Ys

[Sepia]

I thought to myself, surrounded by a language I can't understand spoken by beautiful people with so much passion, that the world didn't really matter. I was high on caffeine and nicotine, no longer had blood in my veins, through them ran ink and all my fingers were bics which was somewhat unpractical as I found myself chewing my fingers as the words in my brain or heart stopped and I scratched my head thinking how I should continue this, here in the city of Ys. A wonderful spectacle it is and people here are so learned, so wise that it felt like a drug and it felt like the world did not matter. I saw a con artist earlier but instead of using cards he had a cat and a box and I met prometheus earlier, standing by the town square, madness was in his eyes and he told us all to lay it down.

I fell in love in the city of Ys. Her name was ondine and she was a beautiful thing, both in face and grace. The first night after I met her I had a dream, she and myself among the cliffs with rain pouring down and I think it was where she used to grow up, her father had been the one keeping it alive before it all got digital, the last remnant of a revolution began ages ago, still rippling through the water as the puddles fill up and there's four of us, you, our children and me. We've been out, on an expedition, it's autumn and in our baskets we carry freshly picked mushrooms. I can see our house, the lights are on in the kitchen and it's glowing warm, radiating through the rain and I remember our future together, I remember how it's going to be. Your father's funeral, that night you proposed, the first night I saw you in the dark bathed in light, your heart filled with terror and warmth. Then came the end of your education, and then the birth where a couple of years passed before we moved out here. That summer the kids stayed at my parents' and we had that summer in the light, building a life from the rubble of someone elses. Where we indulged in ourselves and our fantasies before autumn came and it was time to pick mushrooms.

There was a small restaurant by the docks of Ys, it didn't open until the evening but every day I bought the chef a beer and bitter and as he sat and became more normal with each sip, I livened up to the coffee and the breakfast he had prepared, just for the two of us. It was an idyllic scene, worthy of memory and as I repeated it into the spring it never grew old nor dull, these mornings with this kind but alcoholic man, dishing up the simplest and most beautiful meals and I did my job, I observed the men and women in this mist. Some of them had passed away long ago, were only dull forms seen as others walked behind them, a nuclear outline like the dead men painted in doorways and under bridges. Nothing here was real, everything was fog and light. The fog was welcoming, pleasing and it felt like a place we visited when we were young. If none were home, don't you think hansel and gretel would have lived there forever after?

[Freeky]