"Get a job, hobo!"

The man standing on the corner blinked. His naive, yellow eyes closed slowly and opened once again, watching the angry person who yelled at him walk away, shaking a bird in the air.
"I have one," he said quietly, as if confused by the statement. Then the man shrugged and went back to juggling the glass balls he was holding. Red, blue, green. They crossed each other over and over. Children watched from a safe distance, fascinated but held back by their mothers.

The man looked suspicious enough. He had unkempt hair that looked like it was either a pretty blond with dirt staining it, or a sort of creamy cappuccino brown that was washed, but not at all contained. He wore ratty, rather loose jeans and thick, black boots. His shirt was long-sleeved, red and gray striped. And there were holes in at the wrists. A black trench coat was under his right foot.

Each finger had a thin, silver ring on it that clinked delicately against the glass as he tossed the baubles around. He couldn't have been older than 18....

Brown eyes peeked out from underneath messy, bright orange dyed hair. He wore a brown hoodie, and an earthen-tone green messenger bag hung off his shoulder. His jeans had once been dark blue, but now they just seemed a dark, dirty gray, and everything he wore was old and beat up.

He watched only for a moment, as he passed by unafraid of the ragged stranger. After all, he was ragged too. Perhaps this man was simply living in hard times as he himself was? Who could be sure. He shrugged lightly and turned his attention back towards where he was heading. This man was of no concern.

The sounds of glass shattering on concrete filled the air like the sound of an rainbow being ripped in half. The ragged man stared at this passing stranger with vivid hair while blue, red and green glass instantly liquefied and turned into a black puddle on the asphalt.

The man looked down at his feet. Some of the liquid had soaked into his trench coat underfoot. He grimaced a bit and picked up the garment, dusting it off before kneeling by the puddle.
"Sons of bitches...."

He didn't bother looking back upon hearing the glass baubles break. He continued on his way to the run down apartment building that he called home. It was only a few blocks away, and he had had a very long day at work. All he wanted was to get home to his cat and a warmed up canned meal.

The man shook his head quickly, somehow picking up the entire puddle and putting it into his pocket.
"Mommy, that man's magic!" some little boy squealed as the man ran away, trench coat in tow. He spotted the one boy once again and followed him.

In fact, he probably only stood about three feet behind him, his eyes scrutinizing that back of that neck which was veiled by bright orange hair. He kept silent, grinding his teeth behind his lips. A hand lifted and began to reach out....

The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he sensed someone reaching for him. Since becoming as poor as he was, he had been mugged several times and had developed a sense for when someone was grabbing for him. He skipped forward several steps, putting several more feet between them and quickly going up the front stops of a building and punching in the code for the door.

Once inside he made sure that the door shut behind him without letting anyone through, then went down the hall and up the stairs to the fourth floor, where he let himself into his apartment and was greeted by his brown tabby cat.

He fed her and then pulled down a can of vegetables, opened it, poured them into a bowl and put them in the microwave for his dinner.

The hand grabbed nothing and he went reeling forward. "Damn...." Face-down on the sidewalk, black liquid came trickling out his pocket and pooled in the crack between one slab and another. And then it turned into a black, glass daffodil, facing the apartment building that the boy had just entered.

The man got to his feet and sighed. Then he turned one direction, towards a nearby tree and climbed up into it with one strong movement of arms. He settled into the cradle of its branches and then closed his eyes. Waiting.

After eating his dinner of soggy luke-warm vegetables, he wrote in a notebook for an hour or so before going to bed. He left the window by his bed open, but the screen was shut and locked. His cat slept at his pillow, purring loudly as he fell asleep petting her.

"Ah...wonderful." The man sat up at the tree and looked across to where the sound came from, the soft, mellow sound of Voices cooing. He huffed deeply and then jumped off of the tree, landing on a soft patch of space. Some woman below him screamed and then pointed up at him as he wandered through the air and over to the open window. The black daffodil evaporated and then reappeared as a wrist band on his right arm.

The man crouched at the windowsill and peeked into the darkness, knocking a few times against it.
"Hello?"

He let out a tired sound and rolled over in his sleep, hugging his pillow with his back now against the window. His cat yawned and stretched.

This magical hobo frowned a bit and then pulled the black band from his wrist. He threw it through the screen as if it were water, which it suddenly took some sort of quality of and it landed on the floor of the room. "Come on, move," he muttered.

The viscus fluid rolled lazily over the floor and up the bed before it crawled over to the boy and lolled up onto his shoulder. Its mercury-like form slipped up his neck and over to his mouth before rearing back like a sort of viper before closing over all breathing orifices. Just for a second, so breathing was impossible for one moment. Then the blackness vanished.

He gasped and began coughing - perhaps choking - and sat up quickly, gently beating his chest with his right fist in an attempt to knock whatever he had felt in his throat loose.

"Oi!" the weird guy at the window yelled into the room as something dark seemed to cover his face like a mask. "Come here, please!" He wasn't smiling. But he didn't look angry. Almost as if he had not emotion...it was kind of wistful, though. Perhaps curious.

His eyes widened, and he did the first thing that his mind could think of. With a quick movement he was on his side, eyes wide and staring at the window, with a handgun aimed at the stranger that shouldn't be there.

The man furrowed his brow.
"Okay, too close, I can respect that." He let go of the ledge and stepped back onto the air, hovering a few feet from the sill. "Uh, hi. My name is Zenis." He gave an awkward bow, almost falling over face-first. "And...er...well...." The mask melted off of his face and into his outstretched hand where it then formed into a little black sparrow.

"Please don't shoot me, it hurts..." His mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile a bit. "I won't ask to come in, I can tell that would be inappropriate." Down below people were yelling and pointing up at him.

"What do you want with me!?" he demanded, and though he seemed angry, it seemed to be more out of fear.

"Um...." Zenis looked down at the people below and then the sparrow flew from his fingers and soared over the people. And all of a sudden they stopped gaping at him and continued on their way. "To...talk? Maybe get that bug off of you?" He took a sitting position in the air, focusing subdued, yellow eyes on the figure behind the screen.

"Sorry for like intruding on your window. Very rude of me. But I find that a direct approach is better than having to suffer from possible restraining orders from misconceptions. This planet is so weird." The last was a mutter, probably unheard.

"Bug? What are you talking about?" he asked, sitting up and slowly lowering the gun, though he held it tightly in his hand and ready to aim at Zenis again should he feel threatened.

"You have a bug on you, a Voice," Zenis said calmly as a black mass flew up and changed into three glass balls. A green, a blue, and a red. He took them in hand and began juggling while he talked. "Been feeling a little wrong recently? Maybe a bit downhearted? Or maybe just not like yourself in some way?"

"I have a shitty job, I'm bound to feel down sometimes. What's your point?"

"Eh." Zenis shrugged. "You have a parasite stuck to the back of your neck and I want to get it off for you. But...ah, I'm sure you don't trust me one bit. So...maybe instead, you could pull it off for me?" The red sphere floated out from his gasp and through the window at a harmless distance. "Take that."

"Get out," he growled. "I've had a long, tiring day. I don't need hocus pocus nonsense right now."

Zenis had no change of expression. But the red sphere that was floating there liquefied and then soaked into the bed, vanishing.
"Yeah, they usually aren't too keen about it. Don't worry, I'll be sticking around. I need that Voice whether you want to give it up or not."

The green sphere formed a giant oak tree that hovered in the sky, invisible to those below. Zenis climbed up into its arms and settled in one nook, sucking on the blue sphere quietly.

He hurried and shut the window, slamming it closed and locking it, then pulling the heavy drapes over the opening. But it was hot in his apartment... It always got hot at night. Grumbling, he turned a fan on and pointed it towards the bed, then pulled off his pajama bottoms and laid down in nothing bot his boxers and a loose cotton tank top.

He would've taken his shirt off, too, but he really disliked sleeping with a bare chest.

Zenis had already fallen asleep, tired and comfortable in the strong arms of his oak in the sky.

However, the red sphere that had melted into the boy's bed stirred. It moved through the fabric of the mattress until it found the kid's neck...and then it snatched the Voice from him. There probably would've been a sharp, scraping feeling. And then the sphere materialized as a tiny, red cage, hanging from the ceiling. Behind its bars was a translucent entity. It glistened in iridescent hues, flowing softly back and forth.