Ecliptic

The fog cleared out and the brushing trees stopped, the night park black and green. There you were, in the white t-shirt, passing into the shadow of a maintenance shed, the smell of dirt from the door. On your neck was a chain, cheap silver, bought down by the hole in the seawall, the man in the African shirt. For a moment you'd gone, until you passed back out from the shadow of the shed. Yes, you smiled, but a thing had changed, the line of your jaw, the white and brittle. You'd swallowed something in the passage, dark and of the earth.