Elliott was doing laundry when they rediscovered the $50 bill in the pocket of their running shorts. Somehow between the sudden hail storm and having Puck over to their apartment they’d forgotten all about finding the money that night. Now they knew what they wanted to do with it.

With winter quickly approaching and Puck still refusing shelter, Elliott went to the local thrift shop with the idea of buying him some essentials. Among the racks of polyester blazers and moth eaten sweaters they found a decent enough parka that looked like it should fit the teen. 

Further back in the depths of the store Elliott came across a sleeping bag that smelled only slightly of stale cigarettes. They’d hoped to find a tent as well, but that was evidently asking a little too much. They settled instead for a ratty tarp which smelled quite a bit of basement. At least it would keep the rain off. 

When the items were presented to Puck that evening, the boy seemed excited about them, despite their olfactory qualities, though not quite as excited as he’d been for snacks and a box of birthday candles. Unfortunately, when Elliott saw him the following night, Puck greeted them wearing his usual faded hoodie.

“Where’s the coat I got you?” they asked, feeling more than a little irked at how much they sounded like their own mother. 

“Somewhere safe,” Puck informed them. Elliott felt only slightly comforted by the implication that Puck had access to such a place.

“Do you not like it?” Elliott couldn’t help asking.

“I love it,” Puck insisted, and as usual, Elliott believed him. “I just wasn’t cold.”

“Do you ever get cold?” Elliott asked, half jokingly.

“Well… no,” he admitted.

“Okay,” Elliott began with a sigh. “That’s not… well it’s not normal. And frankly it’s a bit worrying. So maybe you should just wear the coat, because I can assure you, it is cold, whether you feel it or not.” 

“Would it make you feel better if I wore it?” Puck asked with a look of faint amusement. Elliott got the distinct impression that this was exactly the kind of indulgent tone Puck might take with a child.

“It would,” Elliott admitted. 

“Alright,” Puck agreed, and that was the end of it. 

By now Elliott had given up on hearing back from Child Protective Services. If they were still trying to find Puck they weren’t telling them about it, and given that Elliott had been able to provide almost no concrete information, it was hardly surprising. They knew that they had to find another solution -- the knowledge weighed on them each night as they attempted to sleep and distracted them from work.

Things came to a head one soggy evening in mid-November. The night started out normal enough -- they found Puck under the usual tree, wearing his coat as he’d been doing since their little talk. Elliott took off their backpack and extracted the thermos of tomato soup and candy bar they’d brought for the kid. 

It was as they were handing the soup to Puck that their fingertips brushed over his hand. The boy immediately recoiled from the touch, a flicker of pain passing over his face, but not before Elliott felt something wrong. 

Puck’s hand was ice cold. Not cold like the hand of somebody who had been outside for too long on a cold autumn night, either. Cold like a block of granite. Inhumanly cold.

“What…?” Elliott began, their voice trailing off as they grasped helplessly for words. They shivered and shoved their hands into their pockets. Had the temperature just dropped? 

“Well… shit…” Puck muttered under his breath. 

The cold rain stung where it hit Elliott’s face, and now their breath came out in visible clouds. Really though, they could have sworn it hadn’t been this cold just moments before. They listened to the sound of the rainfall as it shifted from a pitter-patter to a persistent rattle. Looking down at their coat, it appeared to be frosted on one side with a thin shell of ice which was forming where the rain slanted towards them.

“Freezing rain,” they observed.

“Looks like it,” agreed Puck. 

“Come on,” said Elliott, standing. “We’ve gotta get out of this.”

“That’s alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Elliott demanded, then mentally kicked themself for swearing at the boy, who for his part seemed to be unphased.

“No,” said Puck “I am not.” Elliott made a mental note to call up their parents and apologize for everything they’d put them through as a teen.

“Fine,” they said, and sat back down. “If you’re staying out here, then so am I.” Elliott just hoped that their gambit would pay off before either of them got frostbite. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Puck snapped. Elliott was alarmed at the uncharacteristic venom in his tone.

“Oh, so it’s stupid when I do it?” they demanded. 

“We’re not the same,” Puck explained, slowly, as if he thought Elliott might have trouble keeping up. “I don’t need the same things you do.” 

“What are you talking about? It’s okay to have basic human needs, Puck.”

“I’m not human.” 

“Excuse me?” Elliott was shaken by this assertation. 

“You heard me,” the kid said, his voice barely audible.

“I did,” Elliott agreed, uncertain of how to proceed. The situation suddenly felt terribly delicate, as if one wrong word might send Puck over the edge of some precipice he might not be able to return from. “Can you explain what you mean?” they added after some thought, all of their earlier frustration having been replaced by apprehension. 

Slowly Puck turned to look Elliott in the eye, his expression cold as his skin had been. “I’m not human. I’m what you would call a god. I don’t need shelter, or warm clothing, or food. I only need your belief.”

Elliott was hit with a peculiar sinking feeling, as though the ground had been abruptly removed from under them. This was far beyond anything they were prepared to deal with. It definitely explained some things, but they had no idea how to deal with someone who thought he was a god. A teen who didn’t understand their own mortality was normal enough, but this… this definitely required professionals. Of course, there was still a more pressing need: they had to get out of the freezing rain. 

“I believe in you,” they said in earnest. 

“Not the way I need you to,” Puck answered, but Elliott could see their words had affected the teen. He looked less miserable already. 

“I’m trying to understand, but please… it’s fucking freezing,” they said with convulsive shudder.

“You’re seriously going to give yourself hypothermia for me, huh?” Puck asked. His eyes twinkled as a slight smile played at the corner of his mouth. 

“Y-yes,” Elliott managed to get out through chattering teeth.

The boy sighed. “Alright. Just this once,” he cautioned and sprang to his feet.  

Elliott stood on shaking legs and began to make their way down the hill, which had already grown slick with ice. Puck trod nimbly by their side, apparently unphased by the condition of the ground. 

How can he be so unaffected? Elliott wondered, for a moment almost believing what the kid had told them. Then they shook their head, casting the thought away, because that’s what one is taught to do with impossible ideas. 

Puck chattered away happily now, his attitude having done a complete 180. He pointed out the way an icy coating had formed on all of the bare tree branches, and how it caught and refracted the light of the streetlamps. “Look, it’s made my coat all crunchy too!” he observed, breaking up the ice covering one of his shoulders. 

They reached the edge of the park and Elliott stepped out into the street, holding their arms out to balance on the icy cement. 

“Wait!” Puck yelped. Elliott looked back at him. The smile had fled his face, and now it was panic that Elliott saw there. 

What happened next Elliott only remembered later as a blur. A horn abruptly began to blare, and before Elliott had time to snap their head back around in the direction of the sound they were pulled over backward. Then they were landing on the ground, held in the grasp of somebody impossibly cold and unyielding.

There was no time to process the fact that the kid’s body seemed to be made of stone, because in the same instant, a truck came skidding around the bend in the road and wrapped itself around a telephone pole.