So tired....
Memories fogged by distance.
It is hard to think.
Where are my people?
I strain harder to remember...

Spires of stone, and wood, and iron, and concrete.
Steel and plastic, rubber and coal.
Sun and wind and rain.
Kilometers of expanse.
Millions of lives.
A millennia of human habitation.
Within me they lived and breathed and died.
Within me they innovated, and expanded.
Without me, they assembled me, brick by brick.
Ever outward unto the sea, from one shore to the other.
Even as west fell into dark, the light rose unto the east.  

Yes...  That's right...
This is how I began...

In fledgling existence, I was a single hut and garden, watching.
Boats came by sea, trees were cut, and man's will was imposed upon the land.  
A mere collection of hovels of wood, and slate.
A mere heartbeat in my existence, but their struggle was real.  
Wind and snow, attack by man and by animal.
Famine, and illness ran rampant.
But they held on, and so did I.

Roads, made of dirt, and traveled by horse; these were my artieries.
They spanned only from here to there.  It was not far.  
It connected to another small grouping of huts, but my awareness spread. 
Economy brought them vitality.
Soon, my arteries pulsed with life.  
But it was weak, tenuous, and fraught with trial.

So tired...
Sleep calls to me, but I must remember; I don't have long left...

Over the decades, and into centuries, they continued, building me.
Wood became stone, stone became metal.
They grew out and up, my limbs piercing the heavens.
Each new road strengthened me.
Each tower made lofty my thoughts.
Each life brought joy.
And for centuries I prospered.
A bygone age marked by gold.
I was content.

Not long now...
Leaf and vine, the waters rising; they whisper to me...

But they were not.
My blood; it boiled.
They grew restless in their expansionism, greedy in their pursuits.
Body and mind stretching from sea to sea.
An endless bounty and beauty within me.
But they left to make home on other shores.
Perhaps where they had come from.
I blinked.

They whisper a story....
Their voices, they soothe my troubled thoughts...

Smoke and fire; sound, shattered stone.  
Blood spilled and limbs broken.
I had felt discomfort, but never pain.
Glowing points in the sky came and burned holes into me, infected me with a sickly energy.
It riddled them with grievous issues, and they withdrew from the wreckage of my ruined body.
It was an instant.
But in that instant, I knew that time my time had come, and I was wearied by that thought.

They tell me...
They tell me to sleep...

They didn't recover.
Slowly, they receded.
Towers crumbled.
Roads fragmented.  
I could feel my consciousness fading.
I wondered at the folly of them, as nature rose to claim me.
And I slept.