Orfea stares at the creature sitting across from her, sipping a cocktail in psychedelic hues. Around them is a superb view of Luohu, incandescent now that dusk has come and gone: charcoal sky and illuminated buildings making a cosmos of their own, a high-rise glazed by undulating jellyfishes, another where eight-limbed mermaids sleet across windows. Neon roses drip from roofs and tumble into the canals where they bloom, short-lived, in nebulae.
