It's difficult to breathe inside the roof of Crazy Carl's Charcoal Chicken. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust, and the fetid stench of death permeates Anna's nostrils, so strong she can taste it and it makes her wretch.

It's a good thing. It means rat skulls are nearby. Anna tries to avoid the actual rats as she heads into their nests, trying not to vomit as she steps in soft piles of what can only be droppings. It's better, she supposes, than stepping the array on broken glass, nails and exposed electrical wires all around. She just needs to grit her teeth and get it over with.

It would be cleaner and much more pleasant to go to the forest for this task, but it would take infinitely longer. A leisurely trip to the edge of town is not a luxury Anna can afford right now. Heading deeper into the fray, she shudders as the rats brazenly brush past her, even walking over her feet! They don't seem to mind as she removes their dead, sniffing them out fo find the skeletons that are clean from flesh but still ebbing with life force. She grips each skull in her mouth, holding the body in her paws and snapping it at the top of the spine with a sickening pop. The taste is beyond foul, and she tries not to think about the filthy diseases they might carry. When the basket around her neck is full with four or five skulls, she leaves and the rats part with reverence for her - their own personal undertaker.

After bringing them home, she heads into the next restaurant, and then the next, under the watchful moon, feeling very alone in the stillness of the night.

Days pass, each one the same as before, and Anna continues working the shop by day and exhausting local rats' nests by night. Occasionally she actually uses one of the gifts that are supposedly the point of being a familiar - identifying the presence of curses.

Real curses are very rare, and usually pettier than people assume. The vast majority of people with chronic health ailments or financial woes are simply unlucky. But the ones whos pumps keep breaking, every time, no matter how many they buy, who are always missing the bus by the skin of their teeth, and whose coffee orders always get mixed up at the cafe, they are usually the ones who cut some grumpy witch or wizard off in traffic and are now paying the price.

But cursed or not, Hans welcomes all and takes their money happily, promising their life will soon change. Anna says nothing - mostly because she literally can't talk to non-magical people. But also because she has her own family to think of. Her own stakes.

It feels great to be human again! To swing her arms and walk on two legs amongst the crowd rather than scampering beneath it. Anna is sure she has a long list of things to do and people to see, but they're all fuzzy in her mind for some reason. Instead, she does what feels natural. The quintessential human experience. She buys a coffee.

The layout has changed since she last visited Little Seed Cafe. It feels bigger, and she swears the ceiling never used to be this high, or have all these lights dangling down so low. They're very pretty though. Sunshine streams through the windows, casting a warm, cosy vibe into the warehouse. The line is confusing, snaking through the tables and splitting into three, but everyone is super friendly and lets her cut in front with big smiles on their faces. She makes it to the counter and orders a cappuccino. Some kind of cake or brownie would be nice as well. Cats can't have chocolate, but Anna thinks about it every day, like a lover gone off to war. She peers into the glass cabinet to see what sweet treats are available, but it's full of flowers and tiny plants. Are they edible? Why are they so tiny?

The barista smiles and hands Anna her coffee in a big red bucket, because they're out of cups. It's a bit weird, but she can only make the best of it, right? She finds a table, and drinks carefully from the bucket, holding it up with two hands and trying not to spill it.

'Hey, stranger.'

Anna recognises the voice, and lowers the ridiculous bucket - which is now leaking - to see Elsa sitting across from her at the table. She's sitting very straight, with a little pink flower on her plate. Her glittering shoulderless blue dress - which really accentuates her bust, not that Anna's staring or anything - seems out of place in this casual environment, like something one should wear to a red carpet, not a cafe. But then, it has been established that she's kind of an odd person.

'Elsa, hey!'

Elsa smiles and cuts a petal off her flower with a knife and fork, looks up and says, 'You look beautiful.'

Anna looks down to see she's wearing a fluffy animal onesie, with a white patch on the belly, and feels kind of silly. She doesn't remember putting this on, or even owning an animal onesie, for that matter. 'Y-you look beautifuller.' That's a word, right? Yeah. It seems right. She reaches out to touch the glittering material over Elsa's arm. It's cold and smooth, 'Is that… made of ice?'

'It seems like it, doesn't it?' Elsa's figure is almost cartoonish with its feminine curves. She looks down at herself, and her eyes move to her arm, where Anna's hand has stopped to rest. Their hands meet, fingers interlace, it feels very natural. She has missed her human fingers and doing fingery things. Writing. Picking her nose. Playing video games. Holding hands with someone.

'I never expected to bump into you here of all places.'

'Why not?' Elsa reaches for Anna's other hand, rubbing gently with her thumbs. It feels very nice.

'Well you said you like to keep to yourself. And there are, like, a million people here.'

'But they aren't real.'

'They aren't?' Anna looks around to see the other patrons suddenly look away awkwardly, as though they had been watching her up until now.

'No, silly, this is a dream.'

'Oh.' That explains why the cafe is so big, and why there are so many birds in the ceiling. Anna looks down at the flower on Elsa's plate. It's turned into a fancy doll in a lacy dress with its hands cut off. Something about it disturbs Anna, and she apparently shows it on her face because Elsa hides it in her bag, looking embarrassed.

'I know, I know. It's very dangerous to waltz through other people's dreams alone, without a guide. But I wanted to talk to you. In private.'

'Oh!' Anna's first thought is that she's done something wrong. Offended her. Made some terrible faux pass when she was over at her house the other day, and now Elsa has come to reprimand her. It's kind of her to do it privately, not in front of Hans. Anna braces herself for embarrassment, 'About what?'

Elsa leans forward and lowers her voice, even though the dream is apparently a private space, 'I wanted to ask if you're okay?'

'Wait, what?' Relief floods through Anna, 'Yeah, of course I'm okay! I'm great, actually.'

The edges of the cafe are growing fuzzy, disintegrating. A growing discontent rises amongst the patrons in the form of a grumble. Elsa pulls her hands back, awkwardly wringing them together, 'Okay, well, I left a few trails in the forest. If you ever… need help.'

Anna is a little confused, not only because of the fact that they're now on a boat. When did that happen? Waves lap at the sides, rising up into the air, making beautiful shapes. Horses. Water horses. It's quite mesmerising, but she's also feeling terribly seasick, like everything's spinning. Her focus is broken by the cool tingle of Elsa's hand on her arm, her sad smile, 'Goodbye, Anna.'

'Huh? Where are you going?'

'You're waking up.'

'But I don't want to-'

The ocean, the cafe, the boat, all of it dissolves into fuzzy blackness as Hans' voice breaks through the dreamscape. 'Come on! Wakey wakey.'

Anna wakes on the office chair in the workshop, spinning around and around and around. That explains the seasickness. 'Stop it!' She says, flooded with disappointment, unsure if that was real. It felt real. But it's rapidly fading into obscurity, as dreams do.

He doesn't stop.

She jumps off the chair and stumbles around, all dizzy, paws crashing into each other and feeling like she might throw up. 'What was that for?'

'Just to spice things up.' Hans shrugs, a carefree smile spread over his face. He looks relaxed, with loose shoulders and his weight all on one hip, gazing out the window, and this might be the moment Anna's been waiting for.

'Very spicy, thanks.' She wobbles a little, but slowly finds her centre, clearing her throat and finding her courage, 'So um, we have all the rat skulls we need now…'

'Mhm.' Hans is playing with glamours, swiping his hand over his face to change his hair to black, then back to auburn, then to a sandy brown. Sideburns, no sideburns. He turns his eyes brown, then back to blue. After each change he takes a selfie on his phone, then swipes back and forth, comparing them. Clearly he has mana to spare.

'So, uh, my brother's graduation is coming up in a week.'

'Uh-huh.' He changes his eyebrows. Thicker. Thinner. Arched. Rounded. It's like watching a Sims character in creation.

'I'm wondering, if we're all caught up on work, if you'll have mana to spare, my family's really expecting me to be there. You know, with two legs, two hands, no whiskers… And maybe I could have the weekend off?'

Hans sits on the office chair, leans back and looks off into the distance, taking a deep breath before he speaks. 'Anna, did I ever tell you I'm the youngest of thirteen sons?'

Only a thousand times. It's part of the whole Westergaard gimmick.

'You might have mentioned it.' Anna tries to keep the tone light.

'If I took time off, every time somebody in my family finished studying, or won a prize, or had a baby, I'd never work a day in my life!'

'But-'

'And we're not caught up, either! It's the end of the year, that means people are making all sorts of boring speeches. The orders for Verbosity Plus are already coming through. You know what that means.' Hans is already rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain - it's a very expensive potion. Partly because most people fear public speaking more than death, and partly because of its elusive main ingredient. 'Zappo Root. Then, maybe, we can talk about your brother's… birthday or whatever.'

Well, Anna didn't plan to spend her day making that kind of treacherous journey, risking life and limb for a couple of stupid leaves. At this point though, she'll take any excuse to get out of the vicinity of the workshop for a bit. Just to get away and process the disappointment of her dream being just a dream, and what's looking like a "no" for her brother's graduation. She swallows down her dismay and heads off, telling herself to keep her head up and tell herself this is the magical adventure she always wanted.