Whistle a pleasant tune.

>Whistle a pleasant tune.

You purse your lips and start to translate memory into melody. It's tricky at first, because you're damn thirsty and your mouth is dry, but you get a tune going.

It lilts around the clanking, growing bolder by steps with each note. The minute echoes of the music hit and bounce off the left and the right. Headwards and footwards, there's nothing. They just keep going.

What doesn't is a pair of boots, above you, moving from your right to your left, before stopping. You're not sure how far away they are, but they're close.

You think.

Check your pockets. If there's fighting going on, that edged thing could serve as a weapon - though it might not help if you can't see.

What happened to your eyes?

Summer Rain. That's what it's called.

A long, smooth, cool little song that had to make due when you couldn't get the real thing.

You never could get the real thing.

>Check your pockets. If there's fighting going on, that edged thing could serve as a weapon - though it might not help if you can't see.

You reach a hand into the pocket lip and feel something slightly flimsy, kind of flat, and a bit angled. You push your thumb between it and your thigh, and pull it out.

One side is indeed smooth, but your skin catches on a flap. It bends like paper, and the other side has a rough strip - it's a matchbook. You press, and find that there's one match left that dares to press back.

>What happened to your eyes?

You have no idea. Your memory is fragmented, but you know the serrated horizon of This City - towers of neon and plasglas and metaferro in every direction, the currents of people flowing through them, then nothing but black.

Black you still carry.