Januariad

Rebecca track stands at the top of the hill, half-illuminated by the gas lamp above her, paused and thinking. She is deciding on a route. Her exhalations fog around her head, her forearms twitch slightly as she adjust the handlebars to maintain balance. The merged whole of bicycle and her self have the bearings of an animal—she is not entirely unlike the huffing stags she flits past on dark park roads. Similar in bulk, in poise, in momentum.

Rebecca wears synthetic skins that match wholly and unselfconsciously the colours of her bike, reinforcing the impression of a single entity. The whites and blues of her clean carbon frame meld into those of her human one. The vented helmet hides almost entirely a ponytail of tawny hair. Her form is narrow, taut potential. A space-age dissonance between mass and strength.

She appears to idle, frozen longer than it should take to chose a direction. Her feet, laced into shoes clipped into pedals, apply imperceptible pressure to the cranks to keep her upright. Her face, invisible in the murky light, might be smiling. Her eyes might be momentarily be closed.

Suddenly, like a fox discovered, she turns out of the lamplight and moves onto the black road behind the Áras, the red glow of an LED trailing from the small of her back. The visible dot bobs energetically as she builds up speed, then settles, then is gone.