There was a crowd near the front doors, news vans and cameras and screaming people, but none of them came near Cassie. There was no money in her hat, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Cassie wasn’t really trying, not anymore. She hadn’t even bothered to seed her hat with change, and she slumped against the iron railing, eyes half-shut, breath limp and grey in front of her mouth. It had still been dark when she’d sat down; she had watched the world gradually brighten to the harsh, steel grey of a winter morning. At first she had been cold, shivering, but that feeling had passed. Now, she didn’t feel anything. The few people who went by seemed to go out of their way to not see her. Their strides didn’t break, they didn’t slow or vary their voices. It was like she wasn’t even there. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she had been swallowed up by the world of grey, just another featureless lump in the gutter, something to be swept up by the street cleaners after the holidays.
