Neon Visions

2025

Neon Visions is the closest thing this world has to a city. The deities adapt: their fur becomes signage, their horns become antennas, their eyes pick up the kind of light that only exists after midnight. They no longer travel — they appear.

Encounters here are brief and one-sided. Something glows around a corner, decides it has been seen enough, and dissolves back into the colour it borrowed. The era is short on architecture and long on atmosphere.

antlered beast — A beast wearing antlers like an old radio mast. It picks up signals nobody is broadcasting any longer, but the habit is engrained; the antlers tilt as you walk past, the way a satellite dish leans into a star it has not been told has gone out. The beast is not bothered by the silence — silence is its frequency now.

antlered gazer — A long stare under a small forest of spikes. The stare is the work; the spikes are scaffolding. In this era the gaze is the local currency, and the figure has learned to spend it sparingly, which is why being looked at by it feels like being briefly tipped by someone wealthier than you expected.

electric beast — A body humming faintly with borrowed current. Nothing about this animal was built to be electric; it has simply spent enough time near the wiring to acquire some. The hum is involuntary and constant, and on quiet streets it can be heard a block away, the way old refrigerators can be heard through a wall.

furry predator — A predator that turned its coat into a sign. The fur catches the city's lights as if it had been upholstered for the purpose. Whatever it hunts, it lets see it first; the warning is part of the work. By the time you understand what is being warned, the predator has already decided whether you are involved.

glowing forest — A forest behaving like a half-lit interior. The trees still grow on schedule, but the colour management has been outsourced to the local signage; nobody minds, because nobody has been left in charge of minding. It suits the season, which has, in this era, mostly forgotten how to be a season.

horned deity — A deity standing in light that is not the sun. The horns have grown to the dimensions the city pays for. Worship in this era is mostly a matter of facing the figure long enough to be coloured by it — a passive, modern act, conducted, like most things, from inside a car or a doorway.

neon entity — Something the city briefly agreed to call alive. The agreement was renewed nightly for several months, then quietly let lapse. The entity remains. Whether it noticed the lapse is unclear; its routine has not changed, and the corner it occupies still glows on schedule for whoever is paying attention.

neon thorn — A thorn glowing as if it had a small grudge. The light is concentrated at the tip, where the irritation would be if the thorn had a body to attach itself to. It does not need one — the grudge is enough, and in this era a grudge with the right colour can keep a presence going almost indefinitely.