- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Man's Coffee Shop, Phantom Quarter.
The sound of a newspaper rustling hit Ragenard's hearing with the same frequency of a pendulum’s swing. He began counting his breaths; five in, five out. He didn’t bother with any visualization; that wasn’t how he worked. The faint buzzing and thrumming of his blood vessels as they rendered the strange gray-green-red field of his Eigengrau was all the visual his closed eyes needed.
Five more in, and five more out. Evenly measured. Not too deep or shallow.
The newspaper rustled again, exactly when Ragenard expected it. In many ways, the sanity of that frequency was the only solace he had left that the world still made sense. The news changed, but Man always read every page at exactly the same pace.
It wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d seen within the spotlessly clean but lightly scuffed interior of the locale. This was the kind of place where those who knew about it, simply enjoyed the simple and inexpensive fare without many questions. A place to go and be lost with one’s thoughts.
Tucked between a pawn shop and the place where Ragenard bought his surplus military boots, the shop was located just past the border of Lupaix and into the Phantom Quarter, where the last remaining businesses abutted the oncoming desperation that baked off the PQ.
The small coffee shop didn’t have a name or even a sign. The only way you could tell if ‘Man’—the only name the nondescript and average height proprietor gave of himself in highly accented Lutetian and nothing but shrugs as elaboration could be had further—was in was if the small green crystal figurine in the shape of a ‘C’ that he hung by a string on the door above its small window was up. Ragenard had only ever seen it around Man’s neck in those rare occasions when he arrived before—but never by more than a few minutes—the proprietor himself.
The mystery used to interest him some sixty years ago. Nowadays he was simply quietly glad that Man never even asked him how his day was and doubly so that it never felt rude for some reason.
So it was that he sat at the bar when it happened. Sipping at a cup of inexpensive but easily ‘middle shelf’ coffee—with a splash of very expensive Iverian whiskey delivered with a raised eyebrow as the only query as to the size of the splash—when the scent of guilt that he swore couldn’t be suddenly coming from himself assaulted his nostrils alongside with the ring from the small bell above the door. With it came Rhetta’s scent as well, for his memory was just fine.
Man was no longer anywhere to be seen, leaving Ragenard alone with the only sign that he was still within the world of normalcy; the small thud the little green crystal figurine did as it bounced lightly off the door where it still hung.
Five more in, and five more out. Evenly measured. Not too deep or shallow.
The newspaper rustled again, exactly when Ragenard expected it. In many ways, the sanity of that frequency was the only solace he had left that the world still made sense. The news changed, but Man always read every page at exactly the same pace.
It wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d seen within the spotlessly clean but lightly scuffed interior of the locale. This was the kind of place where those who knew about it, simply enjoyed the simple and inexpensive fare without many questions. A place to go and be lost with one’s thoughts.
Tucked between a pawn shop and the place where Ragenard bought his surplus military boots, the shop was located just past the border of Lupaix and into the Phantom Quarter, where the last remaining businesses abutted the oncoming desperation that baked off the PQ.
The small coffee shop didn’t have a name or even a sign. The only way you could tell if ‘Man’—the only name the nondescript and average height proprietor gave of himself in highly accented Lutetian and nothing but shrugs as elaboration could be had further—was in was if the small green crystal figurine in the shape of a ‘C’ that he hung by a string on the door above its small window was up. Ragenard had only ever seen it around Man’s neck in those rare occasions when he arrived before—but never by more than a few minutes—the proprietor himself.
The mystery used to interest him some sixty years ago. Nowadays he was simply quietly glad that Man never even asked him how his day was and doubly so that it never felt rude for some reason.
So it was that he sat at the bar when it happened. Sipping at a cup of inexpensive but easily ‘middle shelf’ coffee—with a splash of very expensive Iverian whiskey delivered with a raised eyebrow as the only query as to the size of the splash—when the scent of guilt that he swore couldn’t be suddenly coming from himself assaulted his nostrils alongside with the ring from the small bell above the door. With it came Rhetta’s scent as well, for his memory was just fine.
Man was no longer anywhere to be seen, leaving Ragenard alone with the only sign that he was still within the world of normalcy; the small thud the little green crystal figurine did as it bounced lightly off the door where it still hung.
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