Overture Downs i know that you want one more night

a small pale boy walks through the warm dusk with a stained shirt. he'd slipped on a slope and crashed through several feet of bush and he had ended up losing a bit of the skin on his shoulder. it smarted with every step he took, but he'd cleaned off the blood as best as he could and herbs to him were an entirely different language.
point out to him the difference between tomato leaf and nightshade, and he'd somehow end up eating the nightshade anyway.
wearily, he shakes out his sodden shoes. there's a stranger in the distance. close-cropped black hair and androgynous, at least, from this angle. around the same age as him. whittaker stands there for a few beats, head spinning from exhaustion. luck leaks from his almost empty engine. he scratches his head as a mental fuzz slowly drowns him.