Death had a party

Dawn did break through the sky, peering at the world through a slit of purple bruised clouds. I would have rejoiced, but exhaustion limited my responses to a slow release of breath, a taller stretch to limber up stiff and sore muscles for the home stretch, and a long perusal of the visible landscape. Two landmarks rested like blurry lumps ahead. One seems much further away, smaller, but lighter in effect. The other, larger and darker, but veering off to the left, and a bit off the path I seemed to be walking. With my head ducked, my fur lined hood pulled tight around my cheeks and chin, I placed one foot in front of the other toward the more appealing of the two. Light over dark, even if it was more of a walk.

I came upon it much sooner than I expected. Cradled down within a gully, what I had been able to see was just the top of a much larger structure. Just one of several remains of ribbing and bases of wagons. In the whitewash of moon, they glowed like bleached bones, and I could almost fantasize an enormous beast left to rot in this valley. The wood bases had been splintered and torn, leaving only jagged rotted planks to hold up molding canvas and once strongly curved cages. Bony fingers of wood, steel and actual bone scratched at the muddy sky, pierced the soft muck and grass and reached in every direction as if trying to capture the essence of life on the wind. Scattered among the much larger ruins, like a festival treasure chest that had exploded, I could see tarps and casks, clothing and tattered remains. I refused to look too closely, only too certain that a leg or eyeless face might look back at me.

Too tired to think beyond finding a bit of shelter, I gingerly stepped around the broken half of an arrow embedded in a leather pouch. Several half rotted boards teetered against an incline of dirt and melting grass, like fingers laced with twine. I drug along a large piece of deteriorating canvas and spread it out for my "mattress". By the time birds and humanity were returning from the land of nod, I had taken the never ending staircase to the world beyond.