021718b

Shards

So a woman with red hair comes up beside me. "Excuse me," she says and reaches up to the wall with a fragment of iridescent blue ceramic.

"Sea or sky?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Flower," and pushes it in next to a large green area with a little white from cheap grocery store dishes.

"Looks nice."

She smiles quickly and turns away. I still have three pieces in my hand, but I don't think they really fit here. I move along the wall, stepping around everyone who is contributing to the Mosaic. Here's a good place for the red brown earthenware I've got left. Broken glass here on the sidewalk, but nothing I can see a use for in the Mosaic. The wizard will be back soon and we have to finish as much as we can. The more we have done the easier it will be to manifest it.

After I stick my last three shards in the wall I step back across the street to take in the gestalt. A River runs through it, there are trees, a couple of large birds, blue sky, and lots of flowers. The city just doesn't compare, and it's broken anyway. With most of the people wiped out during the Five Years, and the infrastructure destroyed by the plastic eating bacteria, even the few of us who are left just can't hack it. But in a new clean world, we can start over.

"He's here!" It runs through the crowd like the breeze before a storm. I see him! He is riding some kind of three-wheeled bicycle that is so high we can see him clearly even though he's on the other part of the highway.

"You have done well!" He shouts. "Now is the time to bring it all to fruition. He pauses and seems to bow his head then, he's chanting. Can hear what he's saying, maybe it's not in English. I feel a little dizzy from the heat and I lean against the barricade separating the street from the interstate. Tunnel vision. That's a sign of low blood pressure or low iron or something. When I can focus again the wall looks different. It's like a doorway, and people are streaming into it. I follow, but the mural, I mean the door, is shrinking rapidly. I dive for the hole and slam headfirst into the wall. Shrieking pain, I curl in a fetal position until the agony recedes. It they left without me. The mural is entirely gone and the wall is cracked and stained concrete. The wizard is still there on the other part of the highway. "I'm so sorry," he says. "You can start again. I will be back in a couple of months."