Jane looked up from her newspaper, and was immediately met by the sun. It's orange glare bore on her from the far west, past the tips of the skyscrapers, through the bustling crowrd and in front of her, and directly into her retinas.
Just her luck. Of course, the day she lost her sunglasses would be the day the sun decided to wage war upon the internals of her eyes.
She really wished she hadn't left the train station in such a hurry. She'd been convinced that she was running late, and had made her fair share of sacrifices to show up at 6pm on the dot.
Not that it'd done her much good, given that it was 6:30 and the asshole still hadn't shown his face.
Who the hell even was that guy? He shows up at her job, DEMANDS to see her, shoves 50 quid in her hands, and says to meet him at the dock for a "new beginning". What that was supposed to mean was a mystery to Jane, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do.
At some point in her train of thought, her subconcious had decided to look away from the sun. This was all in all probably a good idea, but left her feeling very disoriented when she snapped back to reality.
This disorientation was not helped by the fact that, standing in front of her, was the "new beginnings" guy.
"Jesus!" she said, more out of instinct than anything.
"Apologies, but I am not He." the mystery man replied.
"No, I didn't- whatever."
Jane was confused.
"But then, what did you?"
And this wasn't helping.
"Dude, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I could ask the very same riddle of you, my good friend! You claim you did not, but how can you not if you don't even know what you did?"
"Can you just... stop?"
"As you wish!"
At least he knew how to shut up.
"So, you wanna tell me what's going on?"
"Nothing at all!"
"That's... not helpful. What was that 'new beginning' stuff about, then?"
"Please, focus on me, and all will become clear."
Jane focused on the guy. She'd *looked* at him before, sure, but this was the first time she'd truly *examined* him.
The first thing she noticed was the distinct aura of "washed-out"ness about him. All the colours of his body looked slightly too wrong, slightly too pale.
Which was a shame, because they seemed to be otherwise rather nice colours.
He wore a light green trenchcoat, decorated with a rainbow trim around the chest and wrist areas.
Beneath it, peeking out from between the buttons, was a light yellow shirt. Jane couldn't make out very much more detail, but she was sure the author would eventually get around to it.
His face could be described as nothing but jolly. A grin stretched from ear to ear, sitting on a rich auburn beard, shaded by the vast curly locks resting on his forehead and down to his ears.
This didn't clear anything up at all.
"Okay, that didn'-"
Jane was cut off mid sentence. While she'd been focusing on him, everything around the pair had changed.
No longer was she sitting on a bench, but a tree branch. The flood of people in front of her had been replaced by a river, glimmering a beautiful cerulean. And, instead of concrete skyscrapers, the horizon was held up by the parapets of a town, visible in the distance.
The sun was still shining in her eyes.