The ship that sailed our empire to safe harbors is now poked with holes. An impending doom awaits us. For now, the knocks of destruction are light. It won’t be long when these bangs would get louder and harsher until finally destruction would barge in and drown us whole.
One of the soldiers of the empire trespassed into the territory of the Forbidden Lands. Drunken soldiers with the stench of victory intoxicating their heads are nothing but fools. All boundaries blur in their jumbled up minds. Rules are forgotten, only to land, not one, but all in trouble.
The night is loud with rich drumbeats and New Year celebrations but within me is an empty silence. I am a scream that has lost its way, a muted scream. Deadly as a sniper and stealth and silent as a predator attacking its prey. In a jiffy, my existence has turned into a black hole, an empty vacuum where I reside.
There is a certain external force that is working as a razor sharp knife, butchering our strength, our empire, our pride in front of our own eyes. The destruction spins on an axis of blind folly or miserable acts committed by drunks. But there is nothing much that we can do to save us. For there is nothing that the sense can do to conquer and quell the senseless. We are being held back by invisible strings. Ultimately, doom smiles at the other end of it all.
Lately, reports have made way to my ears that strange trinkets are being noticed in the palace. One such trinket was tugged hastily under the mattress of my royal bedchamber. Some were spotted in the vases that line that staircase to the assembly hall. Outside the palace, there are more strange sightings.
I have also discovered black threads at random spots. These are just indications of dark magic slicing its ways into our lives. I have begged doors of many shrines for mercy. I have gone as far as to invoke the djinns to save our sinking empire. But nothing works, maybe voodoo is an unbeatable force of destruction.
An ancient tale ringed a bell in my mind just a couple of days back. It came to me somewhere from the deep recesses of my mind, hinged and trapped in some dark fold of my childhood memory when my mother used to sing the praises of the then Queen and narrated the destructive tales of the past.
Her words echo loud and clear, “Destruction is not the ending, it is the beginning of a new era, of new buds blooming into fresh flowers with new scents.” She always expressed her feelings under layers of metaphors. It’s only now that I comprehend that she spoke about the rise and fall of kingdoms, of the end of one kingdom leading to the birth of another from the ashes of the dead.
Her wisdom of age may have shown her the miracles of new life and beginnings, she may have witnessed kingdoms crumbling but I have seen nothing. Nothing compared to what is going to unfold now.
