The first step is not loud.
Cities do not roar when they decide to move.
They crearrange their weight.
It begins at the riverbend.
Not with flooding.
Not with collapse.
With a subtle misplacement of reflection.
At dawn, the Unplaced City’s eastern quarter wakes to find the river no longer mirrors the same sky as the western bank. The water flows, but the stars above it are shifted by a thumb’s width of impossible distance.
A child notices first.
“The river’s walking,” she says calmly.
Her mother laughs once—then stops.
Because the stones beneath their feet hum with the low, patient vibration of relocation.
By midmorning, the ground answers.
Not with quakes.
With drift.
Streets slide half an inch against each other without cracking. Doorways realign to corridors that did not
