## Emil POV Sol and Leslie brought our manager back from rival turf, after an angry phone call from *you know who* informed us of the scene she caused at their establishment. Aurelian appeared to be in worse shape than me, if such a state was even possible. We sat on the sidelines as the others caught each other up and argued over how to proceed. The dream fume was thickening again; Sol ventured out by himself to negotiate with Pris, and I was about to head back into the break room with Aurelian, when a somewhat familiar-looking scarecrow demon emerged from behind Sol and charged toward the open kitchen door. Leslie rushed to the door, but breathed in a large puff of dream fume as he strained to close it. Suddenly, all the surfaces within the kitchen and the hallway were covered by fractal visions of what appeared to be Leslie’s memory: him as an infant, being doted on by his parents; him as a child, performing in front of a judgmental crowd; him as a teenager, being bullied in school… I smiled to myself and shook my head. Somehow, as a devil, he had had a more stereotypically human upbringing than I did. Embarrassed beyond the threshold of his usual put-togetherness, he questioned us sharply on why we were still lingering in the kitchen. I mumbled my halfhearted excuses while peering into a cluster of the earliest memory: his parents playing with him, laughing, raising him into the air, making airplane noises. I… I had that, too. Once. A long long time ago. My father had a naturally stern face, but he was almost always smiling when he was with me. He would tell me about hunting in the forest with his father when he was a child, and the tales of the thousand lakes in his homeland; or, on a completely different note, Formula One—not the media conglomerate of today, but a niche sport in its infancy—the masterful driving of Fangio, Ascari, and their peers. My father was always doing something with his hands as he talked with that monotonous yet earnest voice of his: mending a tear in a jacket, or tearing cloth into bandages, or taking apart a gun, cleaning and oiling the parts, before putting it back together. He had a habit of wiping his hand on his pants, regardless of whether his hand was dirty or not, before lightly stroking my hair. My mother was beautiful, or so people said. Beautiful and perpetually melancholic. I would catch her staring out the window at the drifting clouds. She would only notice me after a short while had passed, turning to me with a startled motion, before relaxing her shoulders and smiling at me a little sadly, saying, *Sorry, Mama was just… thinking. Do you need anything, love?* The makeup at the corners of her eyes were nearly always smudged. Sometimes she would gather me into her lap and produce a map of the area from a nearby cabinet. She would take my hand and guide my pointer finger through the roads and alleyways, how they intersect and extend, the notable landmarks along the way, to downtown Leningrad, where the Morosov family lived… I had spent a lot of time with the Morosovs. Every time my parents felt that it was unsafe for me to be with them, they’d send me on my way over, with a few coins to pay the tram fee. It was a long, long walk to the nearest station, but once I got on, it wouldn’t feel so cold. Besides, I knew a warm welcome was waiting for me once I got there. Dr. Morosov, who had the gentlest eyes I had ever seen on a man, would probably be reading a book of poetry in a reclining chair by his stacked bookshelves, sipping hot tea from a porcelain cup; Mrs. Morosov—or Iris, as she preferred—would likely be at the dining table, cutting out newspaper clippings for her collection; and of course, *he* would be there, too. Always the one to open the door and drag me inside by my hand, into that narrow, old apartment with a vast, vast warmth— —How fast it all went away. I settled down on the couch in the break room with Aurelian beside me, and we finally had some time to catch up. He said something along the lines of, *I think that person you know—Dmitriy, is it?—yeah, he probably hates me now.* And I laughed and replied, *guess we are in this together, brother.* I looked at them, their tired look with a hint of self-mockery, the yellow lamplight falling on their skin and reflected in their downcast eyes; and then I realized, *it’s warm in here, too.*