local time: 30 october 2022. noon. location: city center. leoran market.
While enjoying the festivities of the Food & Wine Festival, you begin to notice a distinctive change in your vision. Colors begin to gently shift and blur until you perceive the world in painted brushstrokes. You have been dosed with a large amount of the Collective drug Dorian.
Before the Collective, Roz might’ve avoided an event like this one. It isn’t the crowd, although it’s sometimes a shock to the system after their normally quiet days. It’s the way anything remotely alcoholic makes their own community look at them like they’re a child—it isn’t lost on them that it was easier to steal drinks when they were a child, and it was just school kids playing at adulthood. Their friends from back then grew into something new, though, and Roz didn’t.
But like so many things now, the promise of learning more about the other worlds beyond their own calls them to the first annual festival each weekend. They like the name too: first, like the council plans to do this each year, like Leora will continue to evolve around them. Roz is happy enough to focus on the stalls run by members of the Collective today, sampling from plates of unfamiliar foods and drinks.
Their cell phone translator can’t keep up with the background noise and the side conversations, of course, leaving them lost half of the time. Last week, Roz remembers the frustration over that. Today, the distance makes the event feel almost dreamlike.
It’s hard to feel bad, anyway, as they find themself a seat on a nearby bench, watching people from varying planets walk past. The slight breeze is warm as it blows past, causing the florals and greenery around them to rustle and shimmer slightly in the sunlight. Despite their fascination with the Collective and what they bring, Roz will never deny their love for their home planet. Leora is beautiful.
They trace the path of the breeze through the plants around them, eventually finding themself staring at the swirls of warm green, vivid yellow, and golden brown in a nearby tree. It stretches up tall above the market, nature intertwined with community in typical Leoran fashion. Roz watches a single point on the bark long enough that the edges of their vision go soft and indistinct.
That doesn’t go away when Roz blinks, though. Nor does it go away when they reorient themself to the bench and their body, the slightly sweetened drink in their hands that was supposed to be some kind of juice. Even that looks softer, with the pale colors of the drink, the translucent glass, and their own hand holding it all melting together.
If they’d noticed it sooner, before the sensation settled in, maybe they would’ve been concerned. Instead, it’s fascinating—from the well-worn patterns on the soles of their shoes to the composition of blues in the sky above them, the shift in their vision grows more evident as the moments tick by.
Their cell phone is, for once, forgotten by their side. Roz still catches the announcement when it comes though, particularly as it echoes throughout tablets and phones throughout the festival. The word Dorian gives them language for what they’re seeing, although there doesn’t seem to be an explanation yet for why someone did this. Roz trusts the council, though. Anyway, the quiet calm they feel and the unique perspective of the world Dorian’s brought them don’t feel threatening. They’ve already found a comfortable spot on the bench, so Roz sits back, tilts their head up to the sky, and enjoys the view.
