City Bus Driver

A routine shift took an unexpected turn, not because of what I saw, but because of what I smelled. Then came the black butterflies drifting across the windscreen. Except they weren't butterflies at all. Every city has two faces. There's the one we know. Busy streets. Coffee cups in hurried hands. The rhythm of traffic. The familiar dance of buses, pedestrians and cyclists, each weaving around the other in a choreography repeated thousands of times a day. Then there's the other face. The one that only appears when something extraordinary happens. My day began like any other. There was nothing to suggest that, somewhere nearby, a building was fighting for its life. The first clue wasn't flashing blue lights or a road closure. It was the smell. Not the comforting scent of a wood fire, nor the faint aroma of traffic baking on warm tarmac. This was heavier. Damp smoke. Wet ash. Burnt timber soaked by thousands of gallons of water. A smell that settled in the air and lingered...