If she found someone online, it usually took her some time to talk herself into it. No, it wouldn’t be a waste of time. Sure, you can leave after ten minutes if you want. No, you don’t have to kiss them. Very rarely did she meet someone who made her eager and excited to see them again and again. Even rarer than that did she meet someone who captured her interest immediately. Those moments tended to catch her by surprise. For some reason, she never saw them coming.

A scratch, a shake, a shift. More snow fell, and the room got impossibly colder.

“I hate this I hate this I hate this.” Nicole began to shiver so hard she had to bounce on the balls of her feet to keep moving. Bounce, scrape, slide. Cold, cold, cold. She had never felt cold like this in her life. Not even when she didn’t have money to pay for her heating bill in the winter and had to sleep in three layers of clothes.

“I’ve seen your videos,” Francis called out suddenly.

Nicole’s heart sank into her stomach. Not now, not now, not now. Don’t tell me that right now! Once again, she turned around to look at him. His back was still to her, and he’d made way more progress than she had, currently digging under one of the chairs. “But you don’t—”

“Use the app, no. I’ve seen rips of them elsewhere.” He glanced at her. “Keep searching.”

Instead of turning around, she hopped behind the row she had created, kicking the fake snow behind her. She wanted to keep her eyes on him. The cold made it hard to think.

“Do you know what The Everlasting F-Firelight is?” He shook his head as if to shake off the cold and his stutter.

“No.” She inhaled sharply, regretting it. Her lungs burned with a frosty ache. Even her toes were beginning to tingle.

Francis abandoned the chair, resuming his trek across the room in a straight row. “It’s a story my mom told me when I was a kid. Basically, it’s about these t-tiny people, like, um, in The Borrowers, but they lived underground. And on a different planet. Anyway. One day their light system breaks, and so Julip, the main character, goes off into the dark alone to steal this magical Firelight that will never go out. But when he finds it, he discovers that it already belongs to another group of tiny people who need the Firelight just as much as he does. He’s kind of a jerk, so he tries to steal it anyway.”

Nicole exhaled a shivering laugh.