All you have is your fire
And the place you need to reach
Don't you ever tame your demons
But always keem them on a leash
Hozier, "Arsonist's Lullabye
This town smelt sea. Traveling deep into the continent, Harry had already forgotten that smell and now the salty humidity threw at him one flashback after another. England, blurry childhood, hectic teenage times, busy adulthood, all that had sea smell at the background. It was so natural back then that Harry never noticed it like fish doesn't notice water. But at the same time this Russian city didn't have English spirit, like, at all. At best, it had something Irish, perhaps like Galway. Galway, which was seized by USSR and fucked really, really hard with all the bombs, and the guns, and the purges, and the ugly concrete buildings like butt plugs on the places where once were something beautiful.
And the Cyrillic alphabet. Fucking Cyrillic alphabet everywhere. Stupid squarish letters that looked like a fence. Russian really like fences, by the way, they put them everywhere. Which is a good thing, fences help in hiding. But these signs in Cyrillic now became fences themselves, never letting Harry pass where he wanted to. Harry could hardly read anything here. He remembered that the world POLICE in Russian had the mirrored letter R at the end, like in nu-metal band "KoЯn" logo, but this knowledge didn't help him. He visited one building with blue letters and with "Я" at the end, but it turned out to be grocery shop. БОКОЛИЯ or something. Prettty close though. Harry also tried to ask people, in hope that they know at least some English, but those daft twats really did not understand what he wanted from them and at best pointed in the direction of the nearest police patrol car.
And there were a lot of police cars now. Like, A LOT. Not only police, but military troops, patrolling, guarding, with very serious faces even for Russians, the weird nation who rarely smiles even at a sunny day. The city was like under a siege. In less than half an hour Harry met around a dozen of patrols, either on wheels, or going by foot in groups of about five to seven people.