As the World Dies

Centuries ago, men travelled in longboats to villages none may ever know again. They were the riders that knew no fear. They slew those people, took to their breasts those wives and daughters, cooked the livestock and smashed the homes. They set fire to the lands. Legends were told of them by their sons and their tribes, for only a man who made war for his homeland was worthy of Valhalla. Yet, even after the long journey back home, these warriors would eventually succumb to new invaders, and traitors, and patriots, until their nation fell just as the others.

The Earth is a place of birth, life, death and rebirth, so why should it come as any surprise that our nation, so dear, should meet the same fate? One day, perhaps centuries from now, our people will speak with another tongue about the exploits of our warriors as if telling horror stories of a brutal and grim past. Our roads will be buried, our homes long forgotten, our waterways spilled out over their banks, our mountains worn down, our farms long barren. Our systems of government and economy will be relics almost entirely forgotten save for some scraps leftover and hidden in museums. Our ways, and our stories and our people will be ghosts.

Only a few survivors of this (perhaps not too) distant future will yearn for these days when our empire stretched across the world, when our desires were the desires of all people. They will be the outcasts, having been trained in schools not to remember their ancestors - us. We will be forgotten. Those who choose to remember will only catch a glimpse of what we were, and they will never understand it.

As Autumn falls around us, and as the world dies, remember where you are from, where your ancestors are from. Remember the struggles and the hardships they faced. Remember their lives as if they were your own. 

As you ring the bonfire, look into those flames just as your ancestors once did. And remember them.