This calm landscape makes waiting a sweet pleasure: the stillness of the air, the lambs’s voices, the sharp green in the trees. Here you said once you would come back, so I wait here, every year, at the same spot, near the water, looking at the sky’s reflection.
Nothing has changed, the sheep, the trees, the soft grey of the houses. Well, only me, getting older, otherwise, your absence is the same, year after year.
It’s lonely up here, one doesn’t meet humans too often, mostly the locals are ravens and rabbits and moles, and the occasional eagle. But I like it, this is my place, where I dream, and remember. There are sweet memories, and also dark and stormy ones.
Yes, there is a storm coming this way now. I love it, the low clouds, a drop of rain here and there, I can feel the strong winds already, snaking through my empty eye sockets, resonating in my skull. “The Old One”, used to call me the villagers, when there was still a village nearby, long ago.
Nowadays the Old One merely enjoys the peace, and the storm.
It’s a narrow stream, on this side our present, on the other, the past, or an unknown future. What to chose? Staying here, where we are now, is not an option: sooner or later, but maybe much sooner, we have to step on those stones, make up our mind, and chose.
We have to be cautious, the stones are slippery, a wrong move, we may end up in a past where we are lost, or even worse: in a future where we are enslaved.
“It must be done,” she said in a calm voice, her everyday voice.
The dawn was stunning. “I am going to leave you, and all the beauty…” he thought, silent. He had made the pledge long ago, when it all started. Invasion. Invincible machines. Cities burnt to ashes.
Then, all knew it would take some sacrifice. Against inhumanity, to win and survive would take more than courage. There, a short distance from them, lied the devils, yet unaware.
They would see him, though, but they would not, could not recognise what he was before it was too late. Just a human being. They may even try to capture him, to play.
His comrades had already disposed of the other aliens. It took only a small nuke, for each nest. But it took a human to do it. This was the last nest left.
The human spirit.
They kissed. There was no tear: they were both beyond tears. Her chopper waited nearby.
He checked his watch. In ten minutes he would start the walk toward the hill. By then his wife would be far enough. She would see the mushroom though. Just a small nuke.
Remembering H.G. Wells
In the depth of the cave lies a long hidden secret, visible only to the initiated: to those who truly love this land, who have ploughed its fields, nurtured its trees and respected all that lives here. The secret tells them where to hide, how to protect their children and how to honour their ancestors.
The initiated know that the invaders will come, again, as they did in the past, hate and fury, rage to destroy. But they will be, again, defeated, as were the others before them and the ones who will come after them.
For deeper still, lies the Magus, who will awake, at the sound of the horn, when the land is violated. Fear his wrath, as he avenges those who were slain by the Evil, and the corpses of the invaders line up the roads all the way back whence they came.
Still remnants of the past Sylvester
and dead Christmas trees
litter the streets,
grey the walls,
sad the dogs,
only the crows find cause to rejoice.
Sparrows sing, in the cold bushes.
The city, lost in a dream,
lets the clowns speak,
ignores the lies:
she’s heard many others.
Yet Spring will come,
and the Sun will shine again on Mauerweg.
It may surprise you, no doubt, but I am still here. Yes, in this old keep. It has been my home, all these centuries, since the fatal siege that killed most of my people. Well, most of them, not all. You see, below the keep is a long tunnel. Its access could be easily blocked. At the other end is the sea. We had plenty of provisions, all the weapons we could use, we survived for years. As you can see, from here I could look at the traitor, over there, in what was our tower. One clear morning, that was before we collapsed the entrance to our domain, I killed him, one careful shot from my longbow. Ha ha! That was a kick in the ants nest. They tried everything, water, fire, poison… It was too late for them.
So, you may well ask. What did we do all these years? Well, you know your history, or rather what they, and their ‘historians”, told you. The usurpers stayed. We occasionally went out and killed a few of their mercenaries, but this was hopeless. The people were terrified. We lived from fishing, a little hunting, which was more dangerous. My companions died, one by one. I held their funeral at sea, during the night. Finally, I was on my own. More years passed. I am still here. I don’t think anyone can see me, but I have no idea what I look like, now. By the way don’t trust those images of me in museums: I know they made me look awful. As they say, the victors write history, and have pictures made of their victims.
Not that I see myself as a victim any longer.
“She’s made of small parts, of metal, and plastic, of things none of them human, do you understand that?”
I do, I know the argument, humans are being phased out, it all started long ago. And, now, it’s difficult to work out the difference, to know who’s “real”, and what isn’t. Our reality has shifted. The others live among us, and who is to say it cannot go on.
Still, she’s there, she’s to stay. There is no-one else.
They stand, silent, immobile, or so it seems. It looks as if time never flows, as if, for them, there is no beginning, and no end.
But there is. Their role is to bear witness. So they listen, observe, remember. One day, perhaps far into our future, even past us, even after we have gone, they will report, on this evolutionary incident.
They are Gaia’s sentinels.
“This fell not far from us,” she said in a trembling voice.
Her companion replied, not just to reassure her, “That’s true, but now we know where it came from!”
And so it is with most human actions, there is always a return, sometimes with even more fume…
