Lovely start! I like where this is going. I'll keep my eye on it.

wow beautifully written! Can't wait to see what comes next.

The way you set this up is masterful & the chapter is filled with the sort of scrumptious details and sentences I've come to expect from you. The opening of the story and its last sentence create such a strong sense of place and mood. I love the pigeons and the matches and the symbolism.

This:

The heels of her shoes click against the steam grate outside the bar, startling into flight the pigeons that have gathered on the grille to escape the predawn cold. The sky is black, except for a thin sulfurous haze above the skyline where the moon has just set, and she watches the motion of their wings against that ghostly backdrop. She watches them for a while, her breath smoking and vanishing before her in the cold air of that western night. When they have finally gone, she turns up the collar of her coat and opens the door to the bar.

He is sitting at the corner of the bar with a book of speckleheaded matches when she gets inside, and she can see that he is already drunk. He is tearing the matches out one by one and lighting them and watching them burn before he blows them out. The countertop around his elbows is a wickerwork of blackened matchsticks.

And at the end, that spiraling leaf. And "They make tribal patterns against the tiles."

And so much more.

very sad fic

good work!

hope you update soon

Wow! You do dark very well..

Matches as a metaphor for human lives...I like the symbolism

It's only just started, but I can see the blackness beckoning... :)

I do not have low standards! I resemble...uh, *resent* that remark! :)

I love the way you write, the pictures you make with words. The dream-sequence at the end in particular was amazing, and upsetting.