Chapter XVIII - Apricot hills

So odd the taste of apricots again after all this time. And afterwards I swear everything was tinged with their essence. The hills not just burnt but soft and apricotty! Really it was very similar to being drunk or in love or maybe just very very sad.
Wandering in this stupor I almost didn't notice a slight change in the flows. A shifting in the aethers as if something in the sky above me became aware of my presence. Very faint yet distinctly there and quite focused somehow.
Anyway that's what it felt like for just a second or two when I finally departed from my odd and rather fruity imaginings. I say a second but maybe it was actually even less. As soon as it(?) registered my attention it disappeared, vanished, evaporated.
Who knows, maybe it's just an affliction that ails all lonely wanderers in these forsaken lands ?

Chapter XVII - On foreign shores

Going around the car I tried the frontdoor and after a pull a push and a kick it did allow itself to be opened.
The seats were quite dry if a bit hard, another sign of this particular cars old age. But there is something about just sitting quietly in a car. It is as if you get to experience the eccoes of its many short trips mixed up with a few longer journeys.
In the glove compartment I found some stale apricot shortbread and an old travel brochure with flamboyant pictures of sunsets on foreign shores. Quite romantic and very much an illusion to which no one will fall prey, at least not unknowingly. Well maybe that too worked better years ago when the car was still new.