11. A city that outshone the sun

Perhaps the fog had just made him forget the city completely, as well.

Because Peter Lake didn't feel at home here. Wherever this was.

This hadn't been the city he'd recognized, when he'd gone to the cemetery and found the gravedigger. Before the fog had become everything around him.

He looked upon it now, tall and glowing, above and before him, and he only felt pain in his eyes.

Familiar, stone-cut shapes. Unfamiliar, gaudy, dancing colors. Hues so bright and electric that they blinded him.

The white of his fog couldn't have been that thick. How could any curtain shield such vibrancy? Such blinding lights and constant noise?

It wasn't only the chatting and the crowds, which were already excessive. Bizarre automobile-like monsters flooded the street, headlights slanted and glowing. Images moved from the billboards. Everything seemed to have a voice here, inanimate or otherwise.

This, noise and gas and light, too much light for his liking.

It was night now, and somehow the city had become brighter for it, its details more recognizable, its alienness augmented.

This city didn't merely rebel against the starlight in its imitations. It shattered the darkness into other impossible colors. It became the sun itself. On Earth, at his feet. Daylight, revived and repurposed.

It made no sense.

It made… no sense.

And it fascinated him. He longed to know how it worked.

O Come, O Come…

What was this whispering feeling? The identity it implied?

He'd been greedy, he knew. A thief, and a bad man.

Had he also longed to reconstruct the sky, make it mechanic, turn it on as he wished? Had he been that greedy, in his old life?

Do you think stars are afraid of-?

The warmth had asked him this once. Her voice came and went and he couldn't catch it.

Because despite its flashy eye-candy, the city was very cold.

The only detail that truly gave it away as his old city was this, really. Peter recognized its breath.

Cecil.

But other matters called to him. He needed to find his friend.

Lights had led him out of the fog, and now he was floating in them. Adrift in a river of electricity.

There were remnants of red and white chalk on his fingers. He rubbed them together within his pockets, as he wandered.

Eventually, all rivers led to the sea.

O Come…

In this overstimulated city of light and color, it led him to a station.

O Come…


Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.

I finished my dissertation and I'm on my final stretch to finish my Animation major and I needed to write new chapters, at last. Whenever work becomes overbearing, I just come here and retreat Peter's footsteps.

Now, what would a 1910s man who's been ripped of his memories and trapped within a colorless fog for a long-a** time feel like when he wanders a 21st-century New York City for the first time? Seeing all the screens, the cars, the smell of gas, the overbearing sounds? The crowds would be way bigger, the lights gaudier. I've been to New York twice, and at night the city is more alive than in the daylight, even overbearringly so given how huge it is. I've described New York in ASITL before, in a couple chapters dedicated mainly to Peter's reaction to seeing the city, but here, I figure it must have been extremely overwhelming for him to come back to his senses and see a city like this when he's so used to the 1910s technology, something way more discreet.

I also looked up an animated video that displayed New York's evolution through history to get a better sense of how each era would be different. So here we are :3 The very first shot of the movie is 2014 Peter Lake coming into Grand Central Station and rediscovering his items, and we the audience get his backstory. Now, Peter never finds out why his parents abandoned him in the movie, and I don't know how to approach that in my version... but I'll figure something out. Peter is now in Grand Central.

See you soon with the continuation. Thank you, as always, for reading, whoever's here today. Here's a hug for you. *hug*