Stephanie Gunn

Photo by stella-mia

Ajae stood at the window of the apartment, feeling the weight of nothing pressing against her back.

The glass was laced with frost, cold rising from it to bleed into her skin.  Outside, London, the streets painted with rivers of light.

This was a new life, a new beginning.  London’s bones were old and set.  Here the world knew itself and would not flow and change and shift.

Here there was no magic.

Here she would be safe.

Here she would not dream.

The city sheds darkness instead of light.

In the very centre, it is said, lives only pure night. As you walk out towards the edges, the darkness lifts, light bleeding into the streets and windows like blood from a cut vein. Keep walking, past the houses and hotels and crumbling churches, to where the roads themselves fall away to dust.

It is only there, outside of Never, that true light remains. And it is only there where you are truly lost.

Through mist it rises, the dream city.

For a moment Ajae thinks she sees a man standing silhouetted against the towers. But there is nothing there.

She sets her shoulders and prepares to enter the impossible.