Autumn bled into Winter, and the Winter was cold.

It lingered longer than Lucie had hoped it would, the snow settling on the ground and refusing to budge. The first few weeks had just had slightly frozen ground, which meant she had to struggle to dig out the few winter roots and berries hidden under the white blanket, but a month into Winter and the snows came up past her ankle. There was no hope for foraging, no hope for farming, and the heater in her coop had broken that morning. The broken heater had meant that she'd debated letting Diogenes and co come live in her house for a bit, but then she remembered how annoying cleaning up chicken poo was.

But she couldn't just leave them there, and she couldn't afford to buy a new heater, not when she couldn't supplement her own meals with homegrown food.


Shane wasn't quite sure why he was headed towards Lucie's, other than he was bored and needed something to do. He heard her before he saw her, the lilting voice of someone trying to sing multiple harmonies simultaneously.

"Watch now, he'll soon be along and he's finer than any- Shane!" She cut off suddenly, the embarrassment of being caught flooding her cheeks. Despite her blushing, her fingers continued to tap out the rhythm on her forearm, and Shane smiled at her.

"You're such a dork," he said, catching her hand. "I love it."

Lucie grinned and turned away, tucking a non-existent strand of hair behind her ear.

"Were you coming for something?" She asked, her hands finding each other and rubbing together to stop tapping out the rhythm of the sea shanty once more. Shane's smile faltered, then returned the same as before.

"Just to see my good buddy, Diogenes," he teased, untucking Lucie's hair. She put it back behind her ear and shook her head slightly at him. Then, her eyes widened.

"Oh! Are you any good at fixing heaters? I don't know if mine is dead-dead or just pretending-dead, and I can't afford a new one," she winced slightly.

"I can take a look?" Shane offered, knowing full well he had nothing useful to say about the heater. "But you could always keep your chickens at ours for a little bit if you wanted. Eggatha won't mind."

"Eggatha?!"

"I could quite easily go home, you know."

"Sorry - please help. Eggatha is a wonderful name and I will never mock it again," Lucie bowed her head in mock sheepishness. When she glanced up her eyes sparkled and Shane felt his heart stutter at how beautiful she looked, with the small flakes of snow dotting her hair.

"And you know, if you're that broke you can always-" He trailed off as Lucie shot him a warning look.

"No."

"Okay - heater?"

"Heater."


Somehow, and he wasn't entirely convinced he even knew how, Shane snapped the heater in two and ended up carrying two of Lucie's three chickens towards Marnie's Ranch. When Diogenes fluffed up her feathers and snapped at Sophocles, tucked under Shane's right arm, he spoke to them both in stern, yet soothing, voices.

"Hey, stop it. Play nice, both of you," he said, looking between the two chickens. Diogenes made a small yap of protest, but settled back into the crook of his arm and stared off in the opposite direction to Sophocles. A hand pressed into his back, and he turned towards Lucie to see her smile and lift herself on to her toes to kiss his cheek.

"What was that for?" He asked, bemused. She merely smiled and returned her hand to Plato, scooping the chicken back into the more comfortable spot on her arm. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Lucie laughed at his confusion, and hummed lightly to herself, moving ahead of him towards the ranch doors. Shane would never understand her, but watching her bounce towards the door of the place he knew as home filled him with a warmth he didn't object to. If she only put a fraction more enthusiasm into her steps, she'd be skipping.

"Are you coming?" She teased, hand resting on the door handle.


Marnie wasn't in when they moved from the coop to the kitchen, and Shane thanked whatever spirits were listening. He'd felt like every time he'd been with Lucie for the past few weeks, there had always been someone just around the corner to interrupt, and so having this moment of privacy was so welcome.

They had been alone at points, but that was mostly spent in Lucie's bed, and whilst Shane liked sex as much as the next guy, this was a different kind of intimacy. One that felt new to him, the casual affection of two people in a kitchen. And when Lucie started lowly singing a something to herself, the smile burst on to his face. He loved that she sang in front of him, because, Yoba, she was a terrible singer but so enthusiastic.

The kettle came to boil and he glanced across at Lucie, able to hear the lyrics as well as the tune now. Whilst he'd recognised the tune as one that Willie often sang to himself, the lyrics were utterly incomprehensible to him.

"Are you…singing in French?" He asked, frowning at her as he fished the tea bag out of the mug. Lucie stopped singing and laughed lightly.

"Well, yeah," she said, lifting the mug out of his hands.

"Didn't know you knew French." Shane's hands were still cupped, as though the mug was still there. "I don't know any other languages."

Lucie raised an eyebrow at him, laughing at his slightly puzzled expression. She placed the mug on the counter and closed the distance between them. Her hands found Shane's hips and pulled him close.

"Shane - my dad's side of the family is French. I think I knew French before I spoke any English," she laughed, kissing away his puzzled face. When she drew back, Shane looked as confused as before. "Did the names Lucienne and Jacques not give it away?"

Shane muttered something under his breath and looked away.

"Drink your tea and stop pointing out that I'm dumb," he said, slightly more audible this time. Lucie laughed and kissed his nose.

"Not dumb at all," she teased. Then it was her turn to frown slightly. "But, I mean, I know nothing about your family either, so I'll probably say some equally dumb things."

Shane turned away, picking up the black coffee he'd made for himself, and gestured through to the lounge. Lucie sidled through the doorway and then darted back for the tea that she'd left abandoned on counter. Her sheepish grin made Shane want to make her tea and distract from it forever.

"There's not much to say about my family," he said, shutting the lounge door behind him. "It's really just Marnie and Jas. My parents died when I was a teenager."

Lucie looked up at him from the couch, her eyes wide.

"I'm so sorry," she said, and meant it.

"It was a long time ago." Shane shrugged. Lucie squeezed his hand and repeated her condolences. Shane didn't let go of her hand, not squishing it, but holding it lightly. Lucie looked to him, waiting for him to fill the silence with something more about himself, but he didn't.

"Was your mum French too?" He asked, glad to change the subject. Lucie's face darkened slightly. She took her hand back, placing it around her mug and drinking from it rather than answering him.

"No." She stared at the fireplace, empty and darkened with soot. "No, she hated that my dad spoke to me in French rather than English."

"Hated?" Shane asked. He knew he should drop it, avoid the topic that was clearly closed. But Lucie never spoke of her mother and he wanted to know. Surely she'd tell him to shut up if she didn't want to tell him.

She didn't, she merely sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

"Yeah," Lucie said after a short silence. "We don't speak anymore."

"Sorry," Shane spoke quietly. Lucie glanced at him, mustering a small smile.

"I'm not." Her voice was firm, but light. "She's a horrible person, and I don't need her in my life. I've got my dad and you - and honestly, I don't think of her at all." Drinking from her tea to stop her from saying anything more, Lucie shut her eyes for a long moment.


They spent the afternoon talking about their families, pausing intermittently as they each worried they'd asked something too painful, but the answers always came. Shane was surprised to find himself telling Lucie about how he practically ran to college to get away from the town he grew up in, where everyone just looked him as the poor kid who'd lost both of his parents. How he'd been so desperate for approval that he'd joined the first sports team he saw, and then discovered that he actually really liked grid ball - the bro culture less so, but he could cope with being the team loner. He told Lucie how he'd met Jas' mother at a game, when he'd been stuck on the sidelines due to an injury, and she'd been the student roped into making sure anything vaguely technical worked perfectly due to the coach having a remarkable ability to break everything he touched. She'd started talking to him out of boredom, then asked him out for coffee the next day. And how, over coffee, they'd realised that they were polar opposites and a relationship would implode within a month, but a friendship? A friendship could work.

As Lucie told him about her mother's affair with her therapist's receptionist, Shane light the fire, trying not to laugh at her mimicry of a city accent. Lucie wove the story as though it were a comedy and not a tragedy - dramatising everything with poor accents and gestures.

"- so then, the bitch has the gall, the GALL, to blame my dad for the water damage!" She laughed as he sat back down next to her. "As though her leaving the bath running and walking out was his fault in any way. And so, that is how I learnt the term 'gaslighting' at the ripe age of eight years old."

"Lucie, I mean this from the bottom of my heart," Shane pressed a hand against his chest. "Your mother sucks."

Lucie laughed.

"If I ever start to sound like her, do me a favour and just put me out of my misery," she joked, only half-insincere. She glanced towards the window, and noticed the white flakes falling in the dusky late afternoon. "Yoba, it's still snowing?"

She knelt on the couch, turning her whole body towards the window like a child, her feet poking off the edge of the cushion. Shane was so tempted to tickle her feet, just to hear her shriek with laughter, but she turned back before he could reach for them.

"What?" He asked as Lucie nodded out the window.

"I know why Marnie's been gone so long," she said, pointing at the outside world. "Look."

Shane grumbled, but stood and looked out the window. The snow was nearly at the lip of the window sill. Lucie grinned.

"We're snowed in?"

"Climb out the window and go see if Marnie and Jas are okay?" Lucie suggested, a wry smile, pushing herself off the couch to stand next to him. Shane raised an eyebrow at her.

"Jas is with Vince. She'll be better fed and looked after than she'd ever be by either of us. And Marnie will love the excuse to stay at Lewis', because we both know she's not been at JoJo Mart for five hours every Thursday." Shane turned to Lucie. "And I can think of something more fun we can do than trekking a mile to go see if the fine people are fine."