Late afternoon in Amsterdam, the kind of grey that feels silver.
Rain taps against the umbrella, soft, rhythmic, almost gentle.
You sit outside a small café in De Pijp.
The street beyond the café shimmers, cobbles slick with rain, neon from a bike shop rippling in puddles. You are at a round table; the kind with a chipped edge and a wobble no one bothered to fix.
Coffee warm between your hands. Smoke curling from the shared cigarette.
Joost sat across from you, hoodie sleeves pulled low, that soft grin tugging at his lips, the kind he tries to hide when something is too silly or too true.
Just him, present, real.
Max lounged beside you, legs kicked out, one arm draped over the back of the spare chair like he owned the café, the rain, and time itself.
But then Bowie leaned in with quiet mischief and says:
“Did you know slugs have four noses?
I find that oddly reassuring.”
Max blinks. Frows. And without hesitation:
“I don’t think that’s true"; calmly fact-checking the universe, Verstappen-style.
Joost chokes on his drink, caught between reverence and hysteria.
Bowie just smiles, strange; sly.
“That’s alright", he says
"I made it up.”
And for one stupid, sacred moment; the world is perfect.
The café stills.
You listen.
Bowie humming. It rises, like it’s part of the bricks and the air.
“As the pain sweeps through,
Makes no sense for you…”
He hums it low, eyes distant. Not for show.
Just… because it’s in him.
Max doesn’t interrupt.
Even the rain seems to hush.
“I’ll place the sky within your eyes…”
Bowie smiles, eyes closed now.
And for a suspended, aching moment;
the pain is still there,
but it is no longer lonely.
You don’t belong to the world.
You never did.
But here,
as the world falls down,
you are home.