The city is surrounded by a sleepy fog,
the ground shines of wet ice under their feet.
He stands in the center of the abandoned market square in his warmest coat, the wind playing with his hair and turning his ears red, painfully cold. On the other side of the square stands a figure, just as warmly clad but not able to speak, the cold having rendered their mouth useless, their words coming out slurred and slow.
The two nightwalkers stand in silence, one watching the stars high above, the other observing the shining advent lights in all the nearby windows. Deep into the winter, they light up the city's dark nights like its own distant galaxy.
From where he stands the stars seem to slowly move overhead and he gets struck by sudden motion sickness in the infinitive rotation of space.
Warm shoes make the ice crunch in the distance not yet close enough to reach the two wanderers.
For this third party, the night means the long walk to an apartment that doesn't feel like home, hasn’t felt like it in a long time now.She stops her careful traversal over the slippery ice and takes in the figure at the opening of the town center.
Their figure is dark in the shadow of the dimly lit street light, the darkness twisting the reality and turning everything into a threat just waiting to drag her under.
At the other end, constellations form in the other's eyes as they get lost in the winter lights, unaware of this new spectators' turmoil. Behind one of these man-made stars lays a home no longer a home. So close to its resident but for her a lightyear away and blocked off by this potential monster swept in delicate fog and darkness.
The man steadies himself against a nearby market stand, the earth still spinning in his soul. A silence that just felt reassuring now is beginning to slowly choke him. The cold is agonizing ice crystals piercing his innards.
Two figures turn around in the laps of a minute. One with a confident but urgent step towards the east the other distressed, slipping every other step down the slightly slanted street hurrying westward. A man who flees the cold. A woman stumbling from her past towards a house, not hers but more of a home than her apartment will ever be.
Left is only the silent figure who relishes in the quiet of the winter night. The wind drags with it the smell of firewood and safety. In the distance they can see the smoke of a chimney protecting its inhabitants.
They crouch down. Warm hands come in contact with the frozen surface quickly losing heat to the elements. But the figure stays. Feels. For one second more before they once again slip into warm glows and the last nightly walker rises to their feet and begins to travel north.
