short fiction · 2026-10-24

City of Clouds

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The city does not sit on the earth; it hangs, tethered by chains of vapor to the mountain peaks below. Its towers are spun from cirrus, its streets paved with compressed mist that yields softly beneath each step. The citizens breathe in colors — saffron at dawn, bruised plum at twilight — and exhale weather. When a child laughs, a fine rain falls on the lower districts; when the council debates, thunder rolls through the avenues like a drum. No one here fears falling. They fear the day the wind forgets them, and the city drifts, untethered, into the blue silence where no hand can reach.