She walked, slowly, toward her chair -- her comfortable one. She sat slowly down into it, sinking. There was a thing on her front folding table. She opened it up: it buzzed, and it whirred, and it purred. She ran her fingers over the scales on its smooth, metal skin, and it purred even louder at the sensation of touch. It blinked open its eyes -- perhaps it winked at her, even -- and cast a hazy, dim-bright glow upon...

The earth sobbed torrents
All night long --
The earth throbbed, ebb and tumult:
And now it rests beneath the silence
After screaming -- 
Now it nestles in the rubble, 
In the echo,
In the echo of their drowning.
Indifference, aqueous and plain,
Would beat the barren
Into soil
Given time, ebb and tumult:
Now it flees as though a memory,
Wraith, and ghastly.

Triumph tolls unto the Victor --
Vile, vociferous are those intangible chimes;
They hang in heaven...

    A strange feeling scurries across the ground, and disappears into some out-of-sight blackness buried deep between the gaps of failing woodwork. I hear its patter quick and frantic -- fleeting. I hear it nibbling on some crumbs behind the walls.
    Truthfully, I’d known it to be there for quite some time now; and I’d be dishonest in saying that I hadn’t been a little more careless in my actions as of late, as to, perhaps, produce a few more snacks...

    She pulled back her head -- her eyes were still closed -- and took a deep breath in, to herself. I can only imagine what the air might have smelled like: marshmallows, hot cocoa, some distant bonfire-smoke humming and crackling in the wind, dead leaves, pine trees, snow. And I remember wishing I could breathe through my nose. Winter strikes and my allergies flare in a pitiful retaliation to the cold; I’m left only with envy for those who can...