Fiction Prompt: Picture This

Writing is not exactly like playing professional football, but sometimes it feels like it.

Stretching and warming up.
The tackles and the ice-baths and the bruises.
The snail's pace forward.
That.bossy guy in stripes on the sideline demonstrating –– incorrectly, as it turns out –– how to perform the hokey-pokey.  

But fer reals, like any would-be linebacker, a writer has to practice and run drills. Here's my own little practice session. Omaha! Omaha Seventy-Eight! Set! Hut! 

Story 1
He woke to the familiar cathedral space of the pavilion. He smelled frost in the air and made a careful effort to roll in place on the cardboard, not wanting to let cold air into his sleeping bag. 
     If he waited maybe half an hour, there would be bitter coffee to warm his hands and burn his mouth. But if he waited too long, someone would hustle him along and there would be no coffee at all. Perhaps it was time already. He braced himself and then slid himself from of the cocoon of warmth, keeping his sock feet on the Ollie-Ollie-Oxenfree safety of his little bivouac. He stretched, feeling the crackle of his joints and an unpleasant stretching of his skin.
     He was not old –– no one would call him old –– but life on the road had weathered him. Only a few silver threads showed in matted hair, but chalky patches of callus punctuated his corners, showing like mushrooms at his elbows and knees. 

Story 2
In semiphore, the universe was telling him to cash in his bonds, sell his Persian rugs, set the birds free, and dispense with personal hygiene.
     Things were happening. An electric crackle at the edge of his hearing and the way the flags snapped in syncopation? It was all coming clear. They were directives, acronyms spelled out in flags, commands that he could not ignore. 
     He'd been waiting, he realized now, for his whole life for this. He found himself holding his breath, counting steps, feverishly translating phrases into Latin and then Spanish and then back into English. The sense of impending moment, like a cresting wave arrested briefly by the shutter of a camera, arched above him. The heavy perfume of orange blossom intoxicated him with sweetness.
     He woke to the familiar cathedral space of the pavilion. He smelled frost in the air and made a careful effort to roll in place on the cardboard, not wanting to let cold air into his sleeping bag.