Teareny Maybe

Everyone agreed she was too slow.

Not in an unkind way at first. It began as observation. The way she crossed the square after the light had already changed. The way she listened to a question all the way to the end before answering. The way she paused, sometimes, as if waiting for something invisible to catch up.

“She’s gentle,” someone said once.
“She’s distracted,” said another.
Eventually, they settled on slow, because it felt… close enough.

The town was not built for slowness.

Doors closed themselves if you didn’t push hard enough. Bells rang when bread burned, when meetings ran late, when decisions took too long to arrive. Even the river had been trained into a narrow channel so it wouldn’t wander.

She lived at the edge, where the stones loosened and the ground stayed damp. Moss climbed the steps to her door and was never scraped away.

Each morning, she knelt to water it with a chipped cup.

“Doesn’t it spread?” her neighbor asked, watching from the path.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Eventually.”

The day the cracking began, no one noticed at first.

A sound like a branch bending under snow. A low, patient strain beneath the street. The town kept moving. Bells rang. Doors shut. The schedule held.

She felt it through her soles.

She stopped mid-step.

The ground hummed… not loudly, but insistently, like a held breath. She crouched and pressed her palm to the stone. The moss along the cracks shimmered faintly, darkening, thickening, as if drawing strength upward.

She waited.

The others didn’t. They hurried past, annoyed by her stillness.

“You’ll miss it,” someone snapped.

“I know,” she said.

The first fissure split the square an hour later.

Stone buckled. A bell shattered. Water surged where no river had been before.

Panic moved fast.

People ran. They shouted. They demanded instructions from the empty air.

She moved like moss.

She followed the pull beneath her feet, stepping where the ground felt cool instead of tight. She traced the lines the moss had already claimed, leading people… not loudly, not forcefully… just by going first.

“Trust her,” someone whispered, surprised to find themselves saying it.

They crossed to higher ground just as the square gave way entirely, the channel breaking free, water finally allowed to wander.

When it was over, the town stood quiet and stunned. The bells were gone. The doors hung open. The river spread itself wide and calm, like it had been waiting.

They found her at the edge later, rinsing her hands in the damp earth.

“You saved us,” someone said, breathless.

She shook her head gently. “I just took my time.”

The moss crept a little farther that night.

No one stopped it.