This coffee shop wasn't the one Allison had worked at. It wasn't a bookstore, for one thing, used, new, combination or otherwise. Despite that, it wasn't any smaller; the rectangle was large, open, and airy, with tiled floors, skylights set in a high ceiling, all the lights hanging from the ceiling wrapped in boxes of paper that looked (but probably wasn't) handmade, and delicate oval metal covers over single bulbs spaced along the wall between neighborhood artists' prints, paintings and photographs. Every photograph, Allison noticed, was of the countryside; the only one that might be called urban was of a small, cobblestone street, winding from a pair of feet to a village that might very well have come from the twelfth century, if it weren't so pristine.

Tables were spaced--definitely spaced, and not at all crowded--around the floor, with a clear aisle left on either side of the room (past the artwork and, it turned out, their accompanying price tags) back to the counter. The tables were black, polished metal covered in a sheet of glass that extended an inch beyond the metal; the chairs were assorted, but all the same artistic black metal. Someone had put a lot of work into this place.

Allison didn't care. She was aware that it was intended to seem like a vacation; classy and luxurious, but not so luxurious that the people in it might feel guilt for wasting money, or losing connection to 'real people' in favor of the rich. But Allison had been, and once again was, the rich; this sort of place was the least luxurious she'd grown up among, and knowing that it was supposed to be impressive didn't make it so.

Besides, it wasn't like anyone was here. They'd left in a hurry, clearly; everything was cleaned and put away properly, but with just that touch of messiness that indicated whoever put it away had been checking off the list to go home as quickly as they could, and not worrying about when they came back. Maybe they'd been scared, maybe eager; either way, Allison hadn't been involved in their departure. A bit odd, that.

Odd, however, did not compare to any of a number of more interesting things, many of which were present. Allison had her head stuck into a frozen section of the counter, which was the only reason she didn't let herself start bouncing; she didn't want to hit her head. "Ooh, I think the ice cream's still good!"

And, perhaps, she should leave it that way, if it had survived to this point already. Allison pulled her head out, shut the door, stepped over to stand behind the middle of the counter, and waved a hand at the menu (handwritten in pastel chalks, with monotonously sweet little flowers and vines in the corners) above her. "So what would you like, my Queen?"

She might have been exaggerating with the Queen thing. Really, Allison wasn't sure anymore. But then, she didn't care much, either.

The Queen thing had been an exaggeration, in the future: she remembered that much, though other details from that night that lasted a lifetime were faded around the edges. It had been just a joking title that one of the girls had used, one night while they were planning a raid. It was before they'd had the bone castle. When they'd still been living day to day in the fester of New York's corpse, fighting for territory with a half-dozen other bands of survivors. She'd been the farthest thing from a Queen, but the title had made her laugh. She'd kept it because it had a good ring to it.

It sounded even better, back in the present time. The real time. She could get used to being called a Queen.

"I would like," she said, with the loftiest of tones, "...Do they have any of that butterscotch ice cream? The kind with those big chunks of toffee in it?" The Queen's hands pantomimed those bits of toffee in a most regal of manners.