A sudden gust of wind scattered a pile of ashes into the air, and they glided down to the ground with
unfitting grace. I watched as one landed before my foot, and I toed it very lightly, leaving a grey
powder behind. What has happened to this place? I thought. The buildings on either side of me
could hardly be called as such, they were so broken, the roofs missing, windowpanes empty and
hollow. The street I stood on was heavily decorated with cracks and craters of differing sizes, large
rocks strewn across the once smooth surface. I took a slow step forward; a cloth snagged the heel of
my shoe, torn and blackened. Burnt. I shook it off and continued, staring at the singed edges of the
concrete walls that once stood tall and proud.
Smoke rose from a ruin ahead, small tendrils of grey inching slowly upwards from crumbling bricks.
The acrid smell of burning lingered too, sharp and unpleasantly present. I felt an overwhelming
sense of loss, not just for the people, but the architecture too. This place was once one to admire,
with tall, intricately inspiring buildings of all kinds, artistic ability being the centre of it all. My heart
twisted painfully as I noticed what was before me. Another ruin, no doubt unidentifiable to a
stranger, but not to me. It was the heavily damaged skeleton of a building that I had often
frequented, back when I lived here, rubble arranged in an almost recognisable formation, rounded in
a semi-circle. The library.
It was odd, walking forward into what had once been a beautiful interior but was now a mess of
yellow stone, large chunks still adorned with the elaborate patterns that had once graced the walls
of the building. And there were books, so many of them. Piled high, scattered and torn apart, pages
trapped under the heavy weight of debris. One such page flew free and careened through the air,
and I reached out to grab at it but missed. A quick glimpse told me it was the first page of A Tale of
Two Cities, the words of the title printed in large, capital letters. A book from many, many years ago
– 1859, over a thousand years ago, from an era once called Victorian. An almost forgotten era; the
second Elizabethan period is focused on in history lessons. Back then, the world was still
unaffected by the horrors that shape it today.
Standing in what used to be the very centre of the library, the very centre of this city, I looked
around, becoming more amazed at how rapidly one city, even the whole world, could change. In the
blink of an eye, centuries of hard work in infrastructure, literature, science and so much more, gone.
This city would need to wait for a long, long time to ever recover, to ever go back to its state before
the world broke loose, set aflame with the ravaging forces of human nature.