Once in a while, it’s a good idea to just lie down on the soft grass and look straight up at the clear, reassuring firmament.
If there’s one thing that’s distinguished city folk from country folk for hundreds of years, it’s the fact that every other person in the City is a vampire, and you’ve been left out of the club for years; every single one of your neighbors has spent approximately 25% of their waking hours (and your neighbors maintain such a deep facade that you probably think they sleep at night, in beds,instead of during the day, in coffins infused with at least one shovelful of dirt from their original gravesites in Austria-Hungary)–
–yeah, approximately 25% of their waking hours, maybe more like 35%, thinking of nothing but your neck. That’s if there was only one thing, and admittedly, that would be a bit disconcerting; but honestly, there are two. Really, the fact that, back home, you are secretly but utterly surrounded by the living dead is frankly trivial. Don’t worry about it at all. It’s unimportant; in fact, you might as well just forget it. You’re almost certainly going to be dragged off by Goblins before tonight is done anyway, so there’s no serious concern about the bloodsuckers who await you when you return to your everyday life.
At any rate, the other thing is, of course, the unbelievably clear night sky. There’s so much less light pollution here, so much less neon. There are fewer stores, too, except, obviously, for the kind which pop up like giant mushrooms, sell you things that don’t exist, and then return once again to the peculiar and unnamed places which spawn their uncanny ilk.
Yes, the real pleasure of the countryside, especially a place as beautiful as the Catskills, is the evening sky.
There’s nothing quite like the night sky over the Blackthorne. Just look at all of those pinpricks of glow against the inky curtain of eventide’s dark. How distant they are, and yet, how close they seem, as if, even from thousands or millions of light-years away, they were inching towards you, or perhaps you are inching towards them, being pulled up, away from the Earth, getting lighter and lighter as normal gravity reluctantly but helplessly releases its grip into forces no normal being could ever understand, pulling you into the spiralling constellations, so like hundreds and hundreds of teeth in a maw that spans the entire endless, hungry galaxy. What a marvelous morsel you are; how delicious your frail human body in gnashing jaws of the starlight!
With any luck, you’re dreaming, and you’ll be fine. If not, we hope you’ve enjoyed your tour, and that we were able to bring a little bit of happiness to your final few minutes on, or, indeed, anywhere near, the Earth.
