Light footsteps splash into a shallow puddle, remnants of an earlier rainfall. Light reflects and travels across the rough, uneven pavement within each droplet. Orange, from the streetlights above, placed against a dark night backdrop, a surreal type of dark blue which looks just a bit too perfect - your favourite shade, but at a time of night it shouldn't be able to appear. Everything looks a little hazy here. The edges of your peripheral vision are blurred, or darkened, covered with a thin foil to stop you from seeing the full image.
That's how it always has been in this city. Since you arrived, yes, but even before that. You saw it, in the memories of someone, from sometime. Leftover memories, clinging to what you can only assume are places, maybe items (you haven't quite deduced the details yet) which must have meant something to the previous owners.
Yet all memories you've found (been thrown into? ... stole?) before were different. Always sharp, precise, sharpened to the point of driving you to madness over the details when you first started seeing them. You had never before noticed an individual eyelash of anyone, or heard so clearly blades of grass run across each other, scratching right beside your ear. It took you a few years to be able to, well, zoom out.
But not here - here they're just like your vision now. With corners darkened, sometimes the dim seeping onto the rest of the image. They feel lethargic. When you try to move within them, occasionally the image spins, drunk, and leaves you dizzy. Though once you had to pull yourself away, now you fight to focus.
Nowhere else, only here.
You shake your head to clear your thoughts. That's a mystery for another day.
Continue walking