Aqueduct Vigil

Mid-escape, the bridge breathes water again, thin veils spilling from each arch as if the stones remembered their old duty. Moonlight skims the mossed edges; halos gather where the water strikes, then break. Someone etched Where Vojta? into the block at the spillway, careful, deep, doubtful, as though asking the stone itself. It feels like aftermath more than arrival—the kind that follows a wrong turn taken quietly. Look fast: wet carvings glow, arches repeat, shadows fold, the leaf skitters, the river bends away, the path narrows, the question lingers—then slips. No faces, no tracks, only a single leaf caught in a curl of air and the soft insistence of falling water urging movement onward. This aqueduct offers exits in every direction yet denies answers, its ancient geometry nudging the eye to flee along the parapet or down toward the dark trees. Sacred light gathers where it shouldn’t, and I mistrust it, yet I pause. The search holds here, suspended, and Vojta remains unaccounted for.