birds singing in the sycamore tree

[baedalites]

As night falls on Baedal, the city is almost quiet. The streets have a few last minute workers returning home, but by now, most citizens have already gone by the temples and picked up their vurt, ready to lay down and dream.

After placing a not-feather in one's mouth, there's a moment where it fizzes against the tongue before sliding coolly down the back of the throat and pulling the user down into sleep. A series of impressions, more sensation than anything concrete, appears before the user and this is how one chooses which Dreamer to enter.

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[obscuredvision]

Her gaze drifts, chasing the play of light and shadow on the landscape, the way the sun kisses things with its glow and the way the breeze shifts things subtly. She feels it when she breathes, too, in and out, in and out, the air circulating, the edges of her nostrils cooling like the shadows with each inhalation and warming like the sun-dappled rocks when she breathes out.

And there's his voice, calling her back, her attention drawing back in to focus on him. All over again she thinks he's like something out of a magazine somewhere, so nicely framed by the door behind him. Maybe they are on a page somewhere, the envy of some reader's eye.

Her eyes take in the details of his face, then her gaze catches the curling smoke, following it down to his hand, and "Yes," she says yes, "thank you," because she's a good girl who always minds her elders only her elders aren't here, she says "yes" because there's no one to tell her "no", to decide anything for her.

[selfmadman]

His shirt pocket sags with the pack. There are the land's creases, hard enough to shred light; then there's the gap his hand dips into. The unsteady line of the cloth vulnerable as a child's jutting lower lip.

He offers a box stamped with the name—ringed like a target—Lucky Strike. The words draw the eye. The world narrows around them, crowds out wind and shadow.

“It's toasted,” Don says. It has a nursery-rhyme lilt, like the words were waiting for him. His whole face changes with his smile. His features are less muddled, his expression relieved.

The pack's down to its last cigarette; he's feeling for his lighter.

[obscuredvision]

"I'll get you more," she says, because this is the last one and she can't take his last without knowing she'll replenish them. The logo holds her attention as she slips a finger into the packet, until she's rewarded with the drag of paper under her fingertip. The cellophane rustles and she thinks of the wind, the wind catches the ends of her hair and she looks up, watching it move through his like a doting mother's fingers.

"Do you like it here?" She holds the cigarette vaguely like a pencil, isn't that how you do it, couldn't she draw with the smoke once it's lit? "You're different. You're you, but different."