"Ah."  The sock feet swung out and disappeared.  Jin heard a thump and a grunt.  He popped over the parapet to find the little man sitting up on the flat rooftop, fingers scraping at the grit as if seeking a handhold on the surface.

"Oh, are you afraid of heights?" Jin asked, feeling dumb for not asking sooner.

"Not normally.  Dizzy.  Sorry."

Jin helped him up.  The man did not shrug off his hand, so Jin led him on around the twin exchanger towers, set atop the roof like big blocks.  Hearing Jin's familiar step, Galli, Twig, and Mrs. Speck, and Mrs. Speck's six surviving children, ran around the blocks to greet him, clucking and chuckling.

"Oh, God.  Now I see chickens," said the man in a constricted voice, stopping short.  "I suppose they could be related to the angels.  Wings, after all."

"Quit that, Twig," said Jin sternly to the brown hen, who seemed inclined to peck at his guest's trouser leg.  Jin shoved her aside with his foot.  "I didn't bring you any food yet.  Later."

"You see chickens, too?" the man inquired cautiously.

"Yah, they're mine.  The white one is Galli, the brown one is Twig, and the black-and-white speckled one is Mrs. Speck.  Those are all her babies, though I guess they're not really babies anymore."  Half-grown and molting, the brood didn't look too appetizing, a fact Jin almost apologized for as the man continued to peer down into the shadows at their greeting party.  "I named her Galli because the scientific name of the chicken is Gallus gallus, you know."  A cheerful name, sounding like gallop-gallop, which always made Jin smile.

"Makes . . . sense," the man said, and let Jin tug him onward.

As they rounded the corner Jin automatically checked to be sure the roof of discarded tarps and drop cloths that he'd rigged on poles between the two exchanger towers was still holding firm, sheltering his animal family.  The tent made a cozy space, bigger than his bedroom back before . . . he shied from that memory.  He let go of the stranger long enough to jump up on the chair and switch on the hand light, hanging by a scrap of wire from the ridgepole, which cast a bright circle of illumination over his secret kingdom as good as any ceiling fixture's.  The man flung his arm up over his reddened eyes, and Jin dimmed the light to something softer.

As Jin stepped back down, Lucky rose from the bedroll atop the mattress of shredded flimsies, stretched, and hopped toward him, meowing, then rose on her hind legs to place her one front paw imploringly on Jin's knee, kneading her claws.  Jin bent and scratched her fuzzy gray ears.  "No dinner yet, Lucky."

"That cat does have three legs, right?" asked the man.  He sounded nervous.  Jin hoped he wasn't allergic to cats.