Her fingers are frozen as she fumbles around in her pockets. She tries three times to pull out the money she needs to pay. Tears wrap merciless fingers around her throat and squeeze as she drops her pitiful offerings onto the counter and she knows it isn’t enough. The cook’s face is pitiless and unforgiving as he brushes the sugar from the counter and shoves her savings back at her without even counting, shielding his hands with a rag as if the coins were contaminated and her being was a disease he was frightened to catch.

“We don’t serve your kind here.” He spits the high notes out and they dance garbled and cruel in the air. “You can leave when you’re warmed.” His lips pull back into a pitiful attempt a sneer, which looks so soft on his human face. “And don’t even think about eating the fumes, either. We’ve got measures to keep that behavior to a minimum.”

She wants to reach over the counter and dig her claws into his chest and sink her teeth into his face and show him what she thinks of his “measures,” but she is so tired. So tired. She wipes her money back into her palm and drops it back in her pocket and retreats to a table at the back of the café with her metaphorical tail between her legs. She isn’t grateful for the warmth; she knows she is stealing it.

Her fingers are blunt and make no noise as she drums them against the tabletop to generate warmth that she will snatch up to spread across her body like butter on hot bread. She inhales shallowly to avoid temptation; she scoffs at his “measures,” but she doesn’t trifle with them. She has had one too many runes carved into her temporary flesh and the damage is not permanent, but the pain is. She watches the humans come and go, content to ignore her, and she neither envies nor detests them. They look so small. They look so similar to her, and yet they are so very different.

She is not surprised when a man sits across from her, his cheeks red and his lips chapped. He looks at her with a mix of pity and fear and forced nonchalance.

“Are you going to offer me something to eat?” she asks after several minutes of silence. He raises his fist and shakes it. And then he smiles. “Are you going to offer me your soul?” He repeats the gesture. “Are you going to just sit here and stare at me?” Again.

Then he does something with his hand, makes a sign with it, and she doesn’t understand. After a “sentence” or so, he smiles at her and gets to his feet. He is gone by the time she blinks, hardly a spectacular feat, but notable.

She could remain there for seven days. The warmth would be slow to take to her, even with her drumming fingertips, and by the time she dragged herself out, she would be ravenous and opaque. She would take to walking with her mouth open, catching errant drifts of taste and smell from the people on the street, some of which may feel pity and breathe heavier when she passed. It would not nearly enough to live on, and they would know it, but they wouldn’t dare give her any more than scraps. Eventually she would find her way to a park, with tall trees and the ghosts of tall trees and the others who were too human to live. She would lie down on a park bench and close her eyes and she would die and for weeks after, people would stick out their tongues and taste sour sugar on the wind.

She could do that.

It takes her several minutes to realize he wants her to follow him out. She does, only because she knows he couldn’t hurt her if he tried. They stand behind the building and in plain sight of everyone he hands her his leftovers and he leans over and he breathes into her mouth and on his breath she tastes the words, “Don’t eat it all at once.”

He silently laughs and just watches her as she completely disregards his advice and eats almost half of it right there, eager for the warm and the taste and the feeling of being full after so long of being empty.

Her thanks are mumbled around a mouth full of aroma, and is waved off by a hand pale and thin and white and kind. He smiles at her, and it is a strange smile, and it is a smile she returns.