The early light over the City of Shadows brought with it a hush. For the first time in memory, the pigeons on the rooftops cooed in the same rhythm. Street vendor carts rolled into place, guided by a strange internal meter. When Alex Lin awoke—mask askew, hair scattered like the notes from a nonsensical sonnet—he sensed the oddness even before he opened his window.
He heard Mina singing in the kitchen below, but her tune was oddly… patterned.
"Coffee brewing, dancers stewing,
Scones are done, the day's begun."
Alex blinked in confusion, then yawned, and found that even his own thoughts arranged themselves in neat couplets:
Strange, this morning's gentle chime,
Tells me all will move in rhyme.
"Gramps, are you hearing this?" he whispered.
A yawn from deep in his mind: "Kid, I once made a betting pool on iambic pentameter in Paris. But this? This is new."
He dressed, whistling, and every note seemed to wrap around the morning's poetic conspiracy. By the time he opened the front door, there was little doubt: today, reality had decided to speak in verse.
A Departmental Wake-up—Limerick Edition
The Department of Impossible Things was a chorus of confusion—a symphony, perhaps, if you liked your music full of baffled groans. Alex entered to find Ms. Paperworth reciting her daily briefing in what could only be a limerick:
"There once was a fool from the west,
Who solved cases no one could best.
Now words turn to rhyme,
And logic to time—
We dearly hope you'll fix the rest."
Sam sipped at a coffee so strong it nearly rhymed by itself. Beside him, Logan was furiously scribbling in a notebook, and every observation ended with an accidental rhyme.
"Morning meetings must be brief,
Or we'll all come to comic grief."
Mina, eyes gleaming, twirled her scarf and offered tea in the most charming quatrain.
Marcus was already examining the latest case file, reading aloud:
When rhyme entangles order's thread,
And verse is how all laws are read,
Look to the library source unknown—
Who crafts the meter rules this zone…
Oliver, correcting his spectacles, paused. "I'm trying to write a schedule, but my pen refuses anything that isn't heroic couplet."
Investigation: A City of Verses
The day's case was simple, at least in outline: overnight, the entire city had become a poem. Notices on walls rhymed. Graffiti now took the form of ancient Greek epigrams. The physics lecture at City U had devolved into limericks explaining gravity, to the delight (and mild confusion) of everyone present.
Their clue: at dawn, a message had appeared outside the Central Library—arranged in purple chalk:
The heart of rhyme, the soul of song,
Was caged in prose for far too long.
Now let all words in rhythm soar—
Unlock the verse and rhyme once more.
A signature below, traced with a flourish: "—The Bardling, Champion of Unwritten Lines"
Sam read it aloud, then groaned. "I can't even complain without rhyming!"
From across town came echoes of children chanting, street vendors hawking, and even the bell atop the Clocktower of Paradoxes pealing in a precise dactylic beat.
Logan sighed, muttering, "The only thing that could make this day more confusing is… a paradox in meter."
Marcus clapped him on the back and smiled. "We could do worse. At least it's not all in haiku."
To the Library—And a Mystery in Meter
The team rendezvoused at the Central Library, where the doors themselves spoke as they opened:
Stories inside, both wild and tame,
Not all are safe, though all have a name.
Alex led the group inside, followed swiftly by Sam, Mina, Marcus, Logan, and Oliver. The main hall swirled with tension—staff muttering in couplets, patrons whispering in cascading assonance, lost children giggling in nonsense rhyme.
The head librarian, Eleanor Pageworth, greeted them:
"We've had our share of literary flood—
Now every shelf speaks poetry or blood.
Last night this started, with nary a thief,
Just a wind and a note, and then general grief."
She handed Alex a scroll tied with a sparkling ribbon. He unrolled it to read:
Oh Fool, who makes the world go wild,
Attend today to rhyme run wild.
Solve the puzzle, speak the tune—
Or all that's ordered ends by noon.
Sam turned the scroll over. "No secret code?"
Logan shook his head. "Everything's encoded as meter. The curse won't break until someone writes the final line."
Mina gestured to the poetry section, where a dazzling trail of sparkling footprints led between the shelves.
"Let's follow the footnotes," she quipped.
Through the Stacks—And the Heart of the Spell
The trail wound through rooms where every title had rearranged itself in rhyme. "Great Expectations" became "Anticipation's Elation." "Moby Dick" shifted to "That Whale Makes Me Pale."
In the Rare Volumes Room, they found the spell's heart: a large, ancient tome, open to a blank page—every other leaf scribbled full of verse and song except for the last, which glimmered with an unfinished final couplet.
A small, impish figure perched on the book's edge—a cartoonish bard in a cloak of mismatched metaphors, quill behind the ear, face painted in theatrical surprise. The Bardling.
"Ah, the Fool!" it sang out, its voice a melodic alto. "You've come, at last, to play the game. The city's tongue is not to blame.
A world in prose is much too tight—
I wished for verse, and lo—the fright!"
Alex stepped forward, grin twitching beneath his mask. "Bardling, why render the world in rhyme?"
The Bardling clutched its quill. "When poetry is locked away, all magic's essence slips to gray. I only wished for one wild day—where rhyme and reason have their say."
Marcus folded his arms. "You made people speak in verse, but how will it end?"
"Simple!" said the Bardling. "The spell will break when the mightiest Fool can write The Final Line. But beware: it must touch every heart, bind hope and laughter, sadness and art."
Logan pored over the spellbook's last blank page. "It looks like any verse will work… unless it's written out of duty. It must be, well, honest poetry."
Oliver brightened. "We must compose a city's song, together!"
Rhyme Rally—A Citywide Poetry Chorus
The word spread quickly: rhyme's reign would end at sunset, but only if everyone—from the bus driver to the mayor, from the sandwich-shop server to the jazz trombonist on Main—contributed a single, true line. The Bardling's magic would choose the purest poem from this chorus.
The city transformed into an open-mic event. Grannies recited memories in kitchen meter. Toddlers bellowed nursery doggerel. A barista crafted sonnets on cappuccino foam. Even the ducks by the pond honked in accidental rhyme.
The Department's team wrote together in the Library's garden, passing a shared notebook. Each person's line was honest—funny, gentle, quietly hopeful.
Mina:
Let love be the thread in the patchwork of days,
Embroidered with laughter in infinite ways.
Oliver:
May peace make a home where ambition once burned,
And hope be the lesson most fondly unlearned.
Sam:
Let doubt fill our pockets and wonder our shoes—
For walking, not running, is how we don't lose.
Marcus:
Let failures teach kindness, let wounds bloom as flowers—
Soft petals grown strong from the rainiest hours.
Logan:
Let logic and madness dance hand in white glove,
For wisdom is born when we're lost and in love.
Alex:
Let our stories go crooked, our endings surprise,
And may every real Fool see the world with new eyes.
They compiled the lines, and as the sun fell low, Alex approached the final page. He read their creation aloud, each word imbued with the hope, sorrow, warmth, and magic of a city that—just for a day—had remembered itself in poetry.
Breaking the Spell—And What Remains
As the last word hung in the dusk, the blank page shimmered, inky letters blooming to fill the void. A wind of words swept through the city: rhyme unclasped, meter loosened.
People exhaled in surprise as regular speech returned, but laughter and tears rose everywhere—kids clutching sonnet-napkins, shopkeepers smiling at limerick receipts.
The Bardling danced on the spellbook, bowing deep. "Bravo, Fools! You've woven verse and soul. Now the city can choose: rhyme, prose, or both. The heart, once stretched, never shrinks."
Mina smiled, crowning the Bardling with a ribbon. "Will we see you again?"
"In every line—that's honest, wild, or new," it said, fading like the last refrain of a haunting tune.
Aftermath—The City That Learned to Sing
The next morning dawned prose-plain, but every wall held echoes of yesterday's lines. The city never quite lost the cadence; poetry slunk into everyday speech, infusing meetings, love notes, and subway graffiti with a bit more color.
Alex woke, mask lying beside him, notebook heavy with new verses.
At the Department, Ms. Paperworth handed him a mug and—though she tried for businesslike—smiled with a poet's mischief:
"Impossible or not, my team just rhymed the world to rights—
Now let's see if you can sing your way through this week's other plights."
Alex grinned. "If I can't, at least we've got proof: the city is never short of words, and sometimes, that's all the magic we need."
They gathered for coffee, the found family closer than ever, and waited for their next assignment—certain only that whatever reality flung their way, they'd find the right words together.