Incessant wind sweeps the plain. It mutters across grey pavements that sweep
from horizon to horizon. It sings around scattered black pillars, a chorus of
ghosts. It tumbles leaves and scatters dust come from afar. It teases the hair
of a corpse that has lain undisturbed for a generation, mummifying. Impishly,
the gale tosses a leaf into the cadaver’s silently screaming mouth, tugs it away again. The wind carries the breath of winter. Lightning leaps from pillar to
ebon pillar like a child skittering from base to base in a game of tag. For a
moment there is color on that spectral plain. The pillars might be mistaken for relics of a fallen city. They are not. They are too few and too randomly placed.
Nor has a one ever fallen, though many have been gnawed deeply by the teeth of
. . . fragments . . .
. . . just blackened fragments, crumbling between my fingers.
Browned page corners that reveal half a dozen words in a crabbed hand, their
context no longer known.
All that remains of two volumes of the Annals. A thousand hours of labor. Four
years of history. Gone forever.
Or are they? I do not want to go back. I do not want to relive the horror. I do not want to reclaim the pain. There is pain too deep to withstand right here,
