First. First I came to London. Trailing him: Charlie Cooper. Nótt and I, sharing the road: on my knees, half the time, my nose to her snout, palms in the dirt, sniffing for his trace. We lost it, both of us. He smokes too little, that one, and there were too many others, covering up. Siren songs all over the city, calling to me, moth to the flame. A boardinghouse in Clapham. An opium den in Limehouse. A mother clutching her stillborn, all alone under a bridge. Distractions. I am he: a boy in a sweetshop, blindfolded, sniffing for a single ginger nut.

Then: a trace. No, not of the one I followed. The other one. My cousin, my double. But how different his Smoke smells to me now. Where once I sensed rivalry, I now taste promise; where I saw hatred, I now divine kinship. But how weak it seems, this shred of Smoke, leeched by doubt and temperance; how distant from the moment we stood in the ring and beat paths to one another’s souls. I want to find him, wake him to his nature. Taste him, own him, crawl into his skin. Ingestion, osmosis. Cannibalism. Flesh of my flesh, Smoke of my Smoke. In pain and rage we shall become one.

Order though, order! The world of man has sequence. Cause and effect. The world of Smoke is different. Noumenon: the thing-in-itself. Kant? Cunt! I am Smoke’s avatar. I am its prophet, its priest, its monk. I am—

Order!

First. First I come to London. Then comes the trace. Too faint to follow. Chasing it, losing it. A church, the river, distractions.

Then — Sebastian. I remember where he lives. It is like floating up from the dark of the ocean: relearning the skills of men. Planning. Remembering. Thinking in sentences, in words. All against my newfound nature: my mouth level with the waterline, heart, lungs, and liver in the waves. Leviathan circling at my feet. The Regency. A hotel for gentlemen; porters by the door. Licenced sweets in their mouths. Uniforms speckled with London’s Soot. Room 14. Sebastian, Ashton, Aschenstedt. Smoke, Soot, and Ash.