Her nails are bitten and square, thin cuts over thick calluses which have been routinely picked at idly when sitting, splayed, on the rug that laid on the floor of the Green Room, resting against the side of the bed while watching the clock wind its second hand around and around until minutes were seconds and seconds were hours and hours would be milliseconds and nothing mattered anymore. She doesn't sleep at night, just stares at the fire that burns electrically and remembers nights spent in forest, spending hours trying to produce a spark, to no avail.

There are things, she decides, not worth thinking about.

(She dreams of reds and oranges and yellows and they are falling falling falling all around her)

(Every Waking Moment)
they are dreaming

i.

When she tends to their wounds, she smiles. When she waters her plants, she smiles. When she looks into the mirror every morning, she smiles.

It is a mechanism now, lips twisting upwards and they believe her, because there isn't a reason in the world that she shouldn't be unhappy, they think. It is presumptuous and naïve that they think this, for nobody is ever happy in Traverse Town. The stars burn out, one by one, and she gazes upwards with a smile and thinks about flashes of blonde hair and faint smiles and when she sleeps she dreams of water, enveloping her and drowning her.

That's not right, she thinks, and her eyebrow does not furrow, her lips do not curve downwards and she dreams and thinks and lives some more.

I was already dead.

She is smiling and her flowers are wilting away in the shadows.

ii.

The only beverage he touches is beer. He reeks of it, sits slumped against a post in the First District, listening to the tinkering going on in the Accessory Shop and he stares down at the ground and tries to not think not blink not breath not drink and fails dismally as he raises the can up to his lips once more.

He does not sleep in the hotel, does not lie on the starched sheets and matching colors. Instead, he takes to the abandoned room in the Third District and listens to the scrabbling of the Heartless outside his door, lifting a cigarette to his lips and lighting it. She used to say it would be the death of him, and instead she is dead and he is still smoking, hoping to join her.

He hates the hotel for another reason.

The smell of tea manages to break him.

iii.

Before slipping underneath the sheets, he has a system. Ten wipes downward on his blade, five upwards, shoes lined by the door, laces tied and tucked under the tongue of his shoe. The door is locked, the fire set aflame, wood lined neatly in a row of three. The chairs are pushed in, cups all turned to face in the same direction, the teapot emptied into the alleyway. It was filled with liqueur anyways. The blinds are turned to a 32 degree angle against the windowpane so he will not look out and they will not look in.

He slides underneath the sheets and faces the wall, shoulders lined up rigidly and hair tied back and he knows that she does not sleep but does not say a word.

There is a picture that lies facedown under his pillow.

She finds it one day after turning the room upside down in her anger but does not ask.

They are content with their ignorance.

iv.

In Traverse Town, the moon never sets and the sun never rises and the stars are always out, burning brightly until they're gone. There is no day, and thus there is no night, but the city never sleeps and is always dreaming, like its inhabitants, of a day that the sun will rise again.