Milan had learned to breathe again.
Workers fed food scraps into fungal digesters, their mycelium exhaling bricks and fertilizer. Ledgers tracked carbon. No one starved; no one hoarded. Cleaners—now the city’s most skilled workers—scrubbed toxins from canals with algae filters, and repaired cracks in the pavement with bacterial limestone. A child traded figs for shoes, the transaction recorded in lichen-ink before returning to the soil.
Plastic had unspooled into fungal polymers. The Duomo’s crypt cradled seed libraries. Even the skyline had transformed—Spika’s thorns lacing the horizon, architects of the new commons.
Yet something fluttered at the edges. Hesitation in the orchards. Stillness in the hydroponic towers. The city thrived, yes—but it was a body waiting for a vital lifeline.
The pollinators worked, unrecognised and unnamed.
Milan, for all its rebirth, had forgotten to thank its wings.