Where the Smoke Falls

The morning was quieter than usual. Looking towards the window, a muddy, grey sky with a faint yellowish hue was framed into the sight—one could barely feel the warmth.

The dark smoke started to rise from the chimney, giving off a light scent of

stuffy stale flour mixed with chalk and bone-ash. She woke up to this every

morning, an alarm so often that the smell did not bother her much

anymore as it used to. The water already froze with a layer of frost in the

washbasin; she smashed it with her pink knuckled fists and quickly

splashed onto her face. That stingy sensation sharpened her brain to get

ready for the day.

After putting on her boots and combed her hair with her bristle brush, she

rushed out of her terrace with a slice of hardened white loaf in her wicker basket to the factory, yet something felt different this time.

The streets were muddy, damp and smells of horse dung, traces of

footprints and horse tracks interwove into one and another, but not a trace of a living being. The streetlamps glowed, yet unwavering in the bellowing

winds, dimmer than the sun in the distance.

No one, not a single soul. Not even the Smithfield herding barking from the

butcher’s shop.

Her footsteps quickened, passing through every shop and home she knew.

Turning her head around as her chest panted heavily with disbelief.

No one.

A cup of black coffee sat silently on the chipped pine wood table, the steam rose in thin, trembling ribbons, twisting and vanishing into the cold air

before it could find a shape. A burning furnace with pre-kneaded doughs

waiting by its mouth, half opened. But not a living body in those rooms.

She ran out and down the street as fast as she could.

The muddy streets echo with her thumping footsteps.

The oolitic limestone on the grand palace emitted a mute glow in the little

sunlight.

No one, dead silence.

Then, at the edge of the great paved courtyard, a flicker.

It was not a sound, but the ghost of one—a tiny, rhythmic tap-tap-tap,

barely audible against the bellowing wind, fighting the geometry of exhaustion that gripped the city.

She slid to a halt, shoes sinking deep into the mud churned up near the palace wall. Behind a low, freshly built scaffolding, partially hidden by a

thick canvas sheet, was a solitary figure.

The harridan was crouched, bent intently over a small block of Portland stone, working steadily on the work at her hand. Her heavy, chalk-dusted apron and thick leather gloves shaken every time she hammered the stone

with the chisel in her hand.

As the young woman stumbled closer, breathing heavily, her heart about to

burst with bewilderment.

"What's happenin'?" She lowered her voice. "Wher'is everyone?"

The stonemason looked up slowly, her eyes crinkling against the pale sun.

She used her hands to indicate the young woman to stay quiet.

“They are here.” She muttered after a while. “All of them, including you.

You just don’t see it yet.”

“Who?” The young woman gasped as lowly as possible. “What on earth do

you mean?”

The stonemason paused again, this time, she smirked, her eyes flickered

with a strange light, and in a split of a second, she vanished into the thin

air.

"Out of the way!" a booming voice commanded. A man in a thick, dark

overcoat and a bowler hat, clearly a foreman, was striding down the street,

flanked by two younger men carrying clipboards.

He pointed a rigid finger at her. “What are you doing there, standing idle?

The morning bell rang ten minutes past. You’ll be docked half the shift! Get

back to the factory, now!"