The Haunting

The Haunting


The city sleeps, dreaming of times long gone. Creepers, mosses and lichens do their eternal duty, slowly returning those thing wrought by the hands of man to their primordial state. All but the grandest and sturdiest buildings are gone, transformed by the flora and their weather comrades to gravel and dust. Wind drives it's compatriot rain into the smallest crevice. Winter finds the water freezing, prying stones asunder, allowing a foot hold for the ground troops in spring. Winter also finds it's heavy calvery, snow, the accumilated weight crushing the weaker structures beneath it. Aye, the city is quiet and dreams, and remembers.

It is not quite dead, though the occasional treasure seeker exploring through it's quiet halls and streets would think so. Every living entity which sheltered behind the once tall and proud walls left it's mark here. The young lovers, nerviously stealing a few moments together, temporarily out from under the watchfull gazes of their fueding elders. The new mother, joyfully exhausted, holding her first born daughter carefully in her arms. The exhurberant child playing in the street under a bright sun and proud mothers eye, blissfully unaware of the darker side of life. The sorrow of an injured father, unable to work and watching his children go hungry yet another night. The sudden, suprized pain of the unlucky merchant as he dies, fallen victem to someones desperation and hunger. The criminal languishing in a cell, awaiting the morn and his ultimate punishment. The Elder who realizes it is time to move aside and let the younger ones take over, time for a good long rest, and quietly falls asleep for the last time.

Thousands upon thousands of thoughts and emotions echo down times long hall. The city slowly takes them in, savoring that happy time when it resounded with cries of joy and despair, gossip and commands, whispered secrets and shouted hallos from neighbor to neighbor. Resounding down the now deserted streets the echos flow like a sluggish river, the buildings still standing providing a shore for the tide. The city sleeps, and dreams. It remembers, and quietly awaits it's fate under the unstoppable, hobnailed march of that other great equilizer,
Time.