CANTOR DUST (Itari + unanun)

[unanun]

Grey finished watching one leaf crumble. He nudged the midrib, and the rest of the venules still stuck to the veins fell off in a microscopic shower. He had just moved it over to make way for a still-moist, but decaying leaf when a pounding began at his door. Despite his melancholy, he could not stop a small smile forming on his face, which stayed there while he moved to open the door.

He paused with his hand on the handle, unlatched the security chain, then loudly undid the deadbolt and stepped back. There was a brief moment of silence before the door flew open to reveal Zenon, dressed in her mimicry of Lady Growth. Grey caught his breath as she whirled in, but relaxed as there was no accompanying shower of petals or pollen, a gentle reminder that Nari was still out there.

"Lord Grey!"

Zenon spared a second to be in shock at the state of the room.

"I've been looking all over for you!"

"I was thinking!" Grey nodded, encouraged her.

"I was thinking ... I was thinking that perhaps you did not get the chance to really say what you wanted to Lady Growth! It was such a busy time, and as you know, the Showing is always a tightly choreographed affair. I can definitely see that you did not have the chance to have a reunion with her, like was foretold!"

"But," Grey pointed out, "you said that I would not be able to meet her. She is so engaged every hour of the day now that there is no time in which she can be found alone."

Zenon paced the room, throwing up small clouds of humus. This pleased Grey, but made Zenon sneeze.

"Normally. Normally. But there are a few dates during the year which she spends alone. The first of the year, and the middle of the year. And also, the one hundred eleventh day."

Zenon did not catch the microscopic twitch of Grey's lip, the jerk of his index finger and middle finger on his left hand as he squeezed an imaginary cigarette, flicking off the ashes into a tray, and watched the lasers burn off the smoke in sparks as it rose above an invisible sphere centered on his head.

 

[Itari]

The door to her bedroom burst open, causing Nari to nearly jump out of her seat. Zenon entered looking as though she had just run a marathon.

"Lady Growth." She stopped to catch her breathe, "I'm sorry to disturb you... so late at night... but I have urgent news."

Nari raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

Zenon stood straight, a gigantic smile plastered to her face, "Lord Grey has said he will meet with you. I was thinking, the hundred and eleventh day is in approximately one month. It would be the perfect time for the two of you to be reunited."

Nari sighed and stood from her chair to get Zenon a cup of water from a filter in the corner of the room. "Zenon, haven't you realized by now? Grey tricked you. He didn't come here to see me. You should go home. Your parents will be worried." She handed the cup of water to Zenon who gulped it down and then immediately went to her knees.

"Oh Lady Growth, please! You have to believe me! I know I messed up for the festival, but this time I swear! He really will see you!"

Nari's chest grew tight at the thought of seeing him again, but she quickly pushed the thought out of her mind. How many years had she held onto that hope, only to be disappointed year after year? She wouldn't let herself make that mistake again. She hauled Zenon to her feet and gently guided her to the door. "The real world is not the same as your romance novels, Zenon. Don't disturb me about this again."

The girl dug in her heels and pushed back against Nari, which surprised her. Zenon had never openly defied her like this before. "What can I do to convince you it's true?"

The goddess sighed and took a moment to think, "The flower. Bring me the flower. He'll know which one." She closed the door firmly in Zenon's face.

 

[unanun]

"The flower."

"The flower."

"You'll know which one."

"I'll know which one."

Grey slowly closed his eyes, and a microscopic shower of dust rained from his eyelashes. The little red flower was on his planet in his hovel. He remembered picking it up many times and checking if it was still red, whether it had lost any of its luster, but the last time he checked before his trip here, it was still brilliant. Of all the things in his mind, that one was the brightest, both from its importance and from how compact it was, how many memories and feelings were compressed into just an image of a red flower in a glass ball sitting on a small pile of sand in a sandstone cave.

"I don't have it."

"You ... don't have it."

"It's at home. Out there."

"Out there."

Various noises of despair emitted from Zenon, who also assumed various poses of despair, but Grey interrupted her halfway when he stood. "You are going to take me directly to her. We have thirty days to plan it. I've done it before - yes, I know it was a different time - but we can do it again."

They used every single second to arrive at the threshold to her chambers at the right time. The outer rings were the easiest, where Grey was easily disguised, though he complained that he could not see anything with the red flowers over his eyes. As the supplicants thinned out to leave the more devout priests, Grey was no longer able to be in the wrong place at the right time, and they crept forward hallway by hallway. Once, Grey stood as a statue in a niche for three days until a certain ritual was finished and the priests cleared a hallway they had to pass. He received compliments for the exquisite likeness.

At the end, time was their only and greatest obstacle. Zenon pushed Grey into a service tunnel, and that was the last he saw of her until much later. The brown, damp tunnel stretched out of sight behind and in front of him, and he estimated that each light marked an entrance one kilometer apart. So he counted to one thousand, and on the next and last light the tunnel came to an end, with a door in front instead of to the side. He squeezed himself out into a corridor on one of three days where Nari demanded to be alone. Vines bloomed straight from marble. No one saw the ash footprints he left as he walked up to a door he could never forget and knocked on it three times.

 

[Itari]

The spot was growing. What had once been a nearly imperceptible pinprick was now a circle the size of the tip of her pinky. She wouldn't be able to keep it hidden much longer, as the poison was now starting to affect her physical health and strength. Three knocks on the outer door pulled her attention away from the mirror. Nari closed her robes over the yellowing scar, irritated.

"I told you-"

She was dreaming. She knew because she had dreamed of this exact situation thousands of times before. In some of them, she would slap him or yell. Tell him to leave and save her the heartache. In others, she would pull him to into an embrace. They would kiss and Nari would beg him to stay. In the worst ones, Grey would turn into dust in her arms and she would spend the rest of the dream desperately trying to gather all the microscopic pieces and bring him back. In this one, Nari stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the dream to tell her what to do. One second seemed to stretch into a thousand and Nari realized that the dream would not move forward until she did.

She reached out a shaky hand, and brushed her fingers against his cheek. It was warm, solid, and her fingers came away covered in ash. Real. He was real. He caught her hand in his, pressing his lips against her palm and whispered a name she had not heard for several hundred years.

Grey caught her before she hit the floor. Together, they sat there. Nari, pulled into his lap, her face against his shoulder, hands gripping the fabric of his shirt, shoulders shaking in silent sobs. Grey, with his arms wrapped tightly around her.

 

[unanun]

"I ..."

"I'm sorry."

Three dark lines of ash ran down Nari's left cheek; Grey switched to the other side, brushing the back of his fingers along her skin.

"I just ... I couldn't come after a while."

"You don't get it!" He pulled his fingers away and buried them in his pocket.

"No!"

"Stop!" But he always let her have her way in the end, as his hand was slowly extracted with a small stream of heavy grey silt.

"..."

Grey looked bitter. "Of course it's always been like this. You just didn't notice. I left before you could notice! Don't you remember when we were eating at the cafe?"

"Yeah, it got worse the more you helped the planet. I couldn't come as often."

"Hey!" Grey was indignant. "Up until my last visit, I was still trying to come regularly! It's just ..."

"..."

"... the last time ..."

"The last time I came, I started to fall apart in my suit!"

"Stop laughing! I had to hide in the bathroom. Do you know how many people asked if I was okay, while I was scooping myself into my backpack? Asking if I had been to a beach or something? I had to wait until midnight and sneak into the cargo bay of a shuttle. I was forgotten in the trash heaps for months. I don't remember how long it took to recombobulate."

"... Yeah. Recombobulate."

"Stop laughing!" He looked annoyed, but such fake indignation could not hide the smile when he looked at his beloved.

 

[Itari]

The two of them sat on her bed. Grey, bare-chested. Nari, wearing nothing but Grey's open button up shirt. He held her hair pulled into a neat ponytail in one hand and a brush in the other. A pile of flowers lay next to him. Nari was in the middle of handing him a hair tie. The attendants stared at the couple, open mouthed. Zenon looked delighted. The rest had varying expressions of shock, confusion, and horror.

Grey was the one who broke the stalemate by putting down the brush and plucking the hair tie from Nari's fingers. Nari shifted her eyes back to the wall in front of her, keeping her head still and started handing hair pins back to Grey as he twisted her hair into a bun. His fingers left streaks of dust in her white hair. The attendants started walking forward, shouting in protest. A wall of tree trunks grew from the ground. They reached up to the ceiling, completely cutting off a section of the room. The wall closed around the attendants and pushed them out the doorway. Their muffled voices could be vaguely heard from outside.

"Who… that?"

"...High Priests!"

"Lady Growth!"

Grey finished arranging a few flowers in her hair and Nari turned and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, love." She handed his shirt back to him. His eyes wandered down to the browning scar on her chest, eyebrows furrowed in worry. Nari ran her thumb across his brow, as if to smooth out the wrinkles. "I'll be fine. You should worry about yourself." As she spoke, bright vines and leaves sprouted from her skin, weaving themselves into a dress. Flowers matching the ones Grey had selected for her hair bloomed in a swirling pattern.

The room was a mess. With both of them in the same place, the plants had spent the day in a constant cycle of decay and regrowth. Fallen leaves, petals, and dead vines littered the floor and her bedding was covered in a fine layer of dust.

"How long will you stay?"

"Shouldn't you return home to recover?"

"No! Of course not!" Her hands twisted in her lap, her face a mix of worry and guilt. "I… I'm just worried."

Grey kissed her gently on the head.

Nari stood and wrote something out on a piece of paper and handed it to him. "I had a room made for you, based on your descriptions of your home on the Grey planet. I'll ask Zenon to help you find it." Branches grew from her head and twisted themselves into an intricate headpiece that incorporated the bun Grey had made. As always, it was completed by two red flowers that covered her black, alien eyes.

The two left the room hand in hand. The attendants crowded around her, the High Priests behind them. Nari ignored them, and instead spoke to Zenon. "Zenon, take Grey to the address I gave to him. Tell them to give him the room under the name 'Nari.'"

"Who was that?"

"How does Zenon know him?"

"Peter, you said he was Zenon's boyfriend!"

"I- I saw them eating lunch together!"

"This is unacceptable!" The attendants immediately backed away and cleared a pathway for the Head Priest. "Lady Growth, what is the meaning of this? We cannot allow outsiders into these parts of the temple!"

"He was my guest. I let him in."

The Priest stepped in close, "Lady Growth. You forget yourself. You do not have that kind of authority." He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Just sit down and play the role that was given to you."

"No." Nari pushed him away from her. "You forget yourself, Father Beckett. I am the Goddess of this planet. It is only by my grace that any of you are able to survive here."

The Priest scoffed. "You have no power here. The Sacred Tree ensures that you cannot defy us."

"Perhaps." Her hand went to her chest. "But I expect that to change in the near future."

 

[unanun]

The way back took the same amount of time as the way there, though Grey and his detail took a very different route. The priests paid so little attention to him that it was obvious they were paying attention to him. When he was still close to her chambers, they would swing large sails of cotton to catch the smoke that bled from his neck, but that reduced to white-robes priests with brooms of frayed twigs that swept the marble behind him. Perhaps Zenon was the reason he was largely unmolested until he left the temple.

"Was that everything you wanted?"

The room was just a room, but flooded with dust and gravel, constantly set aswirl by several randomly pointed fans. Small dunes had long formed at the equilibrium points of the currents, and shimmered from the waves of silica that the winds still managed to move. Zenon had flattened herself against the door, horrified; Grey reclined on a pile of sand. The effect was mostly cosmetic, and vanishingly not - the decay was just hidden a bit better.

"This --- this is ---"

"I suppose your hidden histories would have not mentioned much of me. Or Nari. You just went through the rituals."

Every time Growth's name left his mouth Zenon flinched. It was a hidden word, a secret word, a reference to a quality that Lady Growth was not supposed to have, worse than the blasphemy that she already had to endure by uttering "Lord Grey." She could not take it any longer, and fled the room.

 

[Itari]

Nari walked around the sacred tree, one hand brushing against its trunk. Her attendants buzzed like flies around her, attempting to brush the patches of gray dust off of her skin and hair. The priests walked behind her, loudly complaining the entire way. The sacred tree looked just as it always did. Nari walked around its entire mile-long circumference but found nothing out of the ordinary. Despite the fact that Nari was dying, the tree looked healthier than ever. She stood in front of it, her hand laying flat against the gnarled bark, and suddenly understood what was happening to her.

It was laughable, really. She had given up everything for this planet. Her family, her humanity, her lover. Her freedom. After two millennia of sacrifices, it would reward her by pumping her full of poison, and then cutting her off like a weed.

"Lady Growth?"

"We really should return now. You have a very full schedule today."

"Clear my schedule for the rest of the day." Nari's hand slowly dropped back to her side.

"What? Lady Growth I don't thi-"

"I am dying." She walked through their stunned faces back towards her rooms. "I'm sure whatever you have planned for me can wait until after we discuss this matter."

 

[unanun]

Fall came and stayed.

Seasons on the planet followed the pattern of the great tree, where winter came when old stagnant growth was trimmed by the priests to make way for new beginnings. Spring came when green shoots peeked above the thick layer of snow, leading to a gentle melt that restored the planet-wide summer. The fall that arrived was unpredicted. It did not discriminate between old or strong growth, taking both crumbling and supple roots. It began as a black dot at the center of every leaf that spread, not like the gradual change from green to shades of red orange and yellow. The louder priests convinced the world that it was part of a super cycle of renewal.

War also came.

There was no time to do anything when the ships became visible. Even compared to the void of space they arrived in a flurry, descending in a swarm without objectives or ultimatums, simply destroying whatever they could get their hands on. Skeletons, robots, humans, soldiers emerged from the ships, some of them still wearing the mining insignias of the grey planet, which was mostly a lifeless rock compared to this one.

Grey watched all that happened from his hotel room. He had become part of the sand dunes shortly after he last saw Zenon, unable to maintain his form. When the chaos was unleashed a pair of crystalline eyes peaked from the piles of dirt, taking in the rising columns of smoke outside. Once he was able to have coherent thoughts again, he started to become worried when he could feel his skeleton sintering from the calcium dust.

Nari ...

I've done something I shouldn't have.

I've been fooled.

 

[Itari]

Nari emerged from the bath and her attendants immediately rushed forward to wrap her in a robe. The scar on her chest had turned completely brown by now and the rot had started to spread along her veins, turning the green vines on her chest and left shoulder a pale brown. She looked around her and frowned.

"Where's Zenon?"

-----

Grey stood in the center of the room buttoning up his shirt. He glanced at the clock as Zenon entered the room.

"You're early."

Zenon wrapped her hand around the object in her pocket, her palms slick with sweat. She stared at Grey, unblinking. It couldn't be him. Ever since Lady Growth's announcement, they had not let her out of their sight. Zenon had accompanied the couple on several dates over the last month. She saw the way he looked at her. Saw the way his eyes lit up every time he saw her. And yet, there was no denying that Lady Growth's illness started on the same day he arrived, and the longer he stayed, the sicker she became.

"Was it you?"

-----

Nari took a step forward and was suddenly overcome with dizziness. She stumbled forward. Peter immediately caught her arm and the others flocked closer around her.

"Lady Growth, are you alright?"

"Are you sure you're well enough to go out tonight?"

Nari nodded and straightened, but did not loosen her grip on Peter's arm.

"I'm fine."

-----

Grey looked down at the two bullet wounds in his stomach in shock. Zenon was still pointing the gun at him, hands shaking, looking as if she couldn't quite believe what she'd just done. A stream of dust poured out of the open holes. Gray stepped forward and Zenon once again prepared to shoot, but he reached her before she could. He grabbed both of her wrists and the two struggled against each other, the gun firing once into the ceiling. It didn't take long for Grey to overpower her. As he wrestled her to the ground, the gun slipped out of her fingers.

-----

Peter eased Nari into the seat in front of her vanity.

"Thank you, Peter."

He did his best to give her a reassuring smile, but Nari could see the worry in his face. In all of their faces. Peter stepped away and two attendants stepped forward to dry and brush her hair.

"Have you decided what you want to wear, Lady Growth?"

Nari opened her mouth to answer, but was instead overcome with a fit of coughing

-----

Grey and Zenon were both on the floor; Grey had managed to pin her onto the ground, one knee on her back, the other leg pinning one of her arms to her side. He held down her other wrist with his hand. In his free hand, he held the gun. The room was filled with the sound of Zenon gasping as she struggled to breathe under the weight of Grey's body. After what seemed like an eternity, Zenon appeared to give up and stopped struggling. Grey cautiously released some of the pressure.

He realized his mistake almost immediately. Zenon took the opportunity to unsheathe a knife hidden under her skirts and stabbed him in the thigh. The gun fired once as she attempted to throw the startled Grey off of herself.

-----

"La- -owth!"

"Someone - doct-!"

Her attendant's voices seemed to come from far away as Nari's body was wracked with coughs. She attempted to wave the people around her away to give her some more space, but couldn't even find the time to take a full breath. Finally she heaved up a mass of dark brown liquid and collapsed on the floor, unconscious.

-----


They stared at each other, wide eyed, neither quite believing what had just happened. Grey looked down at the gun in his hand and then back at Zenon. Zenon pressed one hand to her chest. Blood seeped out between her fingers. She opened her mouth to say something, coughed once, and fell forward onto the floor.

Grey stared at the body for several seconds, then laid down onto the dirt floor, one hand covering the wounds in his stomach. The other, covering his face.

----

As Nari's attendants tucked her into bed, the plants all across the planet began to change color. The summer had ended.

 

[unanun]

Grey nudged Zenon. She was desiccated, mummified by the sand and the fans in his room. Her cheeks were sunken, and her eyelids were brittle films atop tacky eyeballs. Under his command, waves of sand bore her to the center of the room and interred her in a mound.

Everything was crumbling around him, yet it was not catastrophic. The front line was far enough away that he could stand in front of the mirror in his hotel room, and brush away the iridescence from his suit. Sometimes, there was a flash on the horizon with its following echo, but when he stepped into the hotel lobby, business seemed to be just the same as ever. A rocket whined overhead, and several smaller ones darted up to intercept it. They combined into fireworks in the fire of dusk.

"Your total stay amounts to fifty thousand credits, Sir."

"... Excuse me?" Grey jolted upright from where he was leaning on the counter. There was a group of soldiers in the far corner of the lobby, in the one place where shadows were under the vaulted marble arches that still sprouted green vines.

"Unfortunately, we have to levy a wartime tax. I am told to convey to you that you should be thankful the priesthood is not seizing funds."

Grey considered opening his mouth, but reached into his pocket instead. He thought he had grabbed a dry leaf at first, his hand filling with pleasant humus, but then his fingers closed around the plastic card and he pulled it out with a shower of dirt. The vines that had wrapped around it were dead, and as he snapped them off they left their little suckers on the edge. They made swiping the card nearly impossible.

 

[Itari]

"This isn't what you said would happen!"

The meetings with her priests had been moved into Nari's bedroom. Nari sat in bed, propped up by a mass of pillows. Her normally bright skin now had a sickly yellow sheen to it and her thick curls were limp and lifeless. By now, the brown on her chest had nearly spread through her entire body along her green veins.

"You told us that even if you died the rest of the planet would be fine! Look at what's happening outside! The tree is dying! We're at war!"

"This is the fault of that man isn't it! Everything's gone wrong since that day he showed up in your rooms!"

Nari leaned back in her pillows and let their words wash over her. They had been shouting at her for months now, and despite all their demands for explanations, none of them really wanted to listen. They only wanted someone to blame, and alternated between herself, the missing Zenon, and Grey.

The planet was indeed dying. She hadn't anticipated the war, and both she and the sacred tree were greatly weakened because of it. It took all her strength now just to stave off a winter that would spell starvation. She knew Grey was somehow related to the invasion, though she suspected he had either been unwilling or oblivious.

"DEATH has sent us another missive asking for surrender."

"No! We can't agree to surrender. He will destroy our planet, the same way he destroyed his!"

"We could ask for help from the other planets then…"

"From who? Miracle and Disaster are constantly at war with each other, and the others are too jealous of our long time prosperity. They want to see us destroyed."

"That's enough." The priests stopped arguing with each other long enough to sneer at her.

"Do you finally have a solution, Lady Growth?"

She sighed heavily, "Start looking for a suitable replacement for me among the children aged eight to twelve."

The room was stunned into silence. In truth, she hadn't wanted to resort to this. She didn't want to let another suffer the same fate she had, but as long as the poison ran through her veins, she wouldn't be strong enough to defend the planet.

"Now leave. I'm tired." They finally shuffled out of the room, leaving her with blessed silence. She sunk deeper into her pillows.

"Lady Growth. There's been a charge on the credit card." Peter gently held a cup of water up to her lips. "Should we go find him?"

She shook her head. "He'll find me when he's ready."

 

[unanun]

It's not what it seems

"I can't help you anymore."

Grey and the officer were standing under an awning in the alleyway, and he was just reaching into his inner pocket to pull out the card.

"What do you mean? You've always-"

"Credits won't buy you anything, now. Batteries, cartridges, or food."

A heavy silence passed between them, and Grey sighed.

"I will let you go, but we can't meet each other again. The next time I see you, I have to take you in."

Grey was the first to leave. The snow everywhere absorbed all sounds, making it an ideal cover for their last conversation, but the crunch of it underneath his shoes was still deafening. He walked past many small cafes and shops, their windows frozen from the outside to the center. Some patrons huddled inside, next to the bakery oven that continued to churn out fresh loaves of bread. He managed to buy some food there. News traveled slower, these days.

The hotel was not a hotel anymore, part barracks and part shelter. Now that the front line was close, he had no problem finding lodging, and even got his old room, largely undisturbed and likely due to the implied effort of cleaning it up. Zenon was still there, under her mound of sand. The cold did not bother Grey as he sat on the window sill; in fact, the pale, frozen faces of everyone around him made it easier to blend in, and there was still plenty of distance between the current temperature and absolute zero.

He could see the front line from, artillery punctuated by boots in the hallway and the crackle of long range radios. The trails of smoke and rocket flares didn't arc high into the sky now, but drilled straight between buildings and along roads, making the killing personal. If he squinted, he thought he saw a detachment engaged just a few hundred paces away, laying down covering fire while retreating.

"It's probably time for me to go."

He swung his legs to the floor.

"You're probably right."

Zenon's skull peaked from her funeral mound, brilliant white. Grey pulled on a thick parka. He did not need it, but these days more than ever, appearances mattered.

"I've been avoiding it."

His face was crystalline in the mirror, faceted and iridescent.

"Of course I was afraid! I didn't want to die! That's why I ran away."

"I came back after I felt better," he shot back, as if that justified everything before.

Zenon's judgement was unwavering.

"Just because you chose to die for something, doesn't mean that we all have make that same choice."

He strode for the door and walked between the atoms. It dissolved into the air shortly after he passed, and he doubled back to snatch her skull.

I'm on my way

Just outside the citadel, Grey was in a food line. The private dumped a potato in his hands, wrapped in newspaper. It was split down the middle with a wad of butter, the skin sloughing off, and it spit out the opposite site when Grey bit into it, oblivious to the scalding steam.

Grey sat with other refugees and finished his ration. He licked his fingers and wiped them off with the scrap paper, replacing grease with dirt and ink. The citadel exclusion zone might have been the last safe place on the planet, but as long as the tree inside it lived, if it just had one green leaf or green skin under the bark, it was mighty enough to keep DEATH at bay. Small and steady streams of arms and soldiers kept issuing forth from its depths, bringing DEATH into a war of attrition that seemed to fill even his bottomless appetite.

Grey turned his attention to one of these checkpoints, disgorging a platoon of priests. There was no way to enter, not with the guards. He tried anyways, when the doorway was empty for a moment.

"Identification?"

"I want to make a prayer."

"There are shrines and altars set outside."

"I can make a substantial donation ... Supplies, maps of troop movements. It's in my backpack," where Zenon's skull rattled in the canvas bag.

"Move along. You can try again tonight, with the night shift. The gate's too busy now."

 

[Itari]

"Let him in."

Peter stood just beyond the gate. The guard turned and after some hesitation, stepped aside and allowed Grey to pass.

Nari was waiting for him in a small private room behind the tree. She sat in a wheel chair, her thin frame engulfed in a blanket. Despite her poor health, her eyes lit up when Grey entered the room. She reached out to him and Grey gently took her hand and knelt in front of her.

"You look well."

"Is this... I see."

She handed the skull to Peter. "Peter, see to it that Zenon has a proper burial." He took the skull but made no move to leave the room. "Now, please. There's nothing to worry about. I'm not going to drop down dead just from being in the same room as him."

As soon as the door closed behind him, Nari reached her arms out and Grey leaned in for a hug. They stayed there, until finally Nari spoke. "I'm going to die tomorrow, Grey." Her voice was barely a whisper. "They're going to do the selection ritual."

"Will you take me somewhere?"

"There's a corner on a street..."