Calla awoke to the sound of wind fingering its way through the cracked window above their heads — a whistle in the silence that said morning's here, ready or not. The old mattress underneath her creaked as she shifted, muscles aching from another night of sleeping in tension. Her coat had slipped halfway off sometime during the night, and the cold had crept in. She pulled it back up and blinked toward the gray ceiling.
First thing, she checked on Benji.
Her little brother lay curled up like a cat, wrapped in a blanket they'd scavenged from a park bench weeks ago. It still smelled faintly like rust, riverwater, and mildew. His hair stuck out in soft, wild tufts. One hand gripped a bent playing card — the Queen of Hearts, face smudged, edges warped.
He never let go of it now. Claimed it was lucky. Calla didn't believe in luck, not really. But she hadn't taken it from him either. If anything was going to keep him smiling, she'd let it stay.
The room — their current shelter — had once been an office. Probably. There was a rusted nameplate on the door that said MANAGER, hanging at an angle like it was too tired to care anymore. Water-stained ceiling tiles drooped overhead like bloated clouds. The walls were painted a color that used to be white, now closer to forgotten beige. They'd been holed up here for three nights — long enough that Calla's instincts were starting to itch. Long enough that someone might start noticing.
The laundromat outside the office was silent now, but Calla had memorized the rhythm of its noises. The hollow clunk of broken machines. The occasional metallic rattle of wind against the dryer doors. The glass front was mostly boarded up, and no one came here anymore, not since the city had cut power to half this block. That made it perfect. For now.
She sat up, ran her fingers through her tangled hair, and reached for her sketchbook. Flipping past drawings of imagined worlds — treehouses, floating cities, cat cafés where you could sleep for free — she landed on a blank page and wrote:
TODAY:
Check community fridge near 7th
Try for meds at the shelter clinic
Find a new place to crash
Get Benji to smile at least once
There. A plan. A real one. Plans gave the day shape. Without shape, the day ate you whole.
She felt a shift behind her — the soft sound of stirring blankets — and turned just as Benji peeked his head out from under the covers.
"You drawing again?" he asked, voice heavy with sleep but bright with curiosity.
"Not drawing. Planning," she said.
He yawned. "Is it a fun plan?"
"Maybe. Probably not. But it's a good one."
Benji rolled onto his back and held the Queen of Hearts above his face. "I bet the Queen would approve."
Calla scooted closer and held the sketchbook open to show him. "Here. This is what we're doing."
He squinted. "Fridge first?"
"Yeah. Early's best. Less picked over. Then the clinic, see if they've got anything left — you've been coughing again."
Benji nodded solemnly.
"Then we find a new place to sleep," Calla continued, her voice low. "This one's too visible. And cold."
"And you gotta make me smile." He pointed to the last item on the list.
"I do," she said with a grin. "That one's non-negotiable."
He gave her a sleepy salute. "You got it, Captain Calla."
She chuckled and ruffled his hair. For a moment, the weight of everything faded — the hunger, the cold, the constant calculation. For a moment, they were just kids, joking in a quiet room before the city noticed they were awake.
They spent twenty minutes getting ready, which mostly meant folding their blanket into Calla's bag, stuffing two stale scarves into Benji's coat pockets, and making sure they left no sign they'd been there. Calla took care to wipe down the small mirror still hanging on the wall. She didn't know why. Maybe it was the principle of it — leave things better, or at least not worse.
Their possessions were few and packed quickly:
One dented water bottle
A flashlight that flickered if you held it wrong
A bag of stale Goldfish crackers
Half a granola bar
Benji's card deck (missing the Ten of Spades)
Her sketchbook
A single, fraying photograph of their mother, creased and faded from too much folding
Calla slid the photo into the back pocket of her jeans without looking at it.
By the time they pushed open the back door into the alley, the wind had picked up. It wasn't a loud wind — not a stormy kind — just persistent, like it was trying to convince them to turn around.
But turning back wasn't an option. Not in this life.
Benji held her hand, his feet crunching on bits of broken glass as they navigated the alleyway. His other hand stayed in his coat pocket, where Calla guessed he was hiding his Queen again.
As they reached the edge of the alley and stepped onto the sidewalk, the city hit them all at once. The smell of yesterday's garbage. The echo of shouting two blocks down. A guy with a red shopping cart muttering to himself as he rattled past, the cart full of broken electronics. A woman in a long coat smoking something sharp, her eyes vacant.
Calla tightened her grip on Benji's hand.
The sun was rising, somewhere, but you couldn't tell by looking. The sky here didn't brighten — it just lightened the shade of gray it wore.
"Do you think the kitten's still there?" Benji asked.
Calla blinked, then remembered — the kitten they'd seen under the bike rack near the 7th Street fridge. Tiny thing, looked barely alive. She hadn't thought it would make it through the night.
"Maybe," she said. "We can check."
Benji smiled, soft and hopeful. That made her write a mental checkmark next to the last item on her list — Get Benji to smile at least once.
One thing done. The rest of the day waited.
They walked slowly but deliberately, weaving through the streets like ghosts — quiet, invisible if they tried hard enough. Calla kept her hood up and her eyes open, always scanning, always calculating. Benji hummed to himself, low and tuneless, as he skipped beside her.
They passed a shuttered bodega, a mural of a girl in a red hoodie on its metal gate. They passed two crows picking at a slice of pizza on the curb. They passed life, stacked in corners and alleyways, the city's forgotten pressed between buildings like loose change no one bothered to pick up.
But in all that mess, they still had each other. They still had the plan.
And as they turned the corner toward the community fridge, Calla whispered, more to herself than to Benji:
"Let's just get through today."
The line at the community fridge stretched halfway down 7th Street. Even from a block away, Calla felt the change in the air — tense, coiled, like everyone had already decided today was going to be a fight.
The fridge itself, shoved between two graffitied apartment buildings, buzzed faintly, defiant against rust and grime. A mural of sunflowers loomed behind it, bright yellows and oranges dulled by time and sharpied curse words. The words stood out like scars on a hopeful face.
Calla pulled her coat tighter, a poor shield against the wind snaking through the alleyways. She reached for Benji's hand, which was already tucked into her pocket, fingers cold and twitching with curiosity.
"Stay close," she said.
"I'm glued," he whispered. "Like gum on your shoe."
She tried not to smile. The line was a coil of bodies — older men with twitchy eyes, mothers with tired faces and squirming toddlers, teens who looked too skinny to be dangerous but probably were. Arguments buzzed beneath the surface, like bees behind a screen.
As they stepped toward the back of the line, a woman with a gray hoodie and a baby wrapped against her chest cut in just ahead of them, closing the gap in one swift, practiced motion.
"Excuse me," Calla said, voice low but firm.
The woman didn't even glance at her. "You weren't moving."
"We were right here."
"Doesn't look like it now."
Calla's fists clenched, but she stepped back. Pick your battles. Not this one. Not when you're just trying to get a loaf of bread or a bruised apple. Not when your brother's hand is in your pocket, counting on you to keep today from getting worse.
Benji tugged gently on her coat. "Calla… bird."
She looked up. A bright red cardinal sat on the fire escape three stories above them, feathers puffed against the wind. It tilted its head, watching them like it was curious, then chirped once — a sound clear and strange in the city's dull gray static.
"Pretty," Calla whispered. "But don't—"
But he already had.
His fingers slipped from hers, and he ducked beneath a rusted shopping cart, weaving through the crowd, eyes locked on the bird as it flitted toward the alley.
"Benji!" she shouted, lunging forward — but the crowd swelled, shifting like water, bodies folding into one another.
"Watch it!"
"Hey!"
"You just plowin' through people now?!"
Calla shoved past a man with a torn duffel, spun in three directions, and saw nothing. No small figure. No red feather. No laugh. The line was a tangle of elbows and noise, and her little brother was gone.
Her chest tightened. She forced herself to breathe — in, out, in — then grabbed the sketchbook in her bag. The plan. He knows the plan. If he remembers, he'll go there.
She turned and ran, boots pounding the pavement, ignoring the muttered curses behind her as she left the fridge behind.
The shelter clinic sat behind the Salvation Building on 9th, halfway between a liquor store and a boarded-up library. Its front window had a poster peeling off that read "FREE VITAMINS! WALK-INS WELCOME" but the corners were burned, and someone had drawn horns on the nurse.
Calla burst through the door, heart racing.
"Benji—" she started, too loud, too fast.
And there he was.
Sitting on a blue chair by the vending machine. Swinging his legs, staring at the change return slot like it might give him something if he stared long enough. In his hand: a red feather.
"There you are," she said, her knees nearly giving as she crouched and grabbed him in a hug.
"I remembered," he said proudly. "You said if we got split up, we go to the next thing. So I came here."
She pulled back, eyes stinging. "You scared me."
"I followed the blue signs," he said, like it was obvious. "And look—he left this for me." He held up the cardinal's feather, bent slightly at the tip but still bright.
She stared at it. Something about it — ridiculous, meaningless, but also perfect.
She kissed the top of his head and said nothing.
The nurse who cleaned up Benji's scraped elbow wore faded scrubs and a scarf wrapped around her locs. Her name tag read IRIS, all caps in black marker.
"This looks like nothing," she said, dabbing gently with antiseptic. "Bet the other guy's worse off."
Benji giggled. "The other guy was gravity."
Calla gave a breathy, exhausted laugh, leaning her head back against the wall.
"You his sister?" Iris asked, not unkindly.
Calla nodded.
"You two on your own?"
Another nod, slower.
Iris watched them for a moment, then said, "I'm off shift in ten. You want a hot shower? A real meal? I've got leftover lentil stew. Not fancy. Just warm."
Calla blinked. "What?"
Iris shrugged. "You look like you've been running too long without a stop. No strings. Just food. Water. Clean towel."
Benji looked up at Calla, eyes hopeful but silent. He'd been taught not to beg. Not to look desperate, even when they were.
Calla studied Iris's face. Her posture. Her tired-but-honest eyes. And said, slowly, "What's in the stew?"
Iris smiled. "Magic. Carrots, garlic, a bunch of things my grandma taught me to use. It'll stick to your ribs."
Calla nodded once. "Okay."
Iris's apartment was three bus stops away, above a closed florist shop with dusty fake orchids in the window. The stairs groaned under their steps, and the door opened with a sound like a quiet sigh. The hallway smelled like old coffee and boiled onions.
Inside, the apartment was a kind of small that felt safe — worn rugs, dim lamps, framed drawings of flowers on the walls. On the bookshelf: cookbooks, a few old romance novels, a dusty sewing machine. Plants leaned toward the window like sleepy pets.
"Bathroom's down the hall," Iris said, "Hot water takes a minute, but it'll get there."
Benji vanished inside, already yelping about how the soap smelled like fruit salad.
Calla sat at the kitchen table, hands curled around a chipped mug shaped like a smiling sun. The tea was hot and herbal, strange but soothing.
"You two got a place?" Iris asked from the stove.
"Here and there," Calla said.
"That means no," Iris replied, matter-of-fact. "Been there."
Calla glanced at her. Iris wasn't pushing. Just speaking truth.
Iris stirred the pot, ladled the stew into mismatched bowls, and set them on the table. The smell was unreal — garlic, herbs, the kind of smell that wrapped around your bones and whispered you're safe.
"There's a community fridge on Jefferson and 12th," she said. "Cleaner. Bakery drops bread off some nights. Less chaos."
Calla nodded. She was already folding the route into her mental map. Another side quest. Another shot at food without bruises.
Iris hesitated. "Where are you two staying tonight?"
Calla didn't answer. Not yet.
"Well," Iris said softly, "if you don't find somewhere… come back. Just you two. Knock three times."
Calla didn't reply, but her silence was no longer sharp.
From the hallway came a yell: "THIS TOWEL IS SO FLUFFY I WANNA MARRY IT!"
They both laughed — loud and real.
And for the first time in too long, Calla let herself lean back in her chair and feel something that almost resembled rest.
Later, after the bowls were rinsed and the towels were hung to dry, Iris showed them to a small corner of the living room where a folded mattress waited. It had a navy blue sheet and a single pillow that smelled like lavender and laundry soap.
"Stay for the night," Iris said.
Calla opened her mouth to protest, but Iris held up a hand.
"Just one night. You don't have to promise anything else."
Benji curled up without complaint. Calla sat beside him, back against the wall, legs stretched out.
The room dimmed as clouds crossed the window. She could still hear the city out there — dogs barking, sirens wailing faintly, someone laughing too loud on the street. But in here, there was only breathing. Warmth. Quiet.
"Calla?" Benji whispered.
"Yeah?"
"I think this stew might've actually had magic in it."
She smiled, eyes closing.
"Don't get used to it," she murmured. "But… maybe."