The Well

The square was mostly empty, save for the squat, silent well and the long, inky shadows that stretched like the arms of an exhausted giant. It lay like a forgotten stage, its audience—the market traders, the gossiping citizens, the strolling lovers—long vanished, its actors dissolved into the hazy soup of memory. The lanterns that once cast a warm, friendly glow had guttered out hours ago, their final, oily breaths curling upward like the last sighs of old ghosts departing the scene. Now, the moon hung low and heavy; a bruised, half-drowned disc in the cloud cover, as if the sky itself were reluctant to bear witness to the profound, aching emptiness below.

Stone facades lined the perimeter of the square like weary sentinels, their windows shuttered tight against intrusion, their heavy doors sealed with the finality of a chapter closing. Each building wore its great age like a cloak—cracked plaster flaked away to reveal the bone of the brick beneath, paint that was once vibrant faded to the colour of old bone, and ivy crept like thick, sluggish veins across its skin, binding it to the earth. The cobblestones, slick with a cold, insistent dew, glimmered faintly under the moon’s diluted gaze, not like gems, but like relics laid out for a ritual no one remembered how to perform anymore.

The well stood at the absolute centre, the focal point of all this decay and silence, squat and deeply still, its mouth yawning open like a dark, unhealing wound in the earth. Moss clung to its rim in thick, green whispers, and the rope that dangled into its unseen depths swayed ever so gently, though the night air was too still to carry a wind. It seemed to breathe, a slow, deep intake and release, as if dreaming of the hands that once worked the crank, of the laughter echoing off its stone sides, of the metallic chime of coins tossed in with hopeful wishes that never quite reached the bottom of its secret cavity. It was an anchor, a testament to the fact that life once thrived here, pulling sustenance from the very ground.

A sudden, fluid ripple of motion broke the stillness. A cat emerged from the gloom of an alleyway, its fur the colour of liquid ink, its eyes twin embers of cool, emerald light. It moved without sound, an embodiment of the night’s stealth. It paused at the lip of the well, its delicate ears twitching, its tail flicking with the precision of a metronome marking time. For a long moment, it seemed to listen; not to any present sound, for there was none, but to the silence itself, to the profound and overwhelming absence of sound. Then, with the same effortless grace with which it arrived, it vanished, swallowed by the consuming dark as completely as if it had been nothing more than a momentary figment of the square’s restless imagination.

Above, the moon sagged lower toward the horizon, a pale coin spent too often and now worthless. Clouds drifted across its face like gauze pulled over a secret, and the few visible stars blinked behind them, uncertain and shy, like hesitant witnesses. The vast, vaulted sky itself seemed to hesitate, as if unsure whether to continue the slow turn of the night or to fold in on itself and admit defeat to the oppressive stillness.

Yet something lingered in that thick, moon-drenched air. It was not sound, nor was it scent, but a tangible, heavy presence. A hush saturated with memory. It was the kind of air that feels heavier than it should, as if the very space is holding its breath. The square remembered. It remembered the scraping footfalls, the clamour of a thousand forgotten voices, the rattle of hastily set-up market stalls, the soft, private hush of lovers exchanging secrets beneath the oil lamps. It remembered joy and grief braided together like bright and dark ribbons in a child’s hair.

Now, it simply waited. Not necessarily for the dawn, which would inevitably come and burn away the shadows. But it waited for return. For the revival of ritual. For the cheerful, metallic sound of the rope crank turning and the drawing of water. For the moment when the silence would finally break—not with mere noise, but with meaning. Until then, it remained as it was: a threshold. A long, deep pause. A single, held breath between one story and the next.