KidBeast

KidBeast stood at the edge of the Mortar Yard with their hands in their pockets, watching a builder fold grey mix over in a long trough, when the water on top shivered all by itself. It was still dark. The stacks of block and timber around the yard leaned in over the troughs, as if they wanted to hear what happened next.

The shiver came again, a ring spreading out from the middle, and KidBeast felt it in their feet a moment later, low and steady. The builder stopped stirring and watched the ring reach the trough’s edge, then nodded.

“Ready,” they said to nobody, and three Beasts came running with buckets.

So that was how you knew. Wet concrete liked the cool, so everyone mixed before the light, and nobody talked much. A trough lid leaned against the wall with a chalk bridge sketched on it, a long low arch from one roof to the next. Underneath, in square letters: by the eve of first frost.

At the back of the yard sat a trough older than the rest, its lid cracked and pale, with two small letters scratched into one corner. Every builder who poured near it tipped their bucket wide, around that corner, never over it.

A builder at the next trough held out a trowel without looking up. “Smooth it, don’t fuss it.”

KidBeast took it. It felt a bit like being handed a key.

Out on the span, they drew the trowel across each bucket the way they’d watched it done, long strokes and no picking. By the time the sky went pale there was a stretch of bridge about three Beasts long, flat and grey and theirs. They knelt beside it and felt, for the first time this morning, entirely here.

Then someone landed on the roof above them, light as a dropped glove.

“That’s lovely,” said a Hyena with a sack of folded shirts over one shoulder. “I’m Dex. You laid that? Good. Tell me it’ll hold.”

“Hold what?”

“Me. Noon shirts go out soon. Nobody’s ever run this way. First across.” Dex was already bouncing on their toes. “Say yes and I’ll tell everyone whose bit it is.”

The pour looked smooth and solid, but underneath it was still soft. Hours short, maybe more. They wanted to say yes. Dex was the first Beast who’d talked to them like they belonged here, and the trowel was still warm in their hand.

“It won’t hold,” KidBeast said. “Not today. You’d go through it, and so would my bit.”

Dex laughed like it was a joke and stepped back for a run-up.

KidBeast pulled the little air horn off their belt and pressed it.

In that quiet yard the blast seemed to hit every wall at once. Buckets stopped. A dozen builders turned. Dex froze on the gutter with one foot in the air, and the look they gave KidBeast wasn’t kind anymore. It was the look you give someone you’d had hopes for.

“Fine,” Dex said, and went the long way, roof to roof, without a wave.

They clipped the horn back on. Their stretch of bridge lay there unmarked, setting slowly in the cool. The builder at the next trough went back to stirring and said nothing, which was maybe the best thing anyone could have said.

At the back of the yard, an old builder stopped by the cracked lid, rubbed a thumb once across the two scratched letters, and went back to work.