You’ll be late. The minutes will scratch past your skin and you will feel the marks they leave in their wake, a sting against the open air, but you will be helpless to stop them. The weight of feeling yourself falling behind will take up the width and breadth of your concentration. It will embrace you with a wholeness that you have never thought to long for and you will be stifled in the warmth of it’s pleading, eager grasp. You will be late. From this moment on, you will always and ever be late - running behind yourself without hope of ever catching up.

It is stride that is the problem: you, treading too slowly, and the universe, racing ahead. We are creatures bound by cadence and flow. Sometimes one simply falls out of step.

***

Wyl shook himself from the hollow dip of thoughts that he’d stumbled into, just in time to twist out of the way of a merchant struggling beneath the weight of a mighty cask of firebrand. The man (with a weary smile that was as grim as it was genuine) acknowledged him with a grunt and trudged on, each foot moving forward toward the hope of the gained profit that his wares would provide. Wyl watched him go, the boy’s gaze dimmed by a stubborn drowsiness. He’d slept fitfully the last few nights. A nagging sensation, the suspicion that a cold was trying to cleave it’s claws into him, had been lingering in the form of pressure behind his eyes and sinuses all week, and it always grew more insistent when it came time to turn in, vaulted to prominence by long days which, while pleasant, tugged at his energy reserves.

At least, that was what he was admitting to himself. The only other explanation - that the uneasy insomnia following him was caused by belief in his murky, half-formed dreams - wasn’t one which Wyl was ready to accept. It would have been admitting to a level of superstition that he’d left behind. There was no room for childhood fancy now, not when there was so much else on offer in the wide expanse of the universe. So much that was real and tangible and which struck back with just as much, with more, force than any of the wild sproutings of his imagination. He did not have to work to create a world which wove itself around him in mystical and breathtaking ways: it was already here, brutal and tender and spread out like a dancefloor ready for a waltzing.

“You’ve got to try this,” Wyl needled his way through a cluster of marketgoers, using a bit more shoulder force than could be considered polite (necessity ruled), and held out a twisted paper cone to his companion. The edges of the paper were already dampened through with fat, heat from the roasted seeds warming his palms even through the tight layers of the makeshift container. They glistened in bright, cheery colours: red and gold and an unnaturally deep blue. Wyl grinned at Ben. “Royal Mix. Mostly it’s sweet, but every once in a while you get a bit that’ll burn your throat to cinders. Supposed to be like the kings of old, the bloke said. S’great.”

Wyl and Ben had been travelling together long enough now that the boy didn’t feel guilty in the slightest at offering his friend something that would most certainly, at some point, inflict pain. There was a sense of camaraderie in the act, a shared suffering that was hilarious in it’s fulfillment. And anyway, they’d skipped breakfast in their rush to leave the ship before they could immediately get roped into responsible obligations, like restocks and repairs.

Rattling the snack assortment, Wyl cast an eye over the wares on offer at this particular stand. Bits of repurposed wire and metal, delicately twisted by hand into new lives. A watch, all nicked steel and stained hydrocoil, caught his attention for a moment but he glanced away before too much time could pass by; he didn’t want to find himself in the endless loop of a haggling negotiation with the seller for something that, as pretty and worn as it was, had no use for him.

“It’s been too long since we docked somewhere. I almost forgot what non-recycled air feels like.” As if to illustrate his point, Wyl took in a long, deep breath. He coughed, smoke from a nearby soldering venture catching in his chest, and then shook his head worshipfully. “Mmm. That’s prime.”