At your leisure, you may track to the first time I set down beyond the Old Town and saw the remains of their lives. That huge, incomprehensible marker: W LC ME TO MI TON KEY S. Untidy rectangles, once gardens I assumed, overrun and wild. Warped furniture thick with dust; beds, tables and chairs, useless things of that nature. Cracked and picture-less frames, the portraits most likely destroyed centuries ago. Fragments of their pasts blown through shattered windows carried to unknown places by the wind. It was fascinating for me to think of what this might have been long before us, and though I knew it was useless to you I stayed awhile, because it was necessary for me. I’d found something I hadn’t known I wanted. I’m a being of nature, that’s on the Bank, nothing new to any of you. I derive pleasure from the organic so it follows I might be curious about the natural world which came before us. That’s why I do my best to recreate what they once had to the best of my ability. Not to live as they did, obviously. That’s impossible. No; I find myself by absorbing what remains of their past.

Some of their leavings come to good use. The chair with its long curved boards instead of legs, which I found in an upstairs section and brought into the lower, has been a comfort throughout these years. Even though I have no need to sit, it’s good for contemplation. I push back; the chair allows it; the chair pushes forward in turn; I follow. The motion is extremely soothing. The light grows brighter in my cool dark section, and I push the chair into a steady rhythm. I think about the creature and what led me to behave like that. The predatory instinct doesn’t live in us, not any more, but there is something about the urge to capture the creature that’s very unsettling. I thought I was immune to the ways of those before me. Yet I didn’t let her come to me. I didn’t.

I know what I’m leading to. Bo. It’s only in these times I feel I really need it, and though it’s often little help, this brooding alone won’t get me anywhere. I push my chair, and think, until I slam my feet on the wooden floor. I walk outside into cloudless sun. Distant hawks circle overhead, broad wings outstretched, a plea. Smaller birds chatter in the trees, flitting from branch to branch. The sounds of organics are so consuming I almost forget what I’m doing. I focus, bend at the knees, and bound.