From IRC, slightly edited. A birthday tale for Mama.

Once upon a time in the city of Cascade, there lived a man named Blair. Many people believed that he was not a serious person, but they were incorrect. Blair was very serious.

It was merely that he was serious about those things that people believe are unimportant. He did not think cell phones or computers or Academic Politics were important.

He thought that Other Things were important.

He could not have told you why.

He could not have told you why the city beat in his veins--why the asphalt informed his skin--why sometimes at night he heard a great slow inhale and exhale, like wind sighing between skyscrapers.

He only knew that it was Important.

In the city of Cascade, there also lived a man named Jim. Many people believed that Jim was a serious person, but they were incorrect. Mostly, Jim was serious because he sensed something odd in himself, and he did not want to infect others with it. By nature, he was a creature of joy, but the oddness was old and wild and he feared it.

But inside him, the oddness grew, until it wove through him like a cancer, and threads stretched out, out, out, into the city.

And at night, Blair would hear the oddness in the whistle of the great breathing, and in the day the asphalt spoke in ripples of tar about it, and
he could feel it in the beating of his heart.

It grew until he could no longer ignore it, this wildness in his city.

And one day, he touched the asphalt with his hand and he followed the beating of his heart and the siren call of the breathing, and he stood in a doorway and saw Jim. And Jim looked at him with eyes that wanted to be joyous but were afraid of the oldness and the wildness and the strangeness, afraid of what they saw that they should not see.

And Blair spoke, but the wildness was like a jungle in the heart of the city, and he had no sword to cut through the branches. He reached out his hand and gave Jim a token, but he could do no more.

Jim held the token close to his heart, near his pulse and his breathing, and the fear eased a little, but the wildness did not recede. Jim held the token for while longer, hoping for peace, but peace did not come. And so he held it away from his heart, in front of his eyes, and it spoke to him in all the secret corners of his mind, and he followed where it led.

And Blair was there, waiting, not with a sword, but with words. And this time when he spoke, the wildness parted before him, and Jim fled.

(For how could a man of the city part the wildness? It must be witchcraft, and this Jim thought, and this is why he fled.)

But Blair gave chase, and caught Jim, and the wildness fell away, and the oldness, and the strangeness, and it became one with Jim, and in
him, and through him--but like good blood, sweet with oxygen, not like a cancer.

And the city breathed with a sound like wind sighing between skyscrapers, and Jim heard it.

And the asphalt spoke, dermography in tar and pitch and rock, and Jim saw it.

And the city beat like a pulse, and Jim felt it, and Blair said, "Yes!"

For the city was wild, and strange, and the land on which it stood was older and wilder, and they were part of it. And it brought them together, skin and breath and blood. As naked and wild as the city was before them, so they were before it, and before each other, and around each other, and in each other, as though to sunder them were to sunder the city itself.

And the city breathed and moved and thought to their rhythm, and they to its, and so it was and will be forever.

The End.