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Prompt 9 (Illuminating Conversation): This time of year there are lights hanging everywhere. They come in different colors, different styles, different patterns of illumination. You might not remember when it started, but when you looked at a display, you noticed the lights seemed to be flashing in a specific pattern. When you look away, you might be able to see out of the corner of your eye that they return to normal--but any time you look at them, they repeat the same unique sequence. It’s not just one light, either; almost everywhere you go you can find some light repeating the pattern. Is something trying to send you a message? Could it be Morse Code, or something else? A coincidence? Either way, you can’t seem to decipher the message and it’s getting to you. Especially because no one else seems to notice it.
The lights were everywhere.
Most of the time, Zachariah couldn't stand ostentatious displays of holiday seasonality, but he would give it to the light displays, at least; if anything, they had a way of keeping every walking path well lit, and people were oft so distracted by them that they gathered closer to the buildings and made it easier for him to weave his way through the outdoor shopping center. Might have made his attempts to get his groceries and leave a bit faster--
Well.
Normally they would have.
Today, Zachariah was getting intensely distracted by the light display in front of the pizza place he had no interest in going into. Today, he found himself looking toward it and swearing that whatever blinking it was doing was rhymthic and not in the way he might have expected that automated lights would have. It would blink quickly, then slowly, then in a pattern he swore might have resembled music, but not the music he heard around him, so it wasn't synced up to that, either. Perhaps it was just a particularly poor engineering job, but it didn't seem like anyone else was paying particular attention to the dissonance. Maybe he was just hyperaware of it. Training and all.
Easy enough for him to attempt to excuse as he went into the nearby big box store to pick up his groceries. Easy enough for him to attempt to excuse as he checked out, as he stepped back outside, as he attempted to walk in the opposite direction so he could head for the bus stop--
But then he caught the lights in the corner of his eye.
Zachariah supposed he couldn't leave well enough alone, found himself groaning and turning more fully toward it to see if the blinking had at least been corrected, found himself alarmed when he realized that the pattern he had seen before somehow had seemed to start over.
The ******** pinched the bridge of his nose, turned away, attempted to tell himself it was just a light display, and he didn't care about light displays.
Turned back toward it just to test a theory.
It had started over, again, the same rapid blink pattern swapping to the slow pattern swapping to the one that felt like it might have been music but still didn't sync up with any of the music that was going throughout the plaza. And still, no one was reacting to it, and maybe he was hyperaware of it now to the point of paranoia but was it trying to tell him something? Was it a ******** message? For him?
Zachariah couldn't help a snort.
For him. Unlikely. Maybe if he was powered up as Sailor Hydor. Few people cared about Zachariah Faulkner, and even fewer people made the connection between Zachariah Faulkner and the powered Sailor Hydor. Most of those who might have no longer lived there, or at least, fell out of contact again -- maybe it was a message from one of them?
That felt even more doubtful.
There was no point in obsessing, and he told himself again that there was no way something was communicating to him. Something he was hyperaware of. Something that didn't matter for his life. Something he had no chance of interpreting anyway, even if it did matter. Something that was probably the result of another one of Destiny City's frustrating and absolutely common cursed winter events.
... Yeah, that seemed right.
He held the bags he held closer to his body as he resolutely stormed off and decided he wasn't looking at those ******** lights any longer.
