Stone, Mortar, Ash

“If walls could talk…” you sigh wistfully, staring up the courses of worked stone – finding beauty in the age, in the weathering, your splendidly warm fingers tracing ever so lightly the fabric laid down by masons centuries dead.

Perhaps it would tickle – but a wall has not the nerves to be stimulated by such sensation, nor the diaphragm to utter the laugh that so often follows. Nor do we have eyes from which to cry, but the rain running down ancient, cracking frames that glass once graced may yet fool you to think that we do. Perhaps if more of us were still standing for you to admire, you’d hear the stories we have to tell. Instead, we crumble, we wither, we burn, we sink below the sea, the sand, the earth. We are not so different, are we? Just awaiting the day we crumble into dust, and our bones return to the earth from whence they came.

It could be a day like this, for all you know.

The sun shines, it warms us both the same – and you seek my shade to escape the sweltering heat.

If you could hear, I would tell you that there are some things you cannot escape.

Perhaps you think I am safe – for I still stand amongst the rubble of an age long forgotten by you, by those before you too. A fleeting memory of a horror long past, just another snippet that you write about in your books, a fun piece of trivia to tell your friends in the bar amidst lights, laughter, and the lilt of music.

I once bore witness to many such nights. Stories told of battles now forgotten, of trysts, of love, of heroes. Stories told in a language equally as obscure, in your world of metal sky-chariots, and the rumbling beasts that spout smoke to bring you to this ruin, your world of glass eyes that paint your memories onto paper so you may try to recreate that which has been lost, but that will never capture its true glory.

A word of caution, traveler.

Even Daedalus’ creations could not save him in the end. The wrath of the gods is mighty, and neither you, nor I can stand against it when it comes to bear upon the earth.

I should know, after all. I felt the roar before the beast broke free from its prison. If I could have talked then, I would have warned those that I harboured within my embrace. But the thundering stopped, and it was as calm as it is now, and you look just as they did.

No, that is not a threat. Simply an observation. A reminder, if you will. For they, too, thought they were safe.

The fire came later, that is a small mercy I suppose. They never had a chance to fear the flames, for the breath of Vulcan that rushed from the bowels of the earth was far, far hotter than any mortal fire – and it spared none.

Have you seen the bodies? Shells, really. Pluto’s black chariot that followed in Vulcan’s wake, bearing ash, acid and molten earth… well. It took their bodies, as well as their souls.

You see them as a tragic, morbid curiosity.

Pity you cannot see their memory.

Some were lives freely lived, others forced to a death they never deserved, choking in chains on dirty floors in a strange land, far from home and those that loved them. Those that died bound as a sacrifice to the vengeful earth as others fled carrying gold, jewels and silks more - as if their pleasantries were more valuable than a soul.

I suppose you want those stories, the tales of silks, of wine and feasts, of odes to Venus and Bacchus. No one wants to hear of those who toiled beneath the sweltering sun, those who spun the silks, prepared the feasts they would never taste. The tales of those who I sheltered as best I could in the cool shade when the master’s gaze was averted. Perhaps you came here, looking for remnants of a golden age, forgetting in whose blood it was gilt.

You find amusement in carvings you can barely read, while I remember the thin, calloused hands that worked their marks into my flesh – your little curiosity is now the only thing left of brave soldiers, of those that chased away their loneliness for a night, of those who poured the wine, of those who did their best to make a life in a world that preferred they not exist.

Are you laughing now?

I stand here: a testament, a warning, a gravestone. I am received as the comedian.

A comedian who stands amongst the ruin of lives only they know, a monument in the graveyard of their brethren, as the audience tramples their bones. An audience they still shelter from Sol’s searing gaze, as much as they shelter the ghosts washed away in a torrential wind that whisked away their souls, in a flood of ash that ate away their flesh.

You’re still there? Are you waiting for a punchline?

There is none.

Will you still be laughing when the fire has melted your bones?