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There are things one simply comes to understand.  Dream knowledge, the perceptions one creates and imprints upon the world around them until they simply are true.  They are the sorts of things that instantly lose their meaning when one attempts to explain them with words.  They are the floating ideas that are senseless in the simplest form.  Like the thought that you may not be alone in your strangeness.  That somewhere out among the masses there were others as alone, as confused.  As gifted.
I had entered the world with an intrinsic curiosity.  At least that's what I told myself.  In the back of my mind I watched a lovely woman telling me this as she strung up laundry out in the brilliant sun.  But I may be making that up as well.  But here I was, alone, unknowing of myself of anyone else and I needed to know.  I searched in hopes of finding something that I could not even begin to explain.  I was different, I knew that much.  That much I was not making up.
I gathered clock hands.  It was a horrible habit, I'm sure.  They found their way into the warm inner folds of my hands and I pocketed them, wore them around my neck as jewelry, and lost them.  They slipped away from me as mysteriously as they came, as though they were just visiting.  As though they were lonely too.
I took to following random strangers, picking people out of the crowd and wandering just far enough behind them to not seem strange.  They always had places to go and people to smile at and I wondered at the way humanity had collected itself in such a place as this.  The bookstores drew me, the little tea shoppes that seemed to cater to the artist in us all.  The walls seemed to curve in to embrace you, a safe place to sit and watch the world float by.
I followed him a few times before realizing it.  He would wander slowly through the streets, a mind lost in the crowd.  He would stand on street corners, pausing for a moment as though listening to a small voice calling out from the distance.  He would smile, nodding slowly and continue on, as though none of  it had ever happened.  There was something deeply intriguing about him, something that called out.  As though he knew.
I wasn't actually trying to follow him that day, wasn't even looking up when he sat down at my table.  But suddenly there he was, a smiling face with piercing eyes and hair much too pale to be natural.  He did not speak for a long time, but his eyes drew me in and suddenly I understood the images passing through my mind were words.
You're just a little too pretty a girl to be following people alone, darling. He took a sip from my cooling tea, watching me over the brim of the cup.  I must have simply stared because he smiled and took placed his hands, open, on the table, looking down at them as though to prove he was harmless. You seem the intelligent sort so I'm not going to play any games with you.  I know who you are, I know you've been watching me.  You intrigue me darling so I'll let it slide.  You don't have to speak, but you must know that turn about is fair game.
And he was gone.