Weekly Writing – January 27 2024

Some people, first hearing about the grand city of North Bearing, were surprised to be told that it had only one pier – privately owned, at that. Once they were told that North Bearing was completely and utterly land-locked, however, not so much as a spit of lake within a hundred miles, they were usually more surprised that it had a pier at all.
Not to mention a humble but noteworthy amount of sea trade. Enough for the tariff to cover the piermaster’s bills and some comforts besides, for it was in her backyard that the pier stood.
Among the hedges and herb gardens, where no one would have gone looking for it if they hadn’t already been told. From the garden gate, it looked like nothing but a wooden dock placed artfully and uselessly in a brimming flower bed, and it turned most people’s stomachs a strange way when they stepped onto it the first time and found the sea’s grey, unhedged horizon spreading out before them. The flowers turned to lapping daisy-blue waves, and a longboat that shouldn’t by rights have fit through the gate or in the garden at all bobbed with them, tied to the pier like a restless horse, while a ship that should have fit even less waited for it halfway out to that impossible horizon.
Some said it was a sort of portal. Others called it synchronitic magic and plotted to steal the pier for themselves, figuring it would work just as well in their backyards as hers. Others still just called it wrong and unnatural, and tried to ignore the salty whisper of waves through their windows at night.