We'll Always Have Paris

Jehan stumbles through the passageways of the island temple, a cat on his shoulder and four at his heels. He doesn't know where he's going and he doesn't care, because he knows it will be better than glorious. He's never felt this exalted before. No wine or opium or companion has ever done this. It's nothing like the haze of liquor or the ugly hot rush of a fight.

He doesn't even remember what, precisely, he's been doing. Bast had led a dance of some sort, and then there had been comets and starbursts in the sky, and then...

Cats. Many cats. There had also been people, but their faces were blurry in his mind.

There's a shift of some sort--a tremor in the ground, a shimmer in the air. There's a change. Before, the air had smelled like grass and trees and musty, ancient stone. It had been the air of a ruin reborn as an unspoiled paradise.

Now it was, distinctly, the air of a city.

( Read more... )