The bubble above the paving

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching a street performer make a large soap bubble in a pedestrian square.

The performer lifted two sticks, and a transparent sleeve rose between them. For a moment it had no shape I could name. It lengthened, folded at one edge and suddenly joined itself into a single enormous bubble. The square appeared inside it, bent and rearranged: a narrow tower, a swollen window, the dark shape of my own coat sliding across a patch of green.

Nobody moved directly towards it. The children who had been running between the benches slowed to small, deliberate steps. A boy held one hand open beneath the bubble without touching it, as if offering somewhere to land. His mother lowered the phone she had raised to photograph him. The bubble drifted over the pale paving, carrying its wavering version of the square a little further from us.

A band of pink travelled across its surface. Then blue. Then a colour too brief to separate from the next. I tried to decide whether the bubble was growing or whether I was simply imagining more space inside it. A corner narrowed into a trembling point. The boy drew in his breath, and the performer lowered his sticks.

There was no grand disappearance. One instant the tower curved across the soap skin; the next, the tower stood only in its usual place behind the benches. The boy looked at his empty hand and laughed. Around us, the square resumed its ordinary distances. The performer dipped the strings again, and everyone moved a little closer.

How does the writer use language to convey the bubble's appearance and its effect on the watchers?