short fiction · 2026-10-11

The River God's Lament

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

Beneath the city's restless veins, where concrete dreams and steel foundations meet, the old river god stirs in his stone-bedded sleep. He remembers when his waters sang freely through meadows now buried under avenues of light. Once, children dipped their toes in his currents, laughing as silver minnows darted between their ankles. Now he feels only the tremor of footsteps above, the distant hum of machines that never rest. He dreams of breaking through, of reclaiming his ancient channel, but the weight of centuries presses down—layers of forgetting, of pavement laid like shrouds over his grief. In the deepest tunnels, where maintenance workers swear they hear whispering echoes, he waits, patient as erosion, for the day the city remembers what flows beneath its feet.