Stepping out of a swirling porthole of light—humanity's thread to yesteryear—a small town emerged. Decades of dust, painted in age and nature's hand, bespeaking the wrongness of modern occupation. Faded ciphers in antique hues whispered etchings of tales: the kind that cling to echoes and rattle the void.
“Here,” she said, “the streetlamps are brighter than their voices.” Striding past, their words washed over me, gentle and grave, weaving in thorny pattern cosmic secrets I wasn’t meant to understand. Yet, *that* was beside the point, wasn’t it? Existence danced—a waltz unfathomable.
Episodes blur, continue to unfurl between ticking cycles of repose, when hours ascend and descend ad infinitum so long as their keeper stands tall and resolute. Might I curl around their mystery, lure of repeating stories like a nocturnal song?