Elliot slid his over toward me, and I saw that it was steaming and still mostly full.
“I can—” I was starting to say that I could make my own or make myself tea or something, but Elliot interrupted me.
“Drink it, Seth. You’re clearly freezing.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I wrapped my frozen fingers around the mug, hissing slightly as hyper-chilled flesh hit hot ceramic, then pulled my hand back. “I’ll… let it cool a little,” I said, fully aware that it probably wasn’t too hot to drink, just too hot for my chapped hands to hold.
Elliot frowned, then reached out and took one of my hands, wrapping it in both of his. “You’re going to give yourself frostbite,” he told me, his frown deepening.
Frostbite had not been a thing I’d ever been particularly concerned about. Sure, I grew up in the mountains, but the Appalachians aren’t that high, and when I’d still lived there, I was a kid who didn’t know any better. My whole adult life I’d lived in Richmond or Charlottesville, and in neither place hadfrostbite ever been even the slightest concern. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I said.
“Seth, your fingertips are starting to turn blue,” Elliot retorted.
“You should be careful about your fingertips,” Smith put in. “You need those.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said. “They’re just cold.”
Elliot rubbed my hand between both of his. “Blue fingertips isnotfine,” he replied, his voice a little sharp. He lifted my hand towards his mouth, then blew between his own palms so that his breath caused burning tingles to ripple through my hand.
“Ow,” I muttered.
“See? Your hands are too cold.” He rubbed at my fingers a little more, until the pins and needles started rushing in, my hand now flushed and bright pink. He let it go. “Give me the other one.”
I almost protested, then decided that he was more animated abusing my hands than he had been when I’d come in, so I let him do the same thing to my other hand.
“You need better gloves,” Elliot grumbled, before breathing on this hand, too.
“I can’t do my job with gloves on,” I retorted.
Both of them looked at me with horrified expressions.
“Seth—” Elliot said at the same time that Smith went “But Mays?—”
It occurred to me than that it was early November, and already below freezing. It was supposed to warm up a bit next week, but if it was this coldnowwhat was it going to be like in late December or January? It wasn’t like people stopped dying or having accidents just because it was cold. In fact, I was pretty sure that they got snow and ice up here in the winter more like we had in the mountains, which meant that car accidents, at least, were likely to increase in the winter.
“But I need my fingers,” I pointed out. “You can’t work particulate tweezers in gloves!”
“Lacy has a pair of mittens that turn into finger-tip-less gloves,” Smith informed me. “So she can do that and then put her mittens back on.”
“Mittens?” It hadn’t even occurred to me that adults might wear mittens. I’d stopped wearing them around age ten or eleven.
“You know what mittens are, right?” Elliot asked me, and there was an edge of something that might have been teasing to the question.
“Yes, thank you, I know what mittens are,” I retorted. “I wasn’t aware that people who weren’t children wear them.”
Elliot and Smith exchanged a look. “Seth,” Elliot said slowly. “Everyonewears mittens up here when it gets really cold.”
“It is really cold,” I pointed out.
Elliot’s snort and Smith’s pained expression told me that it was not, apparentlyreally cold.
“It’s below freezing!” I said, a little worried now.
“Wait until it gets below zero,” Smith warned.
I knew people lived places where it got below zero. I had not thought that I would ever end up in one, because as far as I’d known, those places were inside arctic circles or were planetary poles. Or really high up in the mountains, like Mount Everest. Not somewhere I could drive to in under twenty-four hours.
