Sarah leaned against her motorcycle where they both stood in the small lot of a drive-up café. She inhaled steam that coated her sunglasses and spread warmth over her face; the cold didn't hurt, not anymore, and Sarah wondered for how much longer she'd be able to feel the difference between sensations at all.
"Tea is expensable, Barbara," Sarah said.
"No," said the voice coming from the phone in Sarah's free hand. "Never has been and never will be."
"You just want cider and donuts." Silence from the phone, and Sarah laughed. "I'll bring them by when I head over. Is Ben in today?"
The parking lot led out onto a busy state highway; a chain-link fence stretched along it to protect pedestrians and drivers from the abrupt fifteen-foot drop on the other side. Sarah's eyes glanced over a young boy in a faded, puffy coat. He squinted up at the sun, and Sarah realized it must be strobing at him through the fence. Migraine city. Sarah set her tea on the ground and stood upright. This traffic was nothing to her, nor were a pair of sunglasses. She--
The boy's squinty glare became a scowl just before he lifted his hand and twisted it. The frosty world rippled, and the chain link morphed into corrugated metal--no, it always had been that. What was Sarah thinking? She shook her head. He entered the lee of a building parallel with Sarah, and the boy lifted his hand again. Corrugated metal became chain, and always had been. Sarah shook her head again; her sunglasses slid down her face.
A warper? Sarah's hand had gone limp with the weight of the phone while she watched the boy; a voice--Barbara--currently spoke from it, but Sarah interrupted:
"Barbara, here on Jefferson and Main there's a..." The boy's eyes met Sarah's. The heat of her tea fogged her glasses, things went fuzzy--but her tea was on the ground. No, it was in her hand.
A boy in a puffy blue coat was passing by. Sarah frowned at his back for a moment.
"Sarah? There's a what, Sarah?" She shook herself. Her eyes wandered until they lit on the "fall faverites" sign at the café entrance.
"Some... great cider here," she said slowly.
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