More of mental images than a story.

[pyrephox]

The first tremors went nearly unnoticed. The bricks on Main Street changed colors, a darker red blush spreading over the dusty, dull brown surface. Only Jakob, who'd been working this street for two decades, with his cardboard sign and his gnarled, useless hands, saw the transformation, and he thought it was simply the aftereffects of too much cheap whiskey.

In the slums, in the blind eyes of crackhouse windows, toothy glass shivered and stretched, each piece reaching out for its lost brothers and sisters, flowing over the gaps until they came together, new and whole. Only the children, walking to school, noticed. And when they tried to speak, the adults did not believe.

Perhaps that's why they went back after school, with chunks of pavement (but weren't the potholes smaller?) and crumbling half-bricks. The windows were broken again by nightfall.

By morning, they had repaired themselves again, and this time, no matter how the children looked, they could find no loose bricks, and no potholes.

This was the day people started to notice. Water stains that had become familiar roommates were suddenly missed. Fans and heaters that hadn't worked in years suddenly came to life and breathed outward. Busy worker bees, scurrying to office jobs, suddenly became aware of a slow, ponderous thudding under their feet. The subway exits yawned to the sky, flashing signs taking on the appearance of sleepy eyes, blinking themselves into wakefulness.

The mayor came on the TV, but even as he opened his mouth, the city groaned, and heaved itself upward, stretching like a cat. The reception went dead, along with the mayor, most of the television studio, and hundreds of other people stuck in buildings too fragile to support the city's movements.

It didn't seem to notice.