Better Streets
As the haze of the evening’s festivities starts to clear from your head, you realise that deciding to walk home might have been a mistake. You probably should’ve caught the last train home with the others, but it had been Neesha’s birthday and you wanted to share one last drink with her before leaving. At the time, it had seemed worth a little inconvenience. But that was before you’d started walking. You shiver a little, as the wind tickles your face.
You look around, but you don’t recognise this street at all. A nearby vending machine buzzes, and a few garbage dumpsters stand haphazardly outside closed restaurants. You pull out your phone and check the map again, but the location marker refuses to zoom in. Either way, you’re sure it didn’t look this far when you were checking the map earlier. In the bar. With all the background noise. While trying to half-hold a conversation. You may have been wrong. It doesn’t matter now though, because you have no idea where you are or how to find your way out.
Ok, you need to think about this. You look groggily around the street. Something about it feels... off. Like there’s something about your perception which doesn’t quite feel right. You shake your head, wishing you were more sober. No, that’s not right, you must be more sober by now.
You wander down the street passing closed shops, their shutters rolled down and covered in graffiti. You walk past one in particular with strange looking writing sprayed onto it. You don’t recognise the script. Are those runes? No, you’ve seen runes before and you don’t recognise these. You wander on, reaching a junction. There don’t seem to be any street signs, unfortunately. Looking left and right, you still don’t see anything which looks familiar. Normally, you’d try and find one of the taller landmarks to help find your bearings. Maybe one of the towers from the city’s commercial districts. But the buildings around here are too tall.
There’s always a better street to walk down. That’s the advice you remember being given when you first moved here. And as far as you can tell, that’s always been true. There’s always been some place which looked nicer. Cleaner. Brighter. Some place with a nicer atmosphere.
That advice seems as good as anything right now, so you decide to follow it. The nicer places must surely lead to the busier places, and those are where you might find better phone signal. Signposts. Maybe even a taxi. You take a right turn and wander past a small roadside garden. A breeze blows dry leaves across your path.
This entire street seems nicer than the last one. There are flower pots on the doorsteps with lush green plants growing in them. There’s not a dumpster in sight. There’s still graffiti though. Among the graffiti, sprayed in side alleyways and on more metal shutters, you find more odd looking writing. Wait, is that the same writing as before? You can’t be sure, but it definitely looks similar. You continue to the end of the street and find another junction. You’d been hoping to find a main road you could follow, but these streets all look very similar to the one you just walked down. No matter. You look around and choose one street with brighter lights than the others and follow it.
This street is lined with trees, neatly planted by the roadside. You can’t see a single piece of litter on the pavement. Wisteria bushes trail up the walls, curving over shop windows and around restaurant doors, hanging little bundles of purple flowers downwards, their bright colours accentuated by the warm whitish street lighting. You look up, and you can even see stars in the sky. As you walk past a traffic sign, you notice some writing scrawled on the back of it, in marker pen. It looks very similar to the writing you saw before. In fact, this time you’re almost certain it’s the same, even though you can’t read it. You’re starting to recognise a couple of the characters.
Your head is much clearer now, though you’re starting to feel tired. You’d really hoped to be home by now. At the next junction, you pick the nicest looking street again. It feels safe here. Comfortable. Warm. The wind you felt before seems to be gone now. The street lights here look nicer, given the look of old style gas lamps. Between the shops and restaurants residential buildings have grander entrances. Larger doors, with older looking trees either side of them. On a paving tile, you see the same strange writing again, written in chalk.
Looking up, you realise the sky is no longer dark. Instead, it’s starting to fade into the deep blue of twilight. You groan inwardly as you realise it’ll soon be morning. But you’re somehow no closer to being home. You still don’t even know where you are. You resolve to just keep following the brighter, nicer looking streets. Don’t pay attention to anything else and just keep walking. You have to find someplace eventually. At this rate, maybe you’ll just find a train station. It won’t be much more than an hour before the trains start running again.
At the next junction, you take a road lined with orange trees, bursting with fragrant blossoms. At the next, you find one with pure white paving tiles and rose bushes. Then one with rounded cobble stones and blooming magnolia trees. Is it even the right time of year for magnolia blossoms? You’re too tired to care. You walk down another street, paved with glassy black stone, lit by low, golden lights. A street paved in marble and filled with ancient, gnarled-looking oak trees. The sky starts to fade to lighter blue. Then orange. As you reach another junction, you realise it’s almost dawn.
You lean on a wall, taking a moment to rest. You flex your aching feet. They’re slightly numb from all the walking. You glance back down the street you came from, but you can’t see the other end of it from here. Warm sunlight hits your face, making you look up. The sun is rising, shining straight down a street in front of you. You walk towards it. The road is paved in stone which looks like jade. A street sign by the road has the same strange lettering you’ve seen written on every other street you’ve walked down. But this isn’t graffiti. It’s finely crafted lettering. Shiny. Metallic. Is that gold? As you step onto the street, you realise you’re completely surrounded by trees. You can’t even see any buildings anymore. Bathed in sunlight, walk down the jade road, curious about what you might find at the end of it.