Azad stands, shirtless at his window. Skin painted in moving shadows by the outside light, he watches cars going by below. People are few and far. Watching the rail’s hot lamp flash between the towers, gone and back, out of sight and back again, he waits as the windows darken, each in their own time, in apartments across the way. Gray eyes reflect clearly in the glass, watching him. He hears Harmony being fucked by Orion past the wall. Day snores down the hall, faintly. He listens to the electricity, alive in the walls. He hears his very breathing—slowly his ribs rise, rhythmic—and he listens to his thoughts, rivers dancing, into and out of his mind—like the rail with its red lights.
Azad turns from the window. Wandering out into the hall, he stands, watching Day, asleep on the living room floor. Slowly she breathes, in this light golden to toe, partially cocooned in her white wings. Her bare legs are folded to her chest, with her arms held between for warmth. The autoduster rolls quietly past his feet, and he watches the short gray hemisphere as it continues its night’s patrol. It peruses the outline of Day, nearly brushing her nose, tickling her feet, but it does not disturb her, and he watches until it disappears into the kitchen. Harmony whimpers louder, in her room down the hall behind him, but Azad just looks at Day. She is like many of the next generation, he thinks. She is aimless though in constant motion, pretty, yet somehow lonesome. Perhaps that is not she but I, he thinks. Maybe we are not alone. What is a body without direction? What is a soul without ambition? She is cold, so he takes the blanket from his bed and brings it there, laying it over her small form. She does not move, save a flicker of an eyelash.
He doubts her sincerity, but her sexuality and self-awareness are less subtle than thunder, or purple skies.
Azad sits on the couch above her straight into the early morning hours, listening to her breathe—slowly relaxing—and eventually he falls asleep upright, with the present white sounds of the night: buzzes, flickers, Harmony’s whispers, laughter, something like birds flirting—always this angelic, soft but electric, fluttering breath.
Near three he wakes for a minute with dreams of wingless flight.
On the floor, on her side in the dark, Day whimpers, quietly, her eyes closed. The blanket wraps her partly. Azad smiles and watches her shoulder, collar, her breathing rhythm. Her eyes move beneath their lids.