01 / On a Clear Day

The sun rose into a grateful May-blue sky. Hills stretched left and right like exposed vertebrae. Fields dropped away to the endless horizon, a patchwork mass of greens, golds, and browns. It was a glorious morning.

Alex’s eyes flickered and began to open, but the bright sunlight made him think again. His back hurt, his head hurt, the light hurt his retinas, even through his eyelids. He could feel the end of each individual strand of his hair. Every single lock hurt. The slightest movement made him feel like he was going to retch, so he didn’t move a millimetre. His eyelids stayed clamped shut. He didn’t feel comfortable at all. He couldn’t remember falling asleep.

“Where am I?” he thought.

It took him a moment to remember that the last time he’d been conscious he was four days into a binge at a traveller festival, a huge rave with twenty soundsystems and twenty-five thousand freaks, mutants and weirdos, all watched from afar by hundreds of confused and pissed-off policemen. He’d danced and danced and danced and taken far too many drugs. He wondered if he was still there or if someone had taken him home. He wondered where he could have found somewhere to sleep for what felt like hours. He wondered if opening his eyes might be possible, slowly forced them open a crack and looked around.

The ground was twenty feet below him.

His legs straddled a thick, flat branch and his back nestled against the trunk of a big, old oak about a mile from the main party site. He instinctively tensed and clutched the tree beneath him.

“How the fuck did I get up here?” he muttered.

“And more importantly, what are you doing wearing all me clothes?” a female voice chuckled from above him. He craned upwards, eyes now fully open, blinking in the sun. Less than an arm’s reach away a cracked but golden smile beamed at him, attached to a woman who was laid on a branch even thinner than his. “And how the fuck did you get me up here?” she continued, cackling to herself.

Alex shook his head and nearly fell. “I have absolutely no idea what is going on,” he croaked, “Who are you?”

“My name’s Song,” she said, unruffled by their distance from the green grass below. She saw his look and continued. “Yes, you heard me right, ‘Song’. And yes, I do have a sister called Dance, she’s my twin actually, and yes our parents were all fucked up on little, blue pills at the time…but you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you wearing all me clothes?”...