#mccort

It’s amazing what you can see from twenty floors up. How the city below looks like an ocean of stars, how even the sirens that screech through the night air can cause some sense of calm and familiarity simply because they are there.

But the door was locked, no windows were broken, and everything was as we left it...except those moved objects.

When I asked Peri about it she seemed almost dazed for moment before telling me that yeah, she'd shifted them. She muttered something about feng shui before announcing in an almost rehearsed way she was tired and heading to bed.

I blinked and she was gone. Did I offend her by staring, I wondered? How did she disappear so fast?

I found her behind the old shops in between our building and that huge apartment building they converted into an office. She was going through the trash and didn't even seem embarrassed when I cleared my throat. She never did nowadays.

But I loved the view.

It got so bad that my roommate, Periwinkle, an old friend from school, was determined to drag me out of the apartment for the night. She almost had to shove me in the shower and literally drag me out. I didn’t want to go, there was more to read, I wanted to know. But...she was my friend. How was I supposed to say no?

I wondered, if there were Gods of the City...did they know about the people in the lower echelons who suffered? Did they help? Did they know about Fig, that one homeless girl who lived behind our apartment? Who we brought in last Winter when it was too cold and the rain turned to sleet and she cried so hard in gratitude she slept for 14 hours? Did they know how hard it was to pay rent and eat at the same time? Or-