The city breathed.
She could hear it, ear pressed against the dirty ground. In, hold... out. In, hold... out. In, hold... out. At first she thought that there might be some enormous beast under the concrete but no, the city itself was the colossal creature. It murmured to itself, deep and rumbling, in words no one has said but everyone knows.
The city breathed.
Some people walked past and some of those people looked at her and some of those looks were filled with disgust, disgust at the girl with dirt on her hands and dirt on her dress and now dirt on her cheek, but she paid them no mind. Perhaps they would not look at her if they, too, could hear the city. Perhaps they would anyway.
The city breathed.
She held her breath to better hear the murmurings of the metropolis and felt its expansive attention turn slowly, inexorably toward her. It whispered three words, and then three more, and she smiled.
If any of the clean-cheeked passerbys had stopped to watch her they might have seen what happened, but they were all to busy focusing on their board meetings and barista-made macchiatos, and so no one saw the cracks in the concrete widen just enough to let a girl in a dirty dress slip through, falling away, falling home.
A short piece based off of "The Dirt Whispered", by Rise Against.
