Things that were, things that are - yet, what will come to pass?
The world was old now.
She looked at the sky, the dry battered plains. She looked at the forests that once had been but were no longer, looked at the moors that had lain across the endless hills. She looked at fresh-growing grass and ivy, vines heavy with fruit and blossoms, and sunshine-soaked trees. All that once had been, but were no longer.
An empty land.
She looked at dusty mountains and empty marshes - dirt lay on dirt, laid on the bones of what once had been, of civilizations past. She looked at a sky filled with dust and smoke, air that - despite the years, centuries, millenia that had passed (she did not know the date) had still not been cleared of the stench.
But once… it had been young.
Once she had looked at stars freshly hung in the sky, at the moon’s new face. Once she had been one of the first to feel the sunlight, to dance in the new rain. Once, she had been the second - not the first, but the second. And she had seen the world born, had seen the mists cleared away and the land filled.
And then it had been older,
And she had seen these lands peopled by infinite faces, endless races. She had seen the mountains emptied, the valleys filled, the forests adorned by others - countless others. She had seen the world be torn with strife, be cradled in peace, be torn with strife, be cradled with peace, on and on and on and on and…
Those had been the good times- times when she gained a name and walked among others.
But then it all went wrong.
Only one group had survived, and the world was changed. The forests gone, the sky filled, the oceans emptied. She had not been known - forgotten, just like the feeling of fresh sunshine on skin. There had been good times, then, but the world grew bigger, or perhaps smaller. None (or not enough) cared for the forests, for the moors, for the song of the wind or the whisper of the sea.
And then it was gone.
The world burnt itself out- tired, so very tired of everything. And little was left, save for poisonous relics and toxic shrines. And who was left? Her, and the endless trail of her wandering footsteps.
The world was empty.
And she decided that she’d had enough.