“The moon looks beautiful tonight, doesn’t it?"

“We hadn’t seen it in such a long time, had we?”

A still landscape lay illuminated by swashes of pale light over the monochrome grass that dotted the cityscape below us. The oblique angle from which we viewed it made it seem as if the grass was tilting up towards the horizon, stretching to a vanishing point above the neutral.

“It’s so close we could nearly touch it.”

“Yes, we could if we tried.”

The solid concrete sides of the minimalist building seemed to connect with the quiet gray of the sky that lay above, and the hard surface of the concrete that lay below. The wind gently whispered against us as we stood there, thirty stories from the ground.

We sat there for a while, saying nothing, gazing upon the gigantic disk in the sky. Gentle murmuring below. A window opened somewhere, and light poured out, along the vertical above or beneath, but it didn’t matter, as we sat watching the moon glide in place through the sky, parallax to the stars, as the clouds moved slowly along the dark background.

“We haven’t seen as many insects lately.” One said to the other. “It’s so quiet at night, when we used to hear the buzzing and humming of the locusts.”

“Yes. We haven’t.” The other said to nobody in particular.

The night was quiet as we sat together. The streetlights below had never turned on. There were no cars and serene blue silence filled the air, the depths of a shallow sea, without the constant grinding of background noise produced by the continents grinding against each other.

Above us, something fluttered gently in the sky. We could hear it flapping in the wind as it drew out on a strand of line going up, up further into the sky, like casting a fishing rod with a weight further and further – it was a tattered coat, billowing and thrumming to a breeze that we could gently feel. “If…”

Gently slipping forwards off the terrace, we felt it slide against our backs, and once again we were seated. It was only a dream that we had together for the briefest moment, but we knew what was said and thought. “No. We wouldn’t.”

A chip of dust fell from the concrete terrace, flaking forwards and fluttering further and further down, until it was out of sight. Above us, the stars were still not visible. Only the moon, a white ball that took up most of the sky with its dim glow. The clouds seemed to dance around it, twisting and twirling, at right angles. Maybe, they were even forming one hundred and ten degrees, like the tilt of our building.

One was a mannequin. Painted on face, with a cross through the center, and not much else. Tilted forwards, and secured to a large block of concrete covered in eyebolts using steel cable, to prevent it from falling. Steel cables looped through the eyebolts around the ankles, and wrists, locking it in a perpetual stare with the future of splinters that betrayed her interior.

The other was myself.

“I dreamt of a lady today that didn’t belong in that store. It was the most curious thing that I have ever seen. The first thing that I noticed was her appearance. You know the type that typically comes into a store like this. Paint stained clothes, a jagged countenance with scars and markings that betray their class – she wasn’t like that at all. The moment she came in, I knew there was something different about her. Something very strange.

Her dress was unique. I suppose it was more of a blouse – button down V cut, going down to her mid thighs. Elegant thing, revealing yet opaque, trimmed with red and gold and gray, on a black background, flowing around her body – not tight, but not loose. You could tell that she was rather thin. Beneath that she wore a set of strange pants – strange because of the material, not the style. You’ve seen the material that most fine dresses are made of – silk, a slightly translucent substance, but hers was completely opaque: a strange, smooth, gray substance that flowed as she walked. yet you could see her legs.

The way that she walked was airy, almost flowing – not a strut, but with a peculiar beat to it – I could count when her next step would be, but it was completely asynchronous to the music that filled the store. She walked at a brisk pace, but didn’t seem hurried.

Her face was trimmed with shoulder length black hair. I didn’t recognize the style but it looked familiar, and well put together, but I couldn’t see anything holding it there. Her eyes were piercing brown, as well – deep enough you couldn’t see through them, almost black.

Her aura was one of refined opulence – unlike those imbeciles who blather around wearing their gaudy, distasteful purple and gold rings and signets, her simple clothes brought a strange element of refinement – as if it was someone who knew how to control a room, and was used to it. She stood with a posture that was straight, but not stiff.

All this, I saw in the instant that she hesitated on the threshold.

It was as if she didn’t know if this was the place for her; her entrance was a malpractice of some law. She stood there for an instant, and then stepped into the store.

She walked in a strange manner. Gliding across the floor in sandals that covered her feet. A swaying motion. She wandered around the store for a moment, never changing her gaze, or posture, a straight, yet relaxed position, from which her yes slowly scanned the room. It was quite unlike those who have eyes that dart back and forth, or those that come in with that purposeful scan of one who is looking for something. It was aimless, yet clearly not without purpose.

She grabbed something from one of the shelves. I’m not sure what, and walked up to the counter. She placed it there, and I unconsciously scanned it, while examining her face, quietly. Any single feature of it was perfectly ordinary – there was no supernatural beauty, nor was there any quality of unnatural ugliness. Yet somehow, together, they combined into a countenance unlike one I have ever seen before, and that I hope I will see again.

Her eyes stared through me, not in a dismissive way, but in the way that one looks when deep in thought, considering something beyond the immediate. Then, she was gone. All in the span of less than a minute.” Already the moon was sinking low in the horizon the last time that we saw each other. Swinging on the roof suspended by a loose collection of cloth bands, painted in the colors of reds and blue and black, slightly twisted around metal loops that sat at the end of the three planked body that made the bench. Swaying slightly in the breeze, but more due to the swinging of our feet pumping energy into it continuously. “I saw a thousand of myself walking along this pathway, down this short stretch of road at least. Different postures, different times, different days. All at once, reading, looking at my phone, walking along, heading home or to the car to go away. For an instant. Then it left me. But for that instant it was real.”

“Yes. Things look different during the day, than now, when the moon rises. Color and light and shades of gray instead of the vibrant greens and blues and yellow gold verdance.”

It swayed back and forth as we looked at each other.

I never could remember faces, even though I couldn’t remember names either. They never were really important to me, except a few people that I thought I must know more about. The purpose of this wasn’t to check my own work either.

“That doesn’t make any sense, what you are thinking about.”

We peered at each other. Pale white, and made of perfectly smooth, light wood that you could carry over your back. The building was tilted enough that we could walk down its side if we so chose.

“Tell me about what you saw today.”

“I saw today a parallax that was beyond that which I have see before. though it stood benign and ordinary. A patch of trees along a stretch of boring road by a nondescript part of town, with small inconspicuous shops and strange things that sat collecting dust in the side of the room.

There was a particular movement along the horizon with these trees, and the first thing that I noticed were the distinct color patterns that they showed. There was a distinct line of golden, blistering yellow: it was unmatched by any vegetation; it was molten. The next was plain, emerald green – as if a perfectly ordinary tree. I saw the leaves in there for a moment, the strange organic curve of maple with it’s bulbous, club-like fingers on the sides. The third and final row was a deep green, almost blue, and was composed of tall pine trees that stretched in both directions before terminating as they slammed into the road at an unimaginable speed – though.

The trees wanted to come closer to the road, but it was clear that someone had told them, no, you cannot come here, this is not the area of which you are partitioned to be in existence: a thing with many heads, blackened, browned and wrinkled and mouths full of sharp teeth that spoke in a single hissing voice and leaned and groaned toward whatever was placed in it’s room. The thing was contained in a dark cloth bag, framed in red, thinly, a few toothpicks worth, not more than a few inches, and the inside was a velvet black. As I watched the trees, perhaps they started to move in retrograde, particularly the middle one.”

“Are you hungry?”

She always used to ask that to anyone, even through her cruel exterior. She came across in an almost bullying manner, but it is clear that she is a very compassionate person in the end.