient bones crumbles together immediately, falling mostly into a heap of brittle bits and a fine, dry dust that was meant to be scattered in aeons past.

The jacket is thick. It would be warm. The material is odd and the color isn’t her favorite, but that doesn’t matter. She shakes it out again, a fragment of an elbow flies out and falls to the ground, shattering. Pen spares one last glance at the heap of dust and broken bones, now piled at the foot of the locker, and shudders. Whoever this was must’ve gotten trapped inside, when something hit the top of the locker. They must have been hiding when the door crushed their leg. How long had they been stuck in there? Alone, in the dark? In the cold? Trapped, until they finally starved, pinned down and waiting for someone to save them. That never happened. Pen knows that. You have to save yourself or you die. That's it. That's all there is.

Shaking out the jacket one last time, feeling nauseous, she throws it over herself, ignoring the crumbly texture of some grainy bits against her skin. It's a bit too large, but that doesn't matter. She doesn't understand how it closes, but she doesn't want to stand here and find out. Her body is screaming at her to run outside and to hop back inside of Tango, but… she's already here. Just one more thing. Just one more room. That’s all that's left. That’s all she needs, right? Just one more peek around the corner. Maybe there's something there too? Pen winces, as she lifts her feet from the frozen stones. They're starting to go numb again.

The city. The city. Does everybody in the city know each other? Or are there simply so many people that nobody can keep track of anybody anymore? Pen silently hopes for the former, as she hobbles towards the second room. Repeat customers would be important for her shop.

Tenderly, she peeks through the door to the second room. Inside, is a single, rickety looking, four-legged metal table, with a bunch of flipped over, empty wooden crates beside itself, that are coated in an incomprehensibly thick layer of dust and rubble. There's nothing else in here, save for the windows. She sees Tango outside, looking in towards her through the foggy glass that oddly enough, appears to be thicker at the bottom than at the top.

Hurrying now, she quickly steps inside and looks around once more, closer, but still eager to leave. There has to be something. Just one thing. One thing. Just one more thing. A single thing catches her eye, glinting as the blueish light from outside streams onto it. A small, metal box with two handles on each side, covered in a pile of rocks that had fallen from the ceiling. Grabbing one of the handles, she yanks on it. It slides across the metal surface of the table with an unpleasant screeching sound that digs into her numb ears. Several of the rocks fall off to the ground. She pulls again and yanks the box free. It has another handle on the other side. It isn’t heavy. But it feels heavy for her. The icy, frozen metal burns the raw skin of her palms as she holds it. But she's determined to not let go. She came for this. It hurts. It's hers. She’s not going to let go of it just because it hurts a little. Wincing, holding the rectangular box in both hands, Pen turns and jogs towards the door, only now noticing the bloody footprints that lead straight back towards herself, marking the path she took.

- What about her house? She wants a house with big, big windows. Pen enters the first room again. Motes of particulate floated through the air, as if suspended in the blueish light shining in from outside. She wants big windows downstairs, so that people can see her wares for sale. Pen rounds the corner and sprints down the steps, the box rattling in her hands. She wants to scream with each downward impact of her bandaged leg. Her bloodless face somehow grows paler with every further drop.

- She wants big windows upstairs too, so that she can look down on the busy streets from above.

Tears run down her face. It hurts a lot. Tango is already turned around and knelt downward with the hatch open. Haphazardly, with the last of her strength, she tosses the box inside and then clambers in after it, like a hunted animal scurrying into its burrow.

Throwing herself in headfirst, like a rabbit digging down to escape a hawk, she presses herself inside the tiny, cramped space and listens as the hatch shuts behind herself. It really, really hurts. Everything hurts. The cold doesn’t numb anything anymore. It just stings. It stings deep into her tissues. Her skin feels like it's on fire as the warmth of the cabin comes to touch her.

“Good job,” says Tango.

Huddled together in a ball, the box jutting painfully into her side, Pen cries. It hurts.

- She wonders if anyone sells shoes in the city? Can she afford shoes? She's probably going to have to sell a lot of things in her store.