If you haven’t already noticed, the lights have gone up and the bartender is calling “last call” to make you get the message, as if the ambiance change was not indication enough.

“Last call! Last call!”

Someone nudges you and you look down at the resident drunk, Louie. “Hey man, can you buy me a drink, I’ll pay you back nex–“

“Last call!”

You don’t listen to Louie; nobody ever does because he never remembers that he had promised to pay you back. So you shrug into your denim jacket to ward off the spring chill that creeps back every evening after nightfall at the end of March. The end of April will be another story, with its promise of summer, but now it is March and those winds still blow cold.

“Last call!”

Yeah yeah yeah, you mutter under your breath, Last call. Meanwhile, Louie tries to bum a whiskey from someone still lingering at the bar. They don’t even pretend to hear he pleas.

You shoulder open the heavy steel door and slip into the night, a cigarette already at your lips and the smell of lighter fluid creeping into your nostrils as you spin the wheel of your Zippo, have it catch fire, your own personal campfire held in your hands as you light your cigarette. You catch a glimpse in the still open door of one of the wait staff… Jessica, you think. She’s new, and you think that’s her name… starts putting the bar stools on the empty tables while Monika turns off the neon signs selling Miller and Bud Lite.

And off into the night you go, unsurprised to see flurries dancing in the streetlights as you make your way out to your car.

---

Ravensweald is up live and running. It is my new site — a bit of a reset on how I approach my online presence. Much of what you see there will seem familiar, only with a shiny new coat of paint. But there are a lot of things planned for that engine under the hood.

While I plan to finish the cooperative read of “Out” posts here for the purposes of continuity, most of my writing will go to the new site. Sometime this autumn, the lights will go out here and the site will likely become archived and revert back to the original name on WordPress.com, walksinshadows.wordpress.com.

While I would love it for people who follow sceadugenga to migrate over to ravensweald, I fully understand it if you elect not to. I appreciate your past readership all the same, whether you come along or whether you stay away.

All the best.