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.

Comments

[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."