The skies today are plum coloured in the night, like the heavens are bloodied with War. A storm is on the horizon, they say, by the docks over the lowlands. The peasant children have been playing outside less as the chill winds blow. This is strange so early on in the year. The Gythh farm has been completely threshed, and the church waived its cess for the year - the peasants have taken to love their Lord when they are given plenty.
The Mayor's confession was naught more damning than any old lord's. Women and wine, frivolity, and the occasional man in the old townhouse guesthalls. My place is not to judge, but this is a man of too many vices to lead so virtuous a town.
But his next words were what trouble me. He spoke of of a sea of black coming down from the mountains and unto our houses, washing away the wattle, chipping at the stone mills, tearing the flesh from bone in the living.
'It was a vision in green, Father. Like watching paintings spring to life in polished green stone, striated and striped with darker shades of the same damned strokes. I felt as if I was standing before it, and it's light was darkness and it's shadow was light and nothing was as it should be. But all through this that damned sea ate and ate and there was nothing there but the bones of children and the wood of churlish little houses, standing like naked skeletons in the dark. '
He had turned to me, opened the booth door, and sprang out. When I came out of mine, he looked frightened.
'This is the dream of an overworked mind son. Not a vision of heaven or hell. There is nothing you need to think at length about.'
The Mayor scuttled off after this, and my thoughts since then have been beset with unrest.
YOU ARE READING
I found the journal of a Church pastor from the 1200s. The Pied Piper is real.
Short StoryA reddit story written by u/potato_on_puberty about a very interesting take on the Pied Piper, a famous story based in Hamelin, Germany. I hope you enjoy!
