Dante dragged a large, light pot onto the stove. He spilled two bowls of O. Helleborus over the rim, placed a brick in the flowers, and slumped against the faux stone counter. In the discolored blur of his reflection the bags under his eyes looked black and runny while his normally beige complexion fluctuated between nonexistence and transparency. The downturn of his thin lips annoyed him, a wave of non negotiable self pity flushed through his fingertips and he suddenly found himself far too repulsed to do anything but toddle sullenly  into the bedroom and cocoon himself in threadbare sheets.

In the kitchen, the softly glowing light of the airscreen finally blinked itself into calcified darkness.

Anasakan awoke retching on his bile blackened pillowcase, the scent of vomit in his  nostrils and yellow clumped excretion spread across his shirt. He threw himself out of bed, scrambling to strip the creaky bed of its spoiled sheets. He pulled his own rank shirt over his head, trying to ignore the putrid liquid that caught in his short white-blonde hair. He balled the laundry into a manageable clump and carried it all swiftly to the utility sink. As he passed through the living area he noted that Dante had barely cleaned, if he had cleaned at all. He crinkled his face in an annoyed early-morning fear mask, this could be dealt with after the vomit cloth.
A few minutes into the cleaning process  the bedroom door screeched its sorry way open, and Dante wandered out into the living area. He snickered morbidly at the drops of sulphurous looking vomit speckled on the stale cheerio carpet. At an earlier point in time, he would have felt nothing but unadulterated pity for his wayward companion. Be that as it may,  as he had come to know that no amount of tracheal damage would sway him in his livid, but surprisingly laid-back approach to addiction. It was one of his best qualities. In the other room, Anasakan pulled his sleeves up and glanced absentmindedly at his watch. An intrepid, unmistakably panicked expression resolved itself in his black-blue pupils. 
“Dante! Dante, we’ve got to go now!” he half screeched, scrubbing furiously at the stains in his sheets and shirt for another minute before giving up and leaving the sullied textiles to soak. He tore through the living area, spotted Dante dithering in the kitchen, and began to root through his clothes.
In the kitchen, Dante pulled a dull bronze jacket over his clean shirt and poured cold tea into two blue containers. The living room was a mess and would remain that way for the next day, if his estimates were correct, and they generally were. Dante had known Anasakan for years  and at this point felt as if he could easily predict most of his future actions. A secretive, uncooperative pocket of his subconscious burbled joyfully at this possibility. Anasakan stumbled into the kitchen, pulling at the yellowed velcro of his old, childish boots, yellow bits of rejected digestables had hardened in his normally tameable hair. Dante grinned and tossed a dish towel at him before leaning to tie the laces of his own shoes, patting his companion que to ensure its presence. In the act of standing his eyes caught on a bruised-purple light that flashed in the upper right hand corner of the mostly dormant AirScreen which glimmered with the dawn light that filtered through the heady near-existence of the screen. Ana’s hand waving in front of his eyes interrupted his internal reviere. Apparently, his typist friend wanted a show, and fortunately,  he was sure he could supply a convincing one. Dante stood up and smiled coolly at Anasakan, giving a light, cursory nod to the purple light.
“Thanks.” He accepted the blue thermos from Ana’s tensed hand, placing it on the counter behind him.
“We’ve really got to go now…” Ana mumbled, clutching his mug close to his chest. The tips of his ears were hot coals and his pupils were pin pricks in reddened blue oculars.

Dante paused in the hallway, heard Ana’s footsteps stop as well, the dull beating of torn fingernails against  silvery ceramic walls and the sharp stressed-tendon sound of his own breathing. The hall looked more like a tunnel then anything else, the ceiling curved and the flooring dipped down in places to create a more natural walking surface. Faux acacia doors interspersed the smooth expanse of wall at five to seven foot intervals, the lambent numbers flickered on some of the older doors. He straightened his back, and resumed walking just as Ana’s anxious ‘Quit your dawdling’ sounded. It was unlikely, he thought, that they would actually be late to retrieve this kid. This Aleks he’d not yet met face to face, but already had plenty of expectations for. Ana had mentioned some trouble with communication in the past year, and occasionally used what he supposed was a manifestation of this friend’s friend superior tinkering abilities as a method of insulting Dante’s own attempts to modify and improve their pre-installed systems.
“Hey, Ana, what time is-”  Ana’s inflected-more-sharply-than-usual words discontinued said question.
“Late. We’re taking a transport. Did you see my socks earlier?” he paused, turning to him for a moment. “I think I lost them...You’ll pay for the transport? I doubt either of us will be able to afford a new heater.”  Dante hesitated for a moment, then nodded.  
“Right, fine. I can try to fix it later, too.” In front of him, Anasakan snickered, slowing to walk next to him as they hurried down the dimpled metal staircase.
“I can ask Alek to check it out. You cut quite a swathe of wires, and I’m never letting you around soldering equipment  again.” Dante glared half heartedly at Anasakan for a moment. A mutual agreement had been made earlier, a treatise that they were both to comply with. A treatise that outlined, in more professional terms, that neither of them were to think too loudly of or speak of the one time he had attempted to build himself a piano and failed spectacularly. As if to spite him, the semi-melodic clatter of another set of foot steps began, these heading up towards them. As they rounded the sharp bend in the hall, a lanky, rather indistinct individual passed them. Their small, steel emblazoned shoes cluttering the stairwell with noise. This made it surprisingly difficult for him to hear Ana’s next words, and he was focused on attempting when he experienced a mildly disturbing sensation. The booted character, as they passed, had placed an unsurprisingly human hand on his shoulder and patted.
Or perhaps they hadn’t, and Dante was simply having another attention starved hallucination. Whichever perception was correct ceased to matter, and the idea of possibly being late to wherever he and Ana were headed became very important. He hurried down the stairs, passing Ana without a word and waiting for him next to the large, extravagantly curved doors.
Ana was a small figure visible in the poorly lit stairwell. The lightly flapping wing of some sort of huge bird creature reflected his blue boots on the slight sheen of whatever mucous membrane the wing was coated with. He hadn’t known that their curators could compel them to move, but for some reason, did not find himself completely surprised by the idea.
A toddler girl whose downy black hair threw itself out from its roots and shivered with static flickered her way into his peripheral vision, a clown's multicolored wig dangled from her small, pink hands. She seemed to share his interest in the lightly flapping wing and appeared to be generally unsupervised, which failed to bother Dante nearly as much as it should have. What bothered him was the fact that he had noticed her, and that there was now a chance of him noticing the other inhabitants of the room. Noticing people was something he tended to avoid, as it seemed unproductive to attempt to connect with others even on such a baseline level if he wasn’t going to speak to them again in the future. There also was always the prospect that he’d end up having to kill them at some point or that he would decide to on a petty whim. Evidently, that was something he was likely to do now. This newly explored prospect seemed only the littlest bit repulsive, and as he had told himself in the past, killing wasn’t really something he was apt to take any joy from. To his dismay, the other human inhabitants of the lobby began to force their sodden, breath-heavy corpses into the outskirts of the tangible world.  A heavyset teen dozed behind the toddler, limbs hanging haphazardly over the edges of a ribbed steel bench, the red boxing gloves draped around his neck spreading a dulled aureole over his burnished, though still generally agouti-peptide complexion. It occurred to him that he may be the caretaker of the tiny girl, and he confirmed this when he noticed the loop of orange felt around the sleeping fellow’s wrist. The felt loop was connected to a battered hornet shaped backpack, which the toddler had shrugged off as soon as the option had become available. He could hardly blame the child, wearing a false approximation of an extinct animal on one’s immature shoulders was uncomfortable even if said pack was not connected to a superimposed authority figure. After all, the cultural revolution demanded that these same youngsters carry the weight of oversexualization on their porous, limber shoulders.
Glancing up, he saw the undersides of small, metal laced boots warp their way through the thick glass of one of the arches that traversed the upper reaches of the lobby. Someone had turned the heating down again, and Ana compensated by tugging his jacket a bit tighter around his shoulders. When he was close enough, Dante tossed his own coat at him. He might as well bask in this change of temperature while he could. The little girl was now seated next to the slumbering minor. The hornet backpack was open on her lap and her oversized child’s eyes darted expectantly around the lobby. A plush green octopus thumped onto the ground a few feet away and she scrambled up. Ana pushed the door open and motioned outside and after a barely noticeable moment of hesitation, Dante followed him outside.
Dim sunlight filtered through bulky sheets of smog and Euphon was suddenly a lustrous chemical city in a fresh, centennial dawn. The hum of sharpened breath over the loudspeakers, old light sifting through gradually purpling particles of factory dredges that ghosted in cloudlike clumps from the desert, as if drawn to the city by some inexplicably present force. Or, Dante considered as he slouched against the boarding curb, maybe pushed just far enough away. This rushing-towards-the-city-center behaviour was certainly not abnormal, and though Euphon harbored its fair share of bitter civic haze, the fouled air never sank low enough to damage the city’s inhabitants. Almost as if it contentiously held itself away from the city’s six spires, from the life abuzz at six times the speed of time, even from the tiny, wig wielding toddlers who stared at the twisting smog as a botanist might a wilted, browning daffodil, or the seemingly omnipotent face of a ticking watch.  Anasakan stared at him, rolled his eyes, and gestured pointedly at the waiting transport. Ana stepped in first, sitting next to someone he hadn’t seen before. He or she (for the moment, he couldn’t actually tell) was certainly an odd occurrence, if not altogether improbable. A split second’s examination of the pod’s interior, however, did manage to solve the initial improbability of the situation. The poryv Ana had hailed was an absolute relic. The engine whirring underfoot, the seats shaking in protest as he settled across from Ana and the driver, who was partially obscured by a white dashboard and largely obscured by a long tan jacket. 
Anasakan took the smooth white disk of his napelnettle from his pocket, and glanced up once as Dante sat down before returning to his communicatory device and pressing the input plugs to his ears. His fingertips, wrinkled like he’d recently been soaking his hands in water, sped along the sleek grey-blue surface, occasionally tapping one of the six shallow indentations that marked the curving steel sides.
Dante leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms and resting his chin against his chest. The upturned edges of his shirt collar pressed white lines into his cheeks. Across from him, the driver stared uncomprehendingly at the blinking dashboard, forehead furrowed in frustration. He tapped his fingers absentmindedly against his seat, glancing up as casually as possible in order  to observe the driver, who was still absorbed in staring pensively at the dashboard in front of them. His or her jacket pooled around their concealed frame, spilling off of the seat wherever possible, the sleeves three inches too short, the heat-warped condition of the name tag pinned to their lapel making it hardly possible to read. The start of the name was distinctly an s, but after that everything smudged up a bit, then a blurred e, then more incomprehensible letters, then a k at the far right of the ruined tag.
“Staring at me isn’t helping.” The driver had looked up from the dashboard, bleached-bone hair falling into bland, sunken eyes. A short period of silence followed, Dante’s eyes following a tiny spider as it flung itself across the deepening abyss of the ovoid vehicle.
A metallic buzzing lingered in the air around them for a moment, and the driver turned a knob on the dashboard idly as the vehicle finally started on its route. Colorful bursts of corporate music crowded through the static. An advertisement for facial creme, another for seashells, a soothing voice explaining the merits of some unnamed non profit. The prophets whispering their sedative laced condolences to a clustered pinprick of infrared light within a vast, man-made desert.
The driver settled on a station just as the barely perceptible hum of progress began in the background.
Anasakan’s thin lips moved noiselessly. Dante was vaguely aware of the driver changing the station again;however, he found himself far too struck by the emptied apparition in front of him to care. Pale, bulging eyes, a long aristocratic neck, slack mouth moving gently, as if a soft breeze rustled the overgrown frills of his colorless lips. Anasakan, he supposed, must hold a certain manner of frightened sweetness with everyone, and now it was easier to see than ever. Why that was, however, he was not quite sure. Ana was generally polite, even kind, but there were aspects of his personality that occasionally made this difficult to see. Specifically, certain behaviours of his. Dante had known him for what, three months now, and had yet to see a week in which his housemate failed to remove himself from his sanity. That wasn’t to say that Ana’s behaviour was completely understandable, that it didn’t seem romantic in the ferocity of its animosity, that Dante didn’t occasionally feel the tug of bright, sacramental euphoria. His head lolled back against the plastic siding, which gave slightly under the weight of his skull. He made quick eye contact with the driver, who was similarly positioned. One spidery hand hooked over their-his own shoulder, eyes (they were blue, he noted, but as drained and waterlogged in appearance as those of some blind animal’s) unfocused as they met his. The driver raised their- his- eyebrows, and the surprisingly wide mouth curved up into a smile that may have been intended to be friendly, but was not friendly in the slightest.  A new voice flared from the radio, thick, oily, melodious and low. This was quite possibly the least menacing voice he had ever heard. The kindest, most horrifically satisfying tones that anyone could possibly hear. He suddenly wanted to press himself into nothingness and altogether disappear, to hide inside of his own head and be safe within the fulgent expanses of white noise he found there.
"In other news, a public service announcement by the Central Offices of Citizen Security advises that citizens in the Agape District be aware of the pre-scheduled quarterly street-side inspection. During this four hour period, children and small animals should be kept indoors, and the poryv transport system will be offline. This event will take place on the 5th of the month, between four and seven pm.
“High council member Qualia Lepidschat retired on the second; her memorial will be held at three today, and elections will be held in one months time, and activity by Banda Grimalkin is suspected in relation to the recent desecration of Euphon’s own precious Tcesper monuments."
A pause, and across from him, a syrupy smile spread over the pale lips of the driver. A sickly sweet glint in their soft eyes as the driver’s gaze flickered over his two passengers. Their sticky hands, tired eyes and wrinkled, whitish clothing.
They turned a corner, the pale midday light coruscating off Eros’ blackened windows as well as the chrome glint of Pavlov’s western gate, Bauble. A soft voice on the radio mentioned the arrival of Elect Council Member Ambrose for Qualia’s memorial, low prices on Panellus Stipticus and hazy music receded. The daily Hearers Attestation began thirty three minutes before its scheduled occurrence.  Pavlov loomed before them, the imposing filaments of radio thread bristling off of its metal exterior giving it the appearance of a huge, greige beast. The gate pressed upward through purpling air and Sultan Deimos’ voice pealed from the speakers. He spoke of the light, and of the darkness. Of demonic material and blissful nothingness.
“The latest candidate for the crassulent role of Radiant Jesus has recently been banished from the Church of Fulgor on the grounds of attempts to meddle in the realms of the dead, as well as attempts to bring a dweller of the holy lands-” A short pause, a careful one, purposeful and powerful. The reverberations of this newfound silence shuddered through the cab like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Speaker for the Light and revered radio technician Deimos’ voice plunged from the clouds. “-Former dweller, into material form, as the very manifestation of all found to be against the Holy Church of the Luminescent Elect. Headmaster Ambrose Lecter has commented upon this atrocity.” A burst of divine static faded into the soft thudding of the poryv against the docking platform. The gradually clearing air revealed the silver glint of the next train speeding forwards.

Outside, the desert streaks by in bright lines of gold and black. The dispersion of coal dust on the window compliments the soft disturbances already present in Crowley Ambrose’s vision. Next to him, his uniformed brother lets a soft sigh escape his lips, so dry and cracked he can see beads of blood gathering between grey-pink crevices. Vaska meets his eyes as he looks him over, tongue darting out from between his lips to sweep them of their crimson. Behind the two of them, their father whispers something to Eleanor, and her response, if there is one, is inaudible.
A grey suited server paces the aisles, offering water and soda biscuits to anyone who isn’t asleep or otherwise unresponsive. Vaska snickers lightly, gesturing towards a haggard looking figure, close to Crowley’s age, he thinks, though considerably smaller. The figure is slumped against his seat, a book covering his face. For a moment, Crowley doesn’t recognize why Vaska finds this funny, then he spots the title of the book, Tcesper and the Urban Desert.
“An environmentalist.” He sniggers.  “In this car, for once.”
Crowley nods, a smile tugging at his lips. It is strange to see anyone with a desire to change the way things are now, the way things are meant to be, actually.  He, personally, has never been sure. If this is the way things were meant to be, then a great deal of people must be destined for some sort of misery. Of course, with due consideration, one could easily retort with something along the lines of in this world there are hearers, sinners and the elect. Sinners are miserable because they refuse to listen, and only because of that.
His father’s voice rings out behind him, professional and personal as ever.
“Boys, we arrive in..” a pause, a whisper from their mother. “Six minutes, arrange yourselves appropriately.”
Across from them, a ragged young man is leaning over his seat and shaking the environmentalist awake. The book drops from its resting place and slips under the seat in front of him, and the boy doesn’t appear to notice. Vaska is craning his neck to peer out the speckled window, and from that angle, Crowley has no trouble spotting the muted purple stains left on his skin by the garland of wilted flowers he wore earlier. The corners of his lips quirk up slightly. He closes his eyes and inhales, then wrinkles his nose and throws his head back to glare viciously at the pipe ridged ceiling. The train stops abruptly, although it remains altogether steady, almost abnormally so.

Some passengers are standing already, joints creaking and popping as they reach for luggage in the overheads with disquieting synchronicity. Their mother sags in her seat behind them, compressed by the dull growl that presses from the cities heart outwards. Doors click open and sweet urban air rushes the muggy, dust ridden cabin. Light, too, pure and holy in its illumination of rapidly oxidizing metal walls, sand pitted windows, and weary, impish travelers.
Crowley and his family,  seated towards the back of the train, are some of the last to exit, and less than glad for it. The station is bright and bustling, as well as cleaner than anything any of them has seen in quite some time. Yes, blackened sand still gathers in the corners, and yes, the great walls of mulberry tinted blight that surround Euphon as a whole are as thick, perhaps even thicker than they have ever been, but in actuality, the station is still much cleaner than most of what remains outside.
When he was younger, Eleanor took him down to the city’s underneath to see the oversized copper coils that generate the electrostatic fields responsible for the cities profusion of light. It had been an undoubtedly religious experience for Eleanor, at least, who had wholeheartedly embraced New Manichaeism upon its Cultural Adoption. The slight tingle in the air and the thick whirring that bounced off dusky sand stone walls, coppery, spidering pipes, and the taut surfaces of her inner ears. For the toddler-aged Crowley, who pushed himself up on the railings and stared down into the serpentine coils, it only served to inspire a series of sometimes terrifying day dreams.
Crowley turns his head as Vaska points upwards, the worsted grey fabric of his sleeves bunching at the elbow. Whether he means to indicate the perfectly blue sky or the gleam sparking off the latticework of the tower in front of them, Crowley has no idea. He also feels in no way inclined to ask, as it happens.  In front of them, their father has pulled up a map of the city, though he hardly needs one. The silver haired council member and his ever prosperous family are to be shuttled securely to and from only the most cleanly and qualified facilities, after all. A battered, grey stained transport vehicle bumps the boarding curb in front of the four of them, and a colorless man in an ill fitting, paint stained coat steps hurriedly out of the drivers side door and scuttles to the back of the vehicle. He paid no attention to the family in front of him, who, after a few seconds of this, lost the expectancy they had harbored. The man, in his brown and red stained coat, opened the compartment in the back of the grey vehicle and leaned forwards. He dragged a large, black bag  out of the trunk and dropped it a few feet away on the curb, then straightened up and reentered the vehicle. Crowley looked away, craning his neck to stare up at the fragmented sky and the prickling masses of transmitters dotting the walls in front of him. He looked back upon hearing an abnormally loud clatter. The environmentalist from earlier has dropped a piece of mustard yellow luggage on his foot in an attempt at getting it inside the trunk.
A storky, white haired fellow has exited the transport, ushered the grimacing environmentalist inside, and lifted the luggage, which was certainly abnormally large, into the rear compartment of the vehicle with some difficulty. He notices Crowley staring before he re-enters the vehicle, turning his head and peering at him with narrowed, blue-grey

          A dulled aurora  filtered through bulky sheets of smog and Euphon was suddenly a lustrous chemical city in a fresh, centennial dawn. The hum of sharpened breath over the loudspeakers, old light sifting through gradually purpling particles of factory dredges that ghosted in cloudlike clumps from the desert, as if drawn to the city by some inexplicably present force. Or, Dante considered as he slouched against the boarding curb, maybe pushed just far enough away. This rushing-towards-the-city-center behaviour was certainly not abnormal, and though Euphon harbored its fair share of bitter civic haze, the fouled air never sank low enough to damage the city’s inhabitants. Almost as if it contentiously held itself away from the city’s six spires, from the life abuzz at six times the speed of time, even from the tiny, wig wielding toddlers who stared at the twisting smog as a botanist might a wilted, browning daffodil, or the seemingly omnipotent face of a ticking watch.  Anasakan stared at him, rolled his eyes, and gestured pointedly at the waiting transport. Ana stepped in first, sitting next to someone he hadn’t seen before. He or she (for the moment, he couldn’t actually tell) was certainly an odd occurrence, if not altogether improbable. A split second’s examination of the pod’s interior, however, did manage to solve the initial improbability of the situation. The poryv Ana had hailed was an absolute relic. The engine whirring underfoot, the seats shaking in protest as he settled across from Ana and the driver, who was partially obscured by a white dashboard and largely obscured by a long tan jacket. 
Anasakan took the smooth white disk of his napelnettle from his pocket, and glanced up once as Dante sat down before returning to his communicatory device and pressing the input plugs to his ears. His fingertips, wrinkled like he’d recently been soaking his hands in water, sped along the sleek grey-blue surface, occasionally tapping one of the six shallow indentations that marked the curving steel sides.
Dante leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms and resting his chin against his chest. The upturned edges of his shirt collar pressed white lines into his cheeks. Across from him, the driver stared uncomprehendingly at the blinking dashboard, forehead furrowed in frustration. Dante tapped his fingers absentmindedly against his seat, glancing up as casually as possible in order  to observe the driver, who was still absorbed in staring pensively at the dashboard in front of them. His or her jacket pooled around their concealed frame, spilling off of the seat wherever possible, the sleeves three inches too short, the heat-warped condition of the name tag pinned to their lapel making it hardly possible to read. The start of the name was distinctly an s, but after that everything smudged up a bit, then a blurred e, then more incomprehensible letters, then a k at the far right of the ruined tag.
“Staring at me isn’t helping.” The driver had looked up from the dashboard, bleached-bone hair falling into bland, sunken eyes. A short period of silence followed, Dante’s eyes following a tiny spider as it flung itself across the deepening abyss of the ovoid vehicle.
A metallic buzzing lingered in the air around them for a moment, and the driver turned a knob on the dashboard idly as the vehicle finally started on its route. Colorful bursts of corporate music crowded through the static. An advertisement for facial creme, another for seashells, a soothing voice explaining the merits of some unnamed non profit. The prophets whispering their sedative laced condolences to a clustered pinprick of infrared light within a vast, man-made desert.
The driver settled on a station just as the barely perceptible hum of progress began in the background.
Anasakan’s thin lips moved noiselessly. Dante was vaguely aware of the driver changing the station again;however, he found himself far too struck by the emptied apparition in front of him to care. Pale, bulging eyes, a long aristocratic neck, slack mouth moving gently, as if a soft breeze rustled the overgrown frills of his colorless lips. Anasakan, he supposed, must hold a certain manner of frightened sweetness with everyone, and now it was easier to see than ever. Why that was, however, he was not quite sure. Ana was generally polite, even kind, but there were aspects of his personality that occasionally made this difficult to see. Specifically, certain behaviours of his. Dante had known him for what, three months now, and had yet to see a week in which his housemate failed to remove himself from his sanity. That wasn’t to say that Ana’s behaviour was completely understandable, that it didn’t seem romantic in the ferocity of its animosity, that Dante didn’t occasionally feel the tug of bright, sacramental euphoria. His head lolled back against the plastic siding, which gave slightly under the weight of his skull. He made quick eye contact with the driver, who was similarly positioned. One spidery hand hooked over their-his own shoulder, eyes (they were blue, he noted, but as drained and waterlogged in appearance as those of some blind animal’s) unfocused as they met his. The driver raised their- his- eyebrows, and the surprisingly wide mouth curved up into a smile that may have been intended to be friendly, but was not friendly in the slightest.  A new voice flared from the radio, thick, oily, melodious and low. This was quite possibly the least menacing voice he had ever heard. The kindest, most horrifically satisfying tones that anyone could possibly hear. He suddenly wanted to press himself into nothingness and altogether disappear, to hide inside of his own head and be safe within the fulgent expanses of white noise he found there.
"In other news, a public service announcement by the Central Offices of Citizen Security advises that citizens in the Agape District be aware of the pre-scheduled quarterly street-side inspection. During this four hour period, children and small animals should be kept indoors, and the poryv transport system will be offline. This event will take place on the 5th of the month, between four and seven pm.
“High council member Qualia Lepidschat retired on the second; her memorial will be held at three today, and elections will be held in one months time, and activity by Banda Grimalkin is suspected in relation to the recent desecration of Euphon’s own precious Tcesper monuments."
A pause, and across from him, a syrupy smile spread over the pale lips of the driver. A sickly sweet glint in their soft eyes as the driver’s gaze flickered over his two passengers. Their sticky hands, tired eyes and wrinkled, whitish clothing.
They turned a corner, the pale midday light coruscating off Eros’ blackened windows as well as the chrome glint of Pavlov’s western gate, Bauble. A soft voice on the radio mentioned the arrival of Elect Council Member Ambrose for Qualia’s memorial, low prices on Panellus Stipticus and hazy music receded. The daily Hearers Attestation began thirty three minutes before its scheduled occurrence.  Pavlov loomed before them, the imposing filaments of radio thread bristling off of its metal exterior giving it the appearance of a huge, greige beast. The gate pressed upward through purpling air and Sultan Deimos’ voice pealed from the speakers. He spoke of the light, and of the darkness. Of demonic material and blissful nothingness.
“The latest candidate for the crassulent role of Radiant Jesus has recently been banished from the Church of Fulgor on the grounds of attempts to meddle in the realms of the dead, as well as attempts to bring a dweller of the holy lands-” A short pause, a careful one, purposeful and powerful. The reverberations of this newfound silence shuddered through the cab like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Speaker for the Light and revered radio technician Deimos’ voice plunged from the clouds. “-Former dweller, into material form, as the very manifestation of all found to be against the Holy Church of the Luminescent Elect. Headmaster Ambrose Lecter has commented upon this atrocity.” A burst of divine static faded into the soft thudding of the poryv against the docking platform. The gradually clearing air revealed the silver glint of the next train speeding forwards.

Outside, the desert streaks by in bright lines of gold and black. The dispersion of coal dust on the window compliments the soft disturbances already present in Crowley Ambrose’s vision. Next to him, his uniformed brother lets a soft sigh escape his lips, so dry and cracked he can see beads of blood gathering between grey-pink crevices. Vaska meets his eyes as he looks him over, tongue darting out from between his lips to sweep them of their crimson. Behind the two of them, their father whispers something to Eleanor, and her response, if there is one, is inaudible.
A grey suited server paces the aisles, offering water and soda biscuits to anyone who isn’t asleep or otherwise unresponsive. Vaska snickers lightly, gesturing towards a haggard looking figure, close to Crowley’s age, he thinks, though considerably smaller. The figure is slumped against his seat, a book covering his face. For a moment, Crowley doesn’t recognize why Vaska finds this funny, then he spots the title of the book, Tcesper and the Urban Desert.
“An environmentalist.” He sniggers.  “In this car, for once.”
Crowley nods, a smile tugging at his lips. It is strange to see anyone with a desire to change the way things are now, the way things are meant to be, actually.  He, personally, has never been sure. If this is the way things were meant to be, then a great deal of people must be destined for some sort of misery. Of course, with due consideration, one could easily retort with something along the lines of in this world there are hearers, sinners and the elect. Sinners are miserable because they refuse to listen, and only because of that.
His father’s voice rings out behind him, professional and personal as ever.
“Boys, we arrive in..” a pause, a whisper from their mother. “Six minutes, arrange yourselves appropriately.”
Across from them, a ragged young man is leaning over his seat and shaking the environmentalist awake. The book drops from its resting place and slips under the seat in front of him, and the boy doesn’t appear to notice. Vaska is craning his neck to peer out the speckled window, and from that angle, Crowley has no trouble spotting the muted purple stains left on his skin by the garland of wilted flowers he wore earlier. The corners of his lips quirk up slightly. He closes his eyes and inhales, then wrinkles his nose and throws his head back to glare viciously at the pipe ridged ceiling. The train stops abruptly, although it remains altogether steady, almost abnormally so.
Some passengers are standing already, joints creaking and popping as they reach for luggage in the overheads with disquieting synchronicity. Their mother sags in her seat behind them, compressed by the dull growl that presses from the cities heart outwards. Doors click open and sweet urban air rushes the muggy, dust ridden cabin. Light, too, pure and holy in its illumination of rapidly oxidizing metal walls, sand pitted windows, and weary, impish travelers.
Crowley and his family,  seated towards the back of the train, are some of the last to exit, and less than glad for it. The station is bright and bustling, as well as cleaner than anything any of them has seen in quite some time. Yes, blackened sand still gathers in the corners, and yes, the great walls of mulberry tinted blight that surround Euphon as a whole are as thick, perhaps even thicker than they have ever been, but in actuality, the station is still much cleaner than most of what remains outside.
When he was younger, Eleanor took him down to the city’s underneath to see the oversized copper coils that generate the electrostatic fields responsible for the cities profusion of light. It had been an undoubtedly religious experience for Eleanor, at least, who had wholeheartedly embraced New Manichaeism upon its Cultural Adoption. The slight tingle in the air and the thick whirring that bounced off dusky sand stone walls, coppery, spidering pipes, and the taut surfaces of her inner ears. For seven year old Crowley, who pushed himself up on the railings and stared down into the serpentine coils, it only served to inspire a series of sometimes terrifying day dreams.
Crowley turns his head as Vaska points upwards, the worsted grey fabric of his sleeves bunching at the elbow. Whether he means to indicate the perfectly blue sky or the gleam sparking off the latticework of the tower in front of them, Crowley has no idea. He also feels in no way inclined to ask, as it happens.  In front of them, their father has pulled up a map of the city, though he hardly needs one. The silver haired council member and his ever prosperous family are to be shuttled securely to and from only the most cleanly and qualified facilities, after all. A battered, grey stained transport vehicle bumps the boarding curb in front of the four of them, and a colorless man in an ill fitting, paint stained coat steps hurriedly out of the drivers side door and scuttles to the back of the vehicle. He paid no attention to the family in front of him, who, after a few seconds of this, lost the expectancy they had harbored. The man, in his brown and red stained coat, opened the compartment in the back of the grey vehicle and leaned forwards. He dragged a large, black bag  out of the trunk and dropped it a few feet away on the curb, then straightened up and reentered the vehicle. Crowley looked away, craning his neck to stare up at the fragmented sky and the prickling masses of transmitters dotting the walls in front of him. He looked back upon hearing an abnormally loud clatter. The environmentalist from earlier has dropped a piece of mustard yellow luggage on his foot in an attempt at getting it inside the trunk.
A storky, white haired fellow has exited the transport, ushered the grimacing environmentalist inside, and lifted the luggage, which was certainly abnormally large, into the rear compartment of the vehicle with some difficulty. He notices Crowley staring before he reenters the vehicle, turning his head and peering at him with narrowed, blue-grey eyes.

On the way to Agape Vaska points out an at first rather confusing dearth of trees, a lack, in fact, of any real plant life at all.

Isadora’s apartment was impeccably unkempt, full of light and grey-dusted clutter. Ana’s first real impression of the place revolved around how fundamentally different her living quarters seemed from the rest of Agape, a tenement famous for its general prodigality. To say Agape, with its perpetual glow, saffron insignia, and overall higher-class population was anything less than faddishly popular would be an unforgivable understatement.  Agape was where everyone wanted to end up, second only to the open-zones in new-made blackspace, and if you were pretty enough, young enough, skilled enough, rich enough, there was hardly a reason that wasn’t where you’d end up. Plus, if you couldn’t make it through the doors as a regular inhabitant, there was always the entertainment side of things. In other words, he’d expected replication of the extravagance outside Isadora’s home on the inside. Humans, after all, are certainly most devout mimics out of all the Hominidae. In earlier studies, those not involving his uncle, but human children and ape-children (not that there was much difference, in dear old Sergei’s opinion) were both shown the same video. This video illustrated how one might open a mid-sized puzzle box that contained a treat. Some of the steps performed by the instructor were completely unnecessary, of course, but that was where the mimicking came in. The apes disregarded the extra steps, got to the treat more quickly, and seemed generally less stressed. The human children, as a rule, followed every step they could manage to retain, even if the solution was painstakingly obvious. Isadora, of course, was no longer a child. Greying early, and in her early thirties, it seemed. So, though surely older than Lester, it couldn’t be by much. The allusion of her age was completed by the wheelchair, the drawn out, slightly confused manner of speaking. The obsession with flowers, of all ungodly things.
Ana looked up from his lap, and made quick eye contact with Isadora, who was immersed in conversation with Lester a few feet away. A few strands of straight brown hair dangled in the center of her forehead and she was hunched over in her chair, elbows on her knees, a deceptive little smirk twitching her bluish-pinkish lips upwards. Beside him, Dante half sighed, taking another sip of his tea. It smelled strongly of the flowers that had crowded their apartment the night before, sickly sweet and vaguely, gently acidic. He tracked Dante’s gaze to Lester’s little brother, who was slumped over the piano bench, Lester’s coat tucked around him as he slept. Ana was confused, for a moment, about why they’d not just tuck the obviously exhausted kid into a bed, or at least move him to a more comfortable surface.
Light the color of curling paper seeped through the dust-smeared windows and Isadora continued to clip her nails, slivers of keratin falling in stop motion into a small, neat pile on the table in front of her. A soft breath of wind  rustled her hair, removing a few carefully placed strands from their thick braid and whistling in her ears.

Outside Isadora’s apartment,  in the largeness and brightness and air that smelled strongly of castor oil and fennel, a convex woman whose small, steel adorned boots tapped pleasantly on the velvet carpeting draped over the stairs checked the time on her yellow naplenettle. It was 5:08 pm and outside, where the sun was obscured by more than slabs of ungodly paneling, the light would be fading from the streets and the sky and just beginning to show in the dull little orbs on either side of the insectoid street cleaners heads. An old city with its rusting gods, stretching and humming into the sunset. Portia Augustine reached ground level and scanned the room for her guests. Her fingertips drummed rhythmically over the stiff little protrusions of bone at her hips, and her closely spaced hazel eyes flicked from corner to corner, searching the small groups of people clustered there-- Ah. An old man in a ceremonial suit, a soft woman in yellow, and two boys, the older man scratching at his scalp under his sparse grey-blonde hair. The desk clerk rummaged nervously through a box of small metal cubes, a visible sheen taking to the backs of his hands and his sloping, pockmarked forehead. Under the stainless steel desk, a small girl prodded him the ankle with the stiff tentacle of a doll that Portia’s assistant had dropped from her bag as the two of them traversed the upper landings of the-  in the majority’s opinion- unnecessarily tall building.
Outside, it had been raining, though the distinct sound of it was difficult to identify while one was indoors. The only real tell tale mark of the outside weather was the smell, a fragile, green scent that clung to the necks, shoulders, wrists and rain-slickers of any recent additions to the lobby. Portia scuttled over to her lambs, her heels clicking incessantly on  the white tiled floor. Upon her approach, the two children looked up, and she paused momentarily to look them over, hovering a few feet from the senator and his wife. Their children looked out of place, ramshackle, as if these two gangly, ill postured boys had been tossed together the day before, using spare bones and flesh from various household closets. A last ditch effort to maintain the image of a complete and joyous political family. A husband, an educated young wife, an heir and a backup, just in case the first ended up being defunct.
The four of them were dressed in a dark, heavy looking cloth, and all wore closely fitted green bracelets on their left wrist. In the case of the older looking boy, the gleaming circlet looked somewhat uncomfortable, biting into irritated, calloused skin, which was none the less as pale as any Portia had ever laid eyes on, freckled slightly here and there. All but the father shared the freckles, his pristine, angular face taking  her by surprise as he looked her up and down, seemingly unimpressed.
“You are the travel agent?” He asked wearily, and it was at that moment that she noted the powdered appearance of his skin. Something had been hastily applied to it to disguise the darkened patches of skin under his flat, reddish eyes, and if it were noticeable from barely two feet away, she assumed it wasn’t exactly meant for close up appearances, but for cameras later on. Her chapped lips twitched, she nodded.
“Yes, Senator,” Portia looked over at the Senator’s family, lovely and waxy in the way citizens of Dukhayrah’s lower levels often seemed to be. “Would you and your family like me to show you to your rooms?”
The wife smiled, her pig-pale lips curling gently, and nodded moments before the Senator’s hasty, heavily accented agreeal. Another rudimentary glance at the man’s poorly done make up was all she could take, and she spun quickly on a hard bottomed heel, her silence purling out from the small gap between her lips as she flourished a hand behind her, gesturing for her guests to follow. The staircase rose in front of her, and she paused in time for a lanky, unwashed looking fellow, younger than the sons of her governmentally inclined couple, stumble past her. She turned her head, eyes immediately caught on the light sheen of sweat on the lads neck, the prickling blonde hairs descending along his weak jawline, but the encounter was brief, interrupted by the light tapping of the Senator’s groomed nail on her shoulder. Portia turned back, mouth twisting into an ugly scowl.
“I thought,” the Senator hissed, and his wife, wide eyed, placed a thin hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Golubchik,” she muttered, “Shush.”
And as such, the five of them continued up the staircase, through the halls, and into a large suite smothered in yellow. The ceiling curved downward regularly, a dome pockmarked with ellipsoid light fixtures and cracking, golden cherubs, rosy cheeked and soft in the way of plaster infants. The flooring was a plane of grey, flat and tiled with long, verticals. The thin stone was marbled with bursts of grey. Portia smiled broadly, sweeping a plump, childlike hand across the scene in front of her, the heaping diazes of pillowy material, the long, triangular windows, the pristine kitchen area. That particular area didn’t seem likely to get much, if any use, but the effect was homey, expanding the whorling architecture of the place- Creating an illusion of high end living, the type that would never be practically available in as city such as Euphon.
“I hope you will find this to your liking, all of you.” She intoned grandly, her tin smile  glinting in the red-gold light. The children were, for the most part, still, and she was immediately drawn to the discrepancies in their expressions, their bones and skin so similar, stretched smooth and freckled and white- Not the white of an entire ethnic group, but the white of polished bone china, of processed egg shells. The white available in the aisles of industry under dusty, tubular lights and the porous grey of half rotten ceiling tiles, threatening to crumble under the weight of metal-work and wiring poised above them. Dull, transportable horror and a similarly dulled, euphoric bliss. The ease with which she transposed their faces over those of their parents was unnerving, even with the slight change in structure upon the mother, the family shared a similar set of expressionary presets. All in all, these strange, bird-like people invoked a bit of a desire to quell their liquidity over all, the social graces she had seen unravel on the stair case. To see something like that raw and bleeding, relatable only in suffering, as politicians and their causes often are would be a treat to end all others.
Generally, a political servant has long surrendered to the fact that the majority of their fantasies concerning their employers would not actually be fulfilled at any point in time. However, when one works for the royalty of a poorly disguised, highly volatile monarchy it is hardly abnormal to subsequently become obsessed with power dynamics. Where one places oneself in said dynamic, however, is entirely up to the individual. Genetic altruistism having been considerably more common in the glint-sharp chromium of the last decade or so, the next generation of children, she thought as she descended a short staircase, would be perfection in the eyes of men. Already the effects had become apparent, realization compounded by entry into any area commonly populated by children- a school yard, a college, a library between 2:30 and 3:30 pm. Change visible mainly in color-scheme, pastel eyes and stunning arches all throughout the children’s bone structure. Their scapulae protruding in fragile curvature from the softer outlines of curving curly-q spinal cords while the necks lengthened, jaws pressing hard into softer flesh at the sharper angle of the throat, the color of yellow-brown keratin. The gently pressing image of the boy who’d passed them on the stairs, soft looking, but thin in a way that suggested stress, haloed with silver-blonde hair ensconced in a gelatinous tomb of plastic wrap and acetic liquid occurred to her, partially triggered by the dramatized contrast in skin tone. The focal points of bone structure and the areas under the tilting eyes painted over with tawny, speckled skin.