Amid the Nebulae

~ Chapter One ~ Pixie Dust ~

Amid the goings on of gregarious persons, one who sports the skinniest of skinny cobalt jeans creeps. Perhaps not yet does Noah Tyne feel as though he is quite wholly a man, but by the same token does he no longer identify himself as being a boy. And those who know this young male understand him to be complicated, a child who is lost in the body of a twenty-eight year old man. A child who wanders without mind. He seems a vagrant by all accounts. A vagrant who rapidly transforms from being as sober as a penny plain kite into an utter riot. Noah's veins do so indulge the most satisfying of sensations. Pins and needles pervade Noah's body from the core to the shell, numbing his senses and diluting the stamina of his despair. His head feels hollow, like that of a chocolate egg, and completely free of any portly burdens.

Yet the night comes to reach an incredibly sharp pinnacle as Noah finds himself guzzling sour coffee on the inside of a musty and dank cell. Behind these bars, the atmosphere is freezing, and Noah's breath resembles the steam of a mammoth express train devouring coal.

"It's like witnessing a nervous hound trapped in a pound," utters the voice of a woman in uniform. "Only without the stench and the matted fur. Whether I can say the same about the fleas, I don't know."

Officer Jordan is a stumpy middle-aged woman with a smidgen of a pony tail and an animal's breath. She spends an hour waiting for the drunken male to embrace any slight ounce of sobriety before forcing his bony bottom onto the face of a knackered plastic chair. The sort of chair that you would expect to find during after school detention.

Noah twiddles his slim thumbs as his body shivers. The icy atmosphere seems a keen blade piercing straight through his bones, only without wounding him, drawing blood, or causing him any physical pain.

"You are in deep, deep water, Tyne."

Despite his efforts to conceal his trepidation, terror looms in the inky irises of Noah's eyes.

"How deep are we talking?"

"Let us say that the depth of trouble you're in might give the corpse of Titanic a run for her money," she says. "You do understand that possessing Class A drugs can result in a seven year prison sentence, don't you?"

Such a foul-smelling woman is Officer Jordan. She had made Noah's arrest earlier this evening, in the wake of a seemingly 'startling' discovery. As it had happened, there was an anonymous tip off from somebody who had caught sight of the drunken male pulling a sachet of 'Pixie Dust,' as he refers to it, from out of his tattered denim pocket. A few moments later, the young male's wrists had been cuffed, and he had been tossed into the rear of Jordan's police car.

"Oh, give me a break. It was practically a pinch of salt," says Noah.

"...excuse me?"

Noah showcases the most impertinent smile. It is endearing and yet frustrating for Jordan catch sight of.

"Give me a warning. Lecture me on the moral of the story. Do anything like that, but just don't lock me away. I don't like your cells. They aren't exactly the work of Laura Ashley. And they stink of cat piss. An air freshener wouldn't go amiss."

"A warning isn't going to pass my lips, because warnings aren't going to cut it this time. You have had several warnings in the past, and yet here we are once again. You're sitting in the same old plastic chair, and that chair has seen your bony arse more times than I've had horse's liver for dinner."

"But it isn't as if I've ever been arrested for having Pixie Dust in my pocket. Not before tonight, at least. It was a complete one off. I got the dust from some lad down the market. I fooled him good and proper," he says. "We made a trade, you see."