From the waxing yellowed buzzes off to his right he knew that those firefly beacons could only be a truck stop, a haven. Maybe beyond the parking lot, where the semis were tucked into the mid-November chill, held a small mall of painfully brown grass or a few noble pines which had been spared the saws of men in order to give the place a more secure or wild feel. Fat chance. The road side bathrooms and information booths could never feel like freedom to any one with more sense than a drunken bar bouncer on his day off.
Or her.
He reminded himself silently.
You don't want to be labeled a sexist out in the open.
He leaned closer into the handlebars as if for some lost comfort of long ago and his mind fell pray to a rather childish day dream; animals running through the snow. He could never tell exactly what they were, though. Maybe horses. Maybe dogs. Maybe naked men mimicking their 'pre-evolution' roots. Maybe nothing but a bored biker's brain running rampart through the frosty landscapes of insanity. Who knew and who cared. He didn't believe in wild horses, feral dogs, or evolution; he had nothing to believe which was wonderful to him.
The welcome matted restrooms and boxed cargo trucks blurred by and then called after his retreating form with their lights glimmering; almost ominously. 'Don't keep going,' they called into the barren expanse that lay before him, 'Rest here awhile. It's dangerous out there.'
He headed anyone little though and the frozen wastelands embraced him with the usual harsh and chilled greeting which was customary by their design. He had heard somewhere, on some godforsaken day, that there had once been actual, fruitful wilderness out in these parts but now not such a statement was counted true. There was just…snow. Looking to your left you might glimpse the outline of black eye outlined mountain silhouettes, but even if you reached those changes in the bleak landscape the slopes up them were barren and grey-stoned craggy. Or so he heard.
But he never had the mind or interest to investigate them.
The cold was squirreling it's way through his thrift shop leather jacket and onto his bear flesh, and the wind, who was the accomplice of the frost, didn't help him retain his precious body heat anymore than the fiendish chill.
Fine, you've convinced me.
He pivoted a hard left and into the empty and opposing lane back towards the slight warmth advertised by the rest area. Who knew why or who he had been talking, thinking to… A lost self buried beneath the ashes marking where past bridges were burnt? Whatever the reason for this inward rambling he himself did not know, but it felt good to admit something; even if it was only to yourself. Faster than the hums of off yellow had gone they swelled back in an orchestrated manner as if the turn around had been a plan by then all along.
Yeah. Teaming up with the damn cold and forcing decent people to retreat back into civilization. Its all the government's fault.
He thought and then laughed after digesting his musing for half a moment. Besides that the cold had thoroughly begun to ebb the feeling from his fingers and all other digits and appendages and that he was forced to spend his night in the slums of a condemned wasteland, he was in a cheery mood; ergo the laugh.
Easing into the entrance (or was it exit for he could not read the sign) he began to select the most secluded spot to prop his bike and/or love in life; if you could call this living. After the close inspection of the cozy alleyways cradled between the large, gas abusing trucks, the oil spilled spots behind the men's lavatory, and the frosty zombie grass underneath the skeleton branched trees he mused that the best scenario would be to park the crimson ride underneath a flickering light Ramada where the Hershey's company parked their overpriced vending machine for fat packed 'chocolate' and the janitorial staff had apparently either died or gone on a ten year strike. Naturally, it was the farthest back, the most hidden from view, but also the warmest.
Heat was life out here from both man and cycle.
As for himself the concrete slabs some might have called tables suited him well enough and lying flat on his back he surveyed the many warning signs on the shelter's roof ( those cautioning people to not come under here to guard against lightening and etcetera) until sleep found him and he was only slightly aware of the wind whipping through the truck stop and the government funded lights dragging out their lights into the night until the dawn came. But he also did not here the person, man or woman it cannot be known, who chanced upon the forsaken sight and managed to steal an item precious to a man:
It was a bike. A red one shined by age, wax, and the chill.
And that fiend had run with their find of axles and handle-bars until they were too far away for a youth to follow, for anyone to pursue; so by the time Tsume awoke that person was already gone.