The blond stops wincing as soon as Harmi finishes cleaning grit and filthy rainwater from the scrapes on her hands and one knee. Her mud-drenched jacket and loose pants finish dripping their sooty, festering mud onto the rug just inside the alley door.
    "Wait here. I'll bring you something dry to wear." Harmi tucks a mug of nearly-hot tea into the blond's hands and slips up the back stairs. The blond squeezes her cold fingers and palms against the warmth trying to get her bones to feel the heat, then suddenly she withdraws the scraped hand as searing pain fills first the hand then her whole arm. Skinny feels this as if it were his own body and looks away, not realizing he is rubbing his own hand as if to ease her pain.
    The blond casts a moving silhouette in the open doorway as she eagerly drinks some of the tea. Soon she turns and extends the half-empty mug into the foggy night where it disappears into a large, damp-gloved hand that momentarily breached the hazy boundary of the yellow light. Only the rats and a few goatsuckers flapping in the night sky bugs can see the mug as it is tipped into the foetid shadows and emptied in a single silent gulp.