Bridges of Neon Drift

The tide carried whispers of brass horns and burnt coffee, their scents tangled like coral threads blooming between rusted balconies. Somewhere above, dirigibles sighed like old storytellers, their shadows slicing the shimmer that danced on the water’s bruised surface. Boats stitched from shattered tables bobbed into the neon undertow while laughter ricocheted off varnished rails and salt-worn tires. Each ripple glowed electric-blue, tasting faintly of copper and citrus against my tongue of memory, fever-bright and unsparing. I watched them fling coins for luck, as if tin tokens could conjure the missing. “One more hour,” someone rasped from the scaffolds, voice cracking like glass under heat—hope and hunger braided in the tremor. Above his shoulder, a striped figure toasted to nothing, triumphant in the mid-flood carnival, while we scanned every raft and reckless grin for a trace of him. The paper signs—Where Vojta?—fluttered wetly against iron girders, their ink bleeding lilac under the perfect, indifferent light. Still no sound of his name in the current, only the crush of music, and the ache of a question unmoored.