It's early. Morning.

And the sky's still that terrible shade of blue. The color of laundry water and cheap bleach that the old gods above spilled across the horizon because they're a bunch of assholes. There's probably a scientific reason trapped in a book. Placed on shelves somewhere, along with song lyrics, poems and stories professing love to the open sky. 'For what else does one see when they look upwards?' the former stationmaster once said to him. 'It will always be there. Even the stars burn out. Even the world ends. It will still be there! Even the color. Get used to it, you arrogant dumbfuck.' But Mug Shot stubbornly wants to hear the answer from the old bastards in person.

Everything below the sky becomes tinged with that disgusting hue and Mug Shot has a moment of weakness. He reminisces like an old fool. When he first got this job, about five years ago, he swore up and down he'd never work mornings. Vowed while whispering in the ear of his then-fling that he would never stay in one place either.

All that vigor and promise he had... Who would of guessed that he would be such a liar today?

The daydreaming fool blows out a wisp of air. The warm mist passes through the glass of his booth where he's been sitting for the last thirty minutes. It leaves a wet foggy mess on the cracked window. Certainty, that wanderlust fool of his youth should be envious of what he has now. Maybe? His memories of the old days are too faint to make much of a difference anymore.

Mug Shot can smell the looming winter approaching Cinder Rock city. The chill lingers, kisses his white coat and decorates it with goosebumps. Part of him almost looks forward to Lady Winter, specter of his childhood and her silvery embrace of the land. It's a childish part of him that should be ignored but he would be more willing to indulge it if only the booth's heater wasn't broken.

He knows that fall is just about over. Soon the crisp colors of vibrant yellow and earnest red choking the city with romantics and amateur poets would turn into dead mush to be tramped on. He didn't mind the out-of-towners as some might think. Yes, it was his responsibility to guard the train station and tourists were the hard-of-hearing folk.

It tended to be a person's privilege to act ignorant in the place they sought to visit. They want someone to correct them. Preventing tourist love-freaks from shouting out declarations of passion or marriage to their special somebody during high traffic is a lot easier then dealing with the regular set of suicidal drunks.

Mug Shot gets up from his chair and uses the magic from his horn to levitate a rag from his saddlebags resting on the dirty wooden floor. In three precise wipes, the smudge on the booth's window is gone. If he chooses not to remember, it would be like the smudge was never there.

What an ugly thought to have.

He tenses, his throat tightens and that damned blue covering everything becomes ablaze, thick and blinding over his eyes. His right hoof raises as if to strike at something. Anyone. Anything. He hears something drop. His hoof still hovers in the air and the moment leaves him. He sighs and another smudge takes the place of the other. He leaves it alone. Tries to look away. Be as far away, whether right now physically or somewhere else in his mind. 'It adds character', he tries to convince himself but he wipes the new smudge away all the same.

He's thinking too hard and he can hear hooves of others walking up the brick-laid hill that the Cinder Rock station sits on. Soon they will gather and interrupt the little peace that he's carved for himself but that's alright. He's grateful for their presence and the early morning merely becomes morning as the sun finally makes her appearance.

Let's try this again.

It's early. Morning.

And the sky is a tolerable shade of blue. The color's diluted by the vivid light of the sun that promises today. He'll be seeing the same sky tomorrow and the many endless days after that.