The city streets are abuzz with activity, as they usually are at this hour.
While darkness fell hours before, the night is young and the lights of the bars and clubs fill the roads with garish neon advertisements of the good times to be had inside. People talk in open air restaurants and cars noisily make their way from destination to destination. The cool breeze carries with it the smell of food and smoke, barely masking the underlying stench of stagnant water and refuse.
A big city that never stops, with a million smaller alleyways crossing the arterial roads like the capillaries of a giant's body.
It is in one of these dark alleyways where the air seems to shimmer like heatwaves rising from asphalt in the summer. The distant sounds of cars and people seems to fade to nothingness as the air grows thick and heavy. The stars and moonlight seem to dim as though a heavy woolen blanket has been cast over the entire alley. The shimmering space in the alley suddenly crystallizes, a hundred fractal cracks reflecting a thousand facets hanging unsupported above the dirty street, each one seeming to shine with light from countless stars. Each facet reveals a glimpse of a single world beyond our own. There is a sudden sound of breaking glass accompanied by the acrid scent of sulfur. The gemlike anomaly shatters and fragments of translucent air fall to the ground as a number of figures step out of the alley. Each figure, features obscured by shadow dart off into the night. Some leap through similar portals that appear for an instant before vanishing with their creator. Others make their way out into the city at large through the alleys or rooftops.
There were new arrivals, each a strange reflection of another like the various refracted gleams of a single diamond.
A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I look forward to playing with some of you, and collaborating with others.
While darkness fell hours before, the night is young and the lights of the bars and clubs fill the roads with garish neon advertisements of the good times to be had inside. People talk in open air restaurants and cars noisily make their way from destination to destination. The cool breeze carries with it the smell of food and smoke, barely masking the underlying stench of stagnant water and refuse.
A big city that never stops, with a million smaller alleyways crossing the arterial roads like the capillaries of a giant's body.
It is in one of these dark alleyways where the air seems to shimmer like heatwaves rising from asphalt in the summer. The distant sounds of cars and people seems to fade to nothingness as the air grows thick and heavy. The stars and moonlight seem to dim as though a heavy woolen blanket has been cast over the entire alley. The shimmering space in the alley suddenly crystallizes, a hundred fractal cracks reflecting a thousand facets hanging unsupported above the dirty street, each one seeming to shine with light from countless stars. Each facet reveals a glimpse of a single world beyond our own. There is a sudden sound of breaking glass accompanied by the acrid scent of sulfur. The gemlike anomaly shatters and fragments of translucent air fall to the ground as a number of figures step out of the alley. Each figure, features obscured by shadow dart off into the night. Some leap through similar portals that appear for an instant before vanishing with their creator. Others make their way out into the city at large through the alleys or rooftops.
There were new arrivals, each a strange reflection of another like the various refracted gleams of a single diamond.
A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I look forward to playing with some of you, and collaborating with others.
