Super-Flowered
Part 48
Jeremy’s lungs burned, struggling against the cold air. He could feel himself losing a little more control with every step he took, but he kept running anyway, sure that whoever was in that apartment hadn’t followed him, but not willing to take that risk. Every corner he took and alley he flew down sent him crashing into the wall of a different building, until his arms were bruised and his shirt was ripped and dirty.
The rain was no longer battering his face until he couldn’t see, and the Dohn bridge was visible now. It had a reputation for being loud, because it was entirely made if copper and most of the time the messengers tried to avoid Coen, so they didn’t get deafened as the crossed it. The bridge lay flat across the Dohn, as though someone had had an old sheet of metal and nothing to do with it, so they threw it in the river and it got stuck.
In truth, there had been a slightly batty architect, back when the Big City was just starting its industrial revolution, who had been commissioned to join Coen to Scurs, by the Janurs, so that the royal family could bring there parades onto the little rock. He had lost his eyesight to old age and every pair of glasses he had ever owned to clumsy hands and living on an island city (it was said that his glasses were still washing up on the shores of the Nossa beaches) and he had been unable to see a way to join the scraggy rocks that cut Coen off at the end of a street, and the sharp rocks jutting up from the road stop the world from walking straight into the Dohn, to the sandy beaches that led from Scurs, as the stacked buildings dissolved into the sea, so the architect stood on the rocks, looking out over the Dohn, squinting at Scurs. Unable to see the beach, or even the buildings that blocked the horizon, he waved his hand and produced a large slab of copper. It melted over Coen’s rocks and extended out towards Scurs, with the architect standing on the end, still squinting into the distance.
Perhaps the Janurs had planned to visit Coen, or perhaps they had heard about the architect crossing the Dohn and imagined it to be somewhat more noble than an old git in greying jumper and a hunch formed from getting to that age when you can’t walk without leaning, standing on what appeared to be a shiny piece of wood extending over the Dohn. Either way, the Janurs arrived, and liked the bridge so much that they decided it was perfect, if in need of a few minor adjustments. The made the architect form several copper posts up from the bridge, and up until a few days beforehand, those posts had been used to hand the Janurs banners, like tapestries, either side of the bridge. In the current light, however, Jeremy could see the remnants of the burt fabric hanging loose from its fixtures.
