Page 4 of Florescentia

Now, I could prepare a celebration for his return.

Astraea, the city among stars.

The name Astraea was derived from the word astēr, meaning “star.” Most believed the name was due to the pedestals we called home, the impossibly tall abodes that stretched higher than the clouds, to touch the sky.

This was rather simple thinking, and there wasn’t much wrong with it aside from the fact the name had come before the buildings, before any major modern construction. Before Astraea was the greatest city on the coast of the Americas.

We were a city among stars because we worshipped them, lived according to them; we were, religiously and culturally, governed by them. Back when the first people settled in the state, the stars were the only thing they had. To map, to guide, to feed their routine.

Unlike people, stars were reliable. The same spots in the sky every night for as long as people remembered to look up. They were a religion so old that it had left a permanent mark on its survivors; as entertainment, as loose guidance, it was culturally ingrained.

They were also fun, a commercial gimmick sometimes. People believed the stars were divine and cards told fortunes, yet no one believed in fantastical things like magic and sorcery. I supposed what you could not physically observe was harder to believe than something that worked in mysterious ways. For the stars had survived since old times, and would expire long after we were gone—the closest things we had to gods to observe us.

Now here we were, getting closer to the stars with every day that went by, until finally we’d build something so tall that it would topple us all, and the next people could start anew.

Perhaps it was nihilistic thinking, but nothing grand lasted longer than polished brass.

A hiss of steam in my ear, the clop of hooves in passing, and a fresco of street food lining the cobblestone path where my feet were planted.

The road was narrow, a deep valley between monstrously tall structures. The light twinkled high on the facades of brass and stone, of steel and brick, glimmering as the sun dwindled in the last moments before dusk. A river of people and the occasional horse or delivery mobile pulling wares along. People avoiding hooves, hooves avoiding wheels, wheels avoiding people.

Every Laxamentum, families spent the hottest days of the season on the curbside for a most delicious endeavor.

Food was, and would always be, a labor of love. It was a distillation of a people, of culture, of you. The things that had sustained life for millennia had not survived by mere accident. Food was a language, a bond as deep as your ancestral tree. To share it was personal, intimate. Which was why the Lax Festival was considered a celebration of love.

This weekend it was being hosted in my home borough, Aisl Park. The festival cycled between the four boroughs every weekend for a month, the other three being Alton Heights, Dieton, and Castor.

Colorful carts hissed and thrummed as the small steam motors kept food hot and fragrant. The water for the engines was drawn from the river that ran between boroughs, resulting in a slightly metallic smell pervading the air.

We hadn’t seen a clean river in our lifetime. It fed directly to the expanse of ocean, which had affected the coastline out east of the city. Progress was coming; it was just slow. Coal and oil energy had been banned within the bounds of the city, with only steam allowed. The electricity plant was just outside the bounds above the Aisl Park county line. Even that wasn’t perfect, polluting the city even if it was technically on the other side of the border. We still felt it in our lungs, in our water; even the clouds of infinite smog were witness to policy failure.

I raised the camera from my waist, leather bellows extended, lining the smokestack in the distance between the silhouettes of the buildings in the viewfinder. Heads bobbed in the lower third of the viewfinder, the smoke a black specter against the sunset.

Click, the camera shutter snapped.

My morning had been consumed by small errands. I’d dropped a camera off for bellows repairs, put in orders for the plumbing maintenance of my home, all while finding time to swipe an apple to calm my stomach until later. In those rare moments in between, I could steal them for my own pleasures with my own little toys.

The banners on the carts depicted a stocky horse with six legs, a cropped tail, and a roached mane. Constellation Dieter was the patron of the season, the harvest time of grains and oats.

“Hot grains for the missus?” The vendor was already scooping the red-powdered granola clumps into bags, the sting of fragrant chili and cayenne clearing my sinuses immediately.

I waved my hand no, but his attention was already turned on three more passersby.

Street company would never be dull. So many personalities, so little time to know them. More interesting than those who dwelled in the light were those who lingered in places unseen.

Squirming shadows lurked under carts, skirting along people’s shoes, tucked among the cobblestones, and slipping in and out of gutters. The streets were full of shadows not connected to bodies or objects, like our own. No, the Peculiars. The ones found in the wild, untethered and unbothered by the people they fed upon.

The ones out in the wild were hardly as large as my most beloved companions, Absinthe and Tonic, but they were there nonetheless. Bigger entities did exist, but there were never any doors from the Otherside large enough for them to slip through, not unless opened by someone who could see them. Old texts described my ability, but no one could achieve the same powers without the use of the Peculiars.

Somewhere out there, small tears in reality had probably let all these Peculiars through, like the smallest pinpricks in a rubber balloon. At first, it could be frightening to come across something unfamiliar. I wouldn’t say they were not of this world; we shared it. Just like us, they were simply existing.

Any location that evoked strong emotions had the highest concentration of the creatures. Most were just curious, floating about, exchanging energy with people without us realizing. Markets were ideal feeding grounds because they were filled with elation from small talk or satisfaction from homey foods, delicious morsels of emotional energy that the shadows could feast upon.

The carts, as well as the people, dwindled the farther I walked. Soon I could count cobblestones and easily access sidewalks. The carts disappeared and were replaced by brick and mortar. One dusty blue sign in particular caught my eye, with sun-bleached type on the awning and door, a sleeping calico in the samples basket in the window, and only a few regulars meandering about.

The brassy ring of the door slapped the air as I entered, my eyes struggling to adjust as I went from the strong light of dusk into the shady shop.

Incense and balms unified the convenience store’s image and aura, the trill of the shop cat alerting the owner to my presence.