The mountain air was still damp from last night’s rain, a faint smell of pine and wet earth clinging to Sebastian’s clothes as he followed the dirt path downhill. He wasn’t sure what had pulled him this far—curiosity, maybe boredom—but his boots crunched the gravel anyway, carrying him past fences he hadn’t paid much attention to before. The farmer’s place. He’d seen it from a distance plenty of times, rows of crops breaking up the valley’s green, but up close it looked… almost deliberate. Orderly in a way the rest of Pelican Town never really managed to be. The farmhouse door was open. Careless, he thought, though the music filtering faintly out explained why. Some low, steady beat—nothing like Pierre’s upbeat festival tunes, nothing the valley usually had to offer. It was… closer to his own taste.

He hesitated at the threshold. Inside, sunlight caught on curls of cigarette smoke and stretched shadows over the half-finished mural that dominated the far wall. Daedalus, wings spread, sketched in careful strokes. Icarus, falling, his feathers scattered like ash. Sebastian’s chest tightened in recognition. He knew the story. He knew the feeling too—reaching for something better, burning out before you even touched it. He leaned against the frame, taking in the scene: the farmer crouched close to the wall, brush balanced between their fingers, earbuds in, completely unaware of being watched. Freckles dotted their face, and paint streaked across their wrists like careless tattoos. For once, Sebastian didn’t feel like the one hiding in the basement. This time, he was the one standing in the doorway, looking in.

He cleared his throat, voice rougher than he meant it to be. “...Was this door meant to be open?”