The spring winds are more autumnal in flavor today. A colony of grackles has established itself out beyond The Rigors. He will go there. Today. Tomorrow. Or later. To listen to them. It is his habit: a Spring-tide marker, as Father likes to call it. A tradition, as Father says, when he says anything at all. Things have always been this way: the eurythmic flux of seasons; grackles building their loud, nesting colonies out east of The Rigors; Father’s terse pronouncements. His ways, everyone says, are those of a priest, but Father’s temperaments are secular in nature. Everyone shared opinion is, thus, apocryphal to Father’s true nature. His concerns are those of any ‘smith. Narek walks a different path than his father does. He is of age to take a brother, a wife, or some such companion. He has not decided which, though his amatory attentions have drifted—of late—to the Inner Quarter, to the quiet mystery to a lean, brooding scribner at home in a cramped garret above the noise of markets and horse-carriages along Inkwell Street. He goes there, on occasion, to Inkwell Street. He pretends to haggle with the fruit vendors, the vellum-makers, the cobblers. He goes, to steal sight of the scribner, to learn small things of the scribner’s habits. Affections grow and swell to the threat of bursing within Narek’s chest, and he knows that sooner, rather than later, the time will come to swallow shyness and speak words to the brooding stranger. But for now, in the confusion of spring winds with an autumnal flavor, he contemplates the grackles, the ruins, the scent of rust and long-vanished decay. Inkwell Street marks his easterly path through the city’s edge. His path along Inkwell Street leads him beyond the city’s border, beyond the marsh flats…outward and out, to the grackle colonies in the ruined superstructure of what had once been a human place. A city. It is a tangle of naked girders now, a crumble of powdered mortar, and fallen brickwork; it is a thicket of brambles and honeywood trees, buzzing with flies. When Narek visits the dead city—the place where men once lived—he goes to the heart of it: to where struts support overgrowth, like the strangest of ribbons…unraveled. There are those—Father among them—who maintain that trains once rumbled over such struts, carrying passengers, carrying cargo from one place to another. Narek cannot imagine this, how grand it must have been. He goes for the grackles, happy to think that the ruined city is theirs. He goes to dream, to count rivets and to explore the ruined caverns that were once vast, subterranean rooms. He finds things in them, on occasion: moldered things…rusted things…the husks of insects. He brings the scent of such things back with him, and now…as the spring winds carry their odd, autumnal flavor, he wonders at the strange metals at home in his own, smaller city. Father has gathered such things, for re-smelting and re-shaping into shoes for horses or hinges for doors. The courtyard between house and ‘smith-shop, smells of rust and coal and Narek—by simple association—smells of such things. Now—somewhere between thoughts of the brooding, mysterious scribner, and the ancient, dead city inhabited by grackles—he considers the strange rivet-work, drilled (screwed?) into rusting plates of metal that Father has salvaged. He touches screw-threads and marvels at the smell of rust. In the distance, grackles take flight and fill the air with their own grackle-ish voices. * * * I have no idea who Narek is, or what city he lives in. I'm sure there's more to his story. As for the image inspiring it, well...it's simple rivet-work from the El tracks in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood. I took this photograph today, as I wandered with Corey in search of...something. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.