[Location- Metior Tramline]
His lunch hour was one of the things Mayland Long liked about his new 'job' at the library. Sometimes he walked to try a new restaurant, and that was pleasant in its own way, but the tram offered a brief ride to almost anywhere in the city, a segue of comfortable interlude, during which he invariably lost track of whatever he was ostensibly reading and found himself staring at the window, past his reflection (which was once more back to normal) and looking out at the strange prison in which he had found himself.
It seemed his life was fated to be nothing but imprisonments. The cave at the bottom of the world, the twenty-two years there with Lucifer's chain heavy indeed around his neck; the more recent cage of this human body, so very small indeed. The prison of San Francisco-- a pleasant prison to be sure, and no walls or chains but those self-imposed, and all the same he had not been there at his own choosing and the years had begun to drag.
Now here. Now this. A nowhere place, a madhouse, a location where after half a year enlightenment had made nothing clearer. Indeed, there was only ever more confusion. The grown turned to children; the children vanished; the city reordered itself at whim and there was the maddening message he was still deciphering.
The glass and the city beyond held no answers. Life was imprisonment, after all-- stuck in the cage of rebirth, samsara, infinite enslavement to passions and ignorance; this was merely the small imitating the large. Long sighed. What else to do but accept it?
A man settled in the seat by him-- another of the infinite Extras, no doubt, and Long grimaced slightly. He didn't care for them. All the same, out of habit he turned to assess his seatmate-- and froze, brows arching slowly as he found himself sitting next to a face he had last seen in a reflection that hadn't matched its owner's body.
Don Draper stared back, then wordlessly got to his feet.
Not far, though: the silver length of a chain where before there had been none stretched between their bracelets, and they both stared at it a second longer.
"Oh, damn," Long said fervently. So much for acceptance.
It seemed his life was fated to be nothing but imprisonments. The cave at the bottom of the world, the twenty-two years there with Lucifer's chain heavy indeed around his neck; the more recent cage of this human body, so very small indeed. The prison of San Francisco-- a pleasant prison to be sure, and no walls or chains but those self-imposed, and all the same he had not been there at his own choosing and the years had begun to drag.
Now here. Now this. A nowhere place, a madhouse, a location where after half a year enlightenment had made nothing clearer. Indeed, there was only ever more confusion. The grown turned to children; the children vanished; the city reordered itself at whim and there was the maddening message he was still deciphering.
The glass and the city beyond held no answers. Life was imprisonment, after all-- stuck in the cage of rebirth, samsara, infinite enslavement to passions and ignorance; this was merely the small imitating the large. Long sighed. What else to do but accept it?
A man settled in the seat by him-- another of the infinite Extras, no doubt, and Long grimaced slightly. He didn't care for them. All the same, out of habit he turned to assess his seatmate-- and froze, brows arching slowly as he found himself sitting next to a face he had last seen in a reflection that hadn't matched its owner's body.
Don Draper stared back, then wordlessly got to his feet.
Not far, though: the silver length of a chain where before there had been none stretched between their bracelets, and they both stared at it a second longer.
"Oh, damn," Long said fervently. So much for acceptance.