10:30pm July 18, AIF 103. Sorry I missed yesterday, but nothing really happened. I wandered around town, thinking about going to one of the theaters or art galleries or souvenir shops or whatnot, but nothing really caught my eye. I eventually just had a wrap in a crowded cafe and went back to the hotel to do some bookkeeping. This morning I realized what I was looking for was something more low-key, so I went to this little nameless antique shop that's directly across the street from my hotel. The wooden sign in front simply reads "antiques" in flaking gold paint, and the smoky window in front displays a collection of brass silverware and scattered curios laid out on a white cloth that looks like it could have been a funerary draping. The place has a sort of mysterious ominousness about it, you know?
...no, I'm not feeling this at all. I need to switch gears with this story. Let me think.
The sun beats down on the stones and they, unthinking, pass it back in rippling waves. Indeed, it is cool here by comparison. A stonemason stands atop the bridge, his bridge, the bridge he carved out of a mountain, to connect two others. Black bearded, brown aproned, he holds a long iron pole, a grey minister's staff, whose head is flared into a chisel. He jabs this down the side of the bridge, cutting free the crusty lip on the inside of the top of the arch, between the supports, where the stonecarvers got lazy. He would insist that form follows function, but does not think of this as an effort towards aesthetics. He is just smoothing his work out, that's all.
Each chip forces him to lean over the edge of the bridge - if his back gave out, he would pitch forward, and tumble in to the wooded valley, a hundred feet below. He knows it won't. The last bit of spongy white mortar disappears into the trees. He straightens and turns, intending to check the other side. The wind picks up, wincing or gasping, anticipating what will happen. By accident, he looks beyond the bridge, beyond the wooded valley, past the long slope at the bottom of which the trees thin out, where the river running down the valley, between the supports of his own bridge, runs out into the sea. It fans out, fertile marshlands along the coast, where a city has been built. Beyond that, the sun is setting. The half disc, incredibly big, incredibly red, surrounded by a yellow corona, a frozen chaos of golden light, clouds, and atmosphere. Its heat hits him for the first time, passing through his bones like the rumbling footsteps of giants. It glimmers in his eyes. The celestial fire. Unblinking, he breathes in the air, hot, heavy, humid, weighed down with its own power, the ghost of glowing coals. His chest puffs out, he takes his chisel up and jabs it down, on another crust of mortar.
His swing is a few inches off, and far too hard. The stone splits in half, and falls through heavy air to the green canopy, dust mixing with haze. He plants the chisel at his side, gripping with one hand but not leaning on it - a minister's staff again. After a moment, he decides to follow the bridge to its beginning, where a tunnel in the mountainside flickers with soft yellow torchlight. It'd be cooler in there. Yes, he'd been working too much in the heat. Some water would do him good.
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