Field guide · chapter graphic

The Pink Mist

The early-sobriety phase where everything feels rosy and you start to believe you’ve figured it out — just before the rebound.

The Pink Mist — vintage rose-tinted glasses showing distorted scenes
Everything is rosy. Nothing is fine.

What you’re looking at

Two vintage rose-tinted spectacles laid flat. Through each lens, the same small landscape — a hill, a sun, a tree, a bird — rendered wrong on inspection. The left lens looks superficially fine: smiling sun with too many teeth, a tree leaning the wrong way, cracked little hearts hovering. The right lens is more obviously off: the bird’s eyes don’t match, the tree has fingers instead of branches, the sun’s mouth is full of zig-zag.

The viewer sees the distortion before the wearer does. Which is the point.

Status

Illustration delivered by Design (May 2026). This page is a placeholder for the eventual chapter content. The SVG above doubles as the homepage card thumb candidate.

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