Ajani - Tracks scent over city

He closed his eyes and breathed.

The air was a cacophony. He concentrated, tuning out the spices, the metals, the worried crowds, the omnipresent lightning-crack scent of aether-fumes that swirled through the city.

There.

Just a whisper from the street below; summer fruits, roses, hyacinth, and honey. The distinctive attar Grandmother wore. Nearly impossible to find anymore, she'd told him, with stubborn pride. Even fainter, the machine oil and hot brass of the mechanical bird that perched on her shoulder piece to sing coded messages.

The back alley was clear, for the moment. No telling how long it would stay that way. He vaulted the rail, letting the air catch in Grandmother's cloak, and rolled the landing.

The whisper-scent led toward the lowering sun. He moved quickly along the winding streets, nostrils flaring at every breath, doves and tailorbirds fluttering at his passage.

It was a different kind of jungle, but he was a tracker.

***

The Dhund was filled with unpleasant scents. Heavy old sweat, cloying urine, too many people confined in too small a space. It reeked of despair and the disappeared. Of teeth in the dark.

There. Faintly, from a tunnel to the left. Summer fruits, roses, hyacinth, and honey.

He hurtled through the tunnels, chasing the scent of her sun-drenched parlor, slipping around pockets of footsteps and muttering.

***

RELEASE