You encounter a city. A sea of shadowy figures moving from one side to the other, chatting, muttering and some even yelling. Cars honking, traffic jams giving everyone a terrible mood. Machinery, shadows working on building even more buildings. Animals whining, barking, making sure each other know where their territory begins. It's loud, it's way too loud.





Take a deep breath, the air smells of pollution, car engines, gas, sweat, someone's old lunch forgotten and rotting among all the food leftover from restaurants. Giant trash containers spread among alleys. It smells, it smells too strongly.





You can’t hear, you can’t think, you can’t breathe. You have to run from all of this. You summon all the strength you can find in your legs and start running, shoving past the shadow figures in your way who don’t even seem to notice you’re there. Run past buildings, parks, street after street everything feels smaller, tighter. Almost claustrophobic, you need an exit…





And then you see it. Your exit, an open space that couldn’t be more different than the graying city trapping you. Green hills, filled with shrubs and untamed wildflower beds spreading over, colors probably stolen from the city. You keep running, this time not feeling trapped but to experience all this freedom. Roll down the hills and laugh, deep breaths giving back the fresh air that was previously robbed from your lungs. The deeper into the shrubbery you end, the more freedom and relief you feel. After a while running turns into walking, walking turns into a slow pace that allows you to enjoy the scenery. Tall trees surround you, the air feels fresh yet never cold and you realize you’re lost but it doesn’t frazzle you, not much at least…





Deep in this forest there’s a small ravine, a forgotten area that serves as the refuge of the master of this nightmare. It’s an old train station, that once travelled back and forth to the city. The more you think about it it seems like they forgot about it and it was for the best. A lone wagon can be seen, leaning slightly over the one side still intact. The steel is rusty from years of contact with air and water. The entire area is as green as the forest as the plants have taken over, a stream of water running where the old tracks were once found. It’s calm except for the chirping and scuttling of a little treat playing around pillows. At last you notice him, a light peach figure at the very back of the wagon. Eyes closed, head tilting with curiosity as to what you’re looking in his domain; after observing you for a while, or so you think as his eyes have not once opened, he speaks to you with a soft voice.





"Can I help you?"