[b]Traveler's Nightsong[/b] The wind - cold, grating, hollow - bleeds through the bones of the buildings. The rasping breaths of an animal beaten, broken, abandoned. High above me it dances amongst sandy phantasms, beckoning me. With every gulp of sterile, metallic air through my damaged filter, with every desperate grasp at my next footstep, I feel a little closer to them. Just a little calmer. Every few steps I feel myself lifted by them - I feel my feet leave the ground, feel all the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders - before I fall once again into the broken remains of the ground. I stare back at the macabre breadcrumb trail I have left. Crimson, sullied by the sand, lit by a cold, distant knife of sunlight. Only upon seeing it, the Sun, so far away, abandoning me, do I know the grounds of home from whence I came, are lost to me. And thus I would drag myself from the tarnished ground and up upon my worn feet, and walk. I know no longer where it is I am headed. Memory is silent now. All there is, all that there ever would be, are the Tombs of a city - their shadows speaking of rest, the cracked, aching ground and the walking. There is no epilogue, no music, no cavalry on the hill. All the lights and angels of Heaven are silent. My footfalls like thunderclaps, my breaths quickening, the air like sandpaper in my throat. Maybe it is time now. I look up at the buildings, still, calm, empty, whilst the Sun shines of earlier times, I exhale once more as the clouds part. The wind exhales with me, it too now sleeps. And, soon, done with walking, I shall rest too.