Close your eyes and hope real hard.
Tristram Foxe stands in the washroom of his loft, hands braced on either side of the sink, trembling. In the halflight, he cannot see the details of his person in the glass of the medicine cabinet, only the background illumination filtering in through the door from the windows that converge in a corner overlooking a busy Chicago intersection a handful of stories below. Somewhere else, dawn is painting a sky that he can't see beyond the buildings of the city. He is like a man who has awoken from a terrible dream, and stands staring at the shadow in his mirror trying to rekindle his trust in the safety of the real world, faith that when enough light comes through the window the face in that mirror will be one that he recognizes.
Only, Tristram Foxe sleeps like the dead. It is as though he has left all of his dreams in that other place, with his sister and everything that was good and familiar up until a year ago. A year ago, he gambled and lost, and ended up here.
No, there is no dream. Only the pull of it finally reaching him, after a year of nonchalant hedonism and simple making of his way. The deep thrum of absence and wanderlust, the knowing that there is so much more to this place than the sameness of his days and his curiously quiet life.
The grey light grows, reaches him; the details of his person begin to appear. All sharp angles and pale hues, the glittering cruelty of his Asthetim heritage twined indefinitely with the total vulnerability of his mortal one. He will always see the divide, to his own eyes his most salient feature. Vianne had to convince him for years that if he didn't want them to, nobody but the purest of celestial blood would ever be able to tell. But there it is, like a fissure in his face. In the mirror, he slowly grins, and laughs.
Among the waning shadows, he stalks out of the smaller room into the larger one. It lays there at his bedside, never tucked away in a drawer. He's been reading in it, lately, after months of being loathe to touch it or look inside. He can't remember why the strange book, the journal, put him so far off when he arrived... perhaps it was the simple fact that it represented all that was wrong with this world, that it had been allowed to trap him. But Tristram is in better spirits now.
Fifteen minutes later, journal tucked under arm and hands in the pockets of a neatly tailored jacket, the young man walks smiling into the neighborhood greasy spoon, a breakfast-all-day diner named Nicolette's. He sits to order coffee, toast, and a milkshake before setting pen to paper.
The handwriting is neat, elegant, cursive; the sort of handwriting one would be inclined to classify as feminine by looks alone. Maybe penned by an old woman who keeps a copy of Emily Post close at hand, or a young one who thinks herself a poet or misplaced descendant of Jane Austen. (Either way, the owner of this handwriting certainly wears very pretty hats.)
Hello, Chicago--
And out the words flow.
Too new a resident in the haunted city; Nicolette's on S. Halstead.
Maybe I just want to hear your story.
~T
Only, Tristram Foxe sleeps like the dead. It is as though he has left all of his dreams in that other place, with his sister and everything that was good and familiar up until a year ago. A year ago, he gambled and lost, and ended up here.
No, there is no dream. Only the pull of it finally reaching him, after a year of nonchalant hedonism and simple making of his way. The deep thrum of absence and wanderlust, the knowing that there is so much more to this place than the sameness of his days and his curiously quiet life.
The grey light grows, reaches him; the details of his person begin to appear. All sharp angles and pale hues, the glittering cruelty of his Asthetim heritage twined indefinitely with the total vulnerability of his mortal one. He will always see the divide, to his own eyes his most salient feature. Vianne had to convince him for years that if he didn't want them to, nobody but the purest of celestial blood would ever be able to tell. But there it is, like a fissure in his face. In the mirror, he slowly grins, and laughs.
Among the waning shadows, he stalks out of the smaller room into the larger one. It lays there at his bedside, never tucked away in a drawer. He's been reading in it, lately, after months of being loathe to touch it or look inside. He can't remember why the strange book, the journal, put him so far off when he arrived... perhaps it was the simple fact that it represented all that was wrong with this world, that it had been allowed to trap him. But Tristram is in better spirits now.
Fifteen minutes later, journal tucked under arm and hands in the pockets of a neatly tailored jacket, the young man walks smiling into the neighborhood greasy spoon, a breakfast-all-day diner named Nicolette's. He sits to order coffee, toast, and a milkshake before setting pen to paper.
The handwriting is neat, elegant, cursive; the sort of handwriting one would be inclined to classify as feminine by looks alone. Maybe penned by an old woman who keeps a copy of Emily Post close at hand, or a young one who thinks herself a poet or misplaced descendant of Jane Austen. (Either way, the owner of this handwriting certainly wears very pretty hats.)
Hello, Chicago--
And out the words flow.
Too new a resident in the haunted city; Nicolette's on S. Halstead.
Maybe I just want to hear your story.
~T