You can always find them patrolling the streets late at night when the lampposts blossom into neon trees and flowers glitch their way through the scrolling adverts in every shop window. By 3AM the entire city becomes a virtual forest, barely recognisable yet familiar enough to not get lost in.
Like any forest it has its own ecosystem, a plethora of impossible creatures and regular animals in improper places like the whales that flitter through the treetops and the android manticore. Of course it has its guardians - the barely-human "Hikers" who always wear thick winter raincoats with the hoods pulled as far forward as they'll go.
It doesn't stop the harsh blue glow of their faces from illuminating their way and doesn't make them any less frightening to encounter, not that they've been encountered often. Most folk will do just about anything to stay out of the Hiker's way while trying to navigate their way back home.
The few who've survived their chance meetings all claim that the Hiker's faces are different - a flaming skull to one person, a dead child from the news to another, even a recently discovered relative to one confused individual.
In spire of this, at least everyone can agree on one thing - don't go into the woods at night.
Like any forest it has its own ecosystem, a plethora of impossible creatures and regular animals in improper places like the whales that flitter through the treetops and the android manticore. Of course it has its guardians - the barely-human "Hikers" who always wear thick winter raincoats with the hoods pulled as far forward as they'll go.
It doesn't stop the harsh blue glow of their faces from illuminating their way and doesn't make them any less frightening to encounter, not that they've been encountered often. Most folk will do just about anything to stay out of the Hiker's way while trying to navigate their way back home.
The few who've survived their chance meetings all claim that the Hiker's faces are different - a flaming skull to one person, a dead child from the news to another, even a recently discovered relative to one confused individual.
In spire of this, at least everyone can agree on one thing - don't go into the woods at night.
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