Neon Vespers Rising

They erupted from the alleys like sparks fleeing a struck flint, orbiting the yellow van crowned with speakers and dusted with longing. Neon words bled from the brick facades—Coffee, Monster, Duikers—as though the city itself whispered incantations to keep the night suspended mid-breath. The air shimmered with floating glyphs, arcs of phantom blue, while a slice of pizza sailed calmly above the fray as though gravity had agreed to pause the argument. Around open pizza boxes where the plea—*Where’s Vojta?*—lay scrawled, their restless ballet continued: chrome-visored figures lunged, a rider poised on a crimson motorcycle braced for some unseen cue, and pink-suited dreamers pirouetted through projected circles of light. It felt almost sacred, this chaos, a ritual to hold memory in place while time lurked beyond the mist. They chant with their bodies, every leap and lunge spelling absence brighter than the neon burn. And still, even now, Vojta does not answer.