The sun glistens at an angle on the surface of the water, making me squint and pull the sun glasses from my head over my eyes, even though it’s currently in the process of setting. I shiver a little and press my paws into my pockets as the wind picks up the coolness of the water and forces it back into my bare blue-grey furred chest. The entire promenade looking a little angrier than normal as the vast areas of water are troubled by the brisk breeze. Even still I head detrimened to a dollar store at the far end of the shopping pier. In this moment I’m dropped into, I can’t even remember why I’m headed there in such a hurry.

Oh, hi! I should explain that this whole event happened about two, maybe three years ago. It all took place in a dream I had, with all of my dreams tending to take place either in my reality, or, this reality that I have invented. Not just a reality, but, a city with people, places, sights, sounds and scents that only exist here. Perhaps a convergences of my memories and experiences and hopes and dreams; or, perhaps more tantalizingly, none of those things and a complete world living in my brain.

This promenade/pier is something I think unique to this world. My city, this city is run though its heart by a wide and slow moving river. At some point in its history it had docks and boats all up and down its banks. Now, however, the most you are likely to see are pleasure craft in the Summer. It’s also flanked on one side by the ocean and, in this way, it’s not at all unlike my home city of Saint John; but, it is several orders of magnitude larger.

Along one part of the river, a levy was built, cutting into the bank and extended into the river, rising a foot or two from the surface of the water. On top, a piece of glass proceeds up another couple of feet into a handrail across this vast new man-made plain. Next, shops and stores and the lower half of a mall were built inside the levy, with wide areas of it flooded with a couple of inches of water.

In the summer, children come and splash around in the shallow ponds, and on a calm day you feel as if you are standing in the middle of a calm river of glass. It’s an unnerving effect, especially if the actual river is as rough as the wind is making it tonight, and especially at night. It’s a feeling I shrug off as I press into a door covered in stickers for credit card companies and enter the dollar store. Ah, I was looking for batteries, that was it.