Give Me A Piece Of Your History

count your days

How many years has it been?

The dark walls, dripping with aged water, and the dirty floor scraping at her dead skin, forced her to be here.

Not in her mind, not wondering thousand of the year away as she bends backward in time to think of a flower that no longer exists.

5? Five years, decades? Who knows! No, it's been 20 years since you last seen a country, the ant crawling upwards stream on her arm replied.

Has it really been that long?

Has it really? The dancing shadows, over the beam of light coming from the one small window, nodded in confirmation.

Yes, she was still an empire

(is she? where is she, how am I alive--

but she wears the title with a broken crown. Empire, ruler of the seas and land, where the Sun never sets. She was no Empire.

I miss them.

It's been so long. Too long. She remembers, tan uniform and the Sun on her back as she feels the sweat rolling down her back in the swelling summer. The air was fresh and she swears she can feel the grass under her fingertips.

"You need rest. This is for you."

Isolation causes so much chaos. You would be so surprised to see how far some people are willing to go, driven by paranoia, and violence. I close my eyes and think if everything that I went through.

And for a second, the second-hand smell of rotting flesh stills, and time is water. She thinks--

Happiness.

The joy.

The adventure.

The pain.

The countries.

The first time that I started expanding I was landing in China.

Although it was a long trip, riddle with diseases, and the constant rocking of the boat, I would never really forget how the water smelled of salt, always sitting under my tongue.

Men have died to get me into one of the ships, and when land finally rose from the horizon, the giddiness never faded as we crossed the rocks.

The air was different.

That's what she remembers.

When she breathes in the air in her hand, the trees subtly nice and the clouds hang over her, but here the air calm, yet chaotic.

That's when she meets a person.

She looks different.

While her men are rough and dirty. This person is tiny, their hair slick like a waterfall.

Strange.

That's what I thought when I first laid eyes on the person, far away from the setup camp. But, of course, when I tried to talk, this person didn't understand a lick of what I said.

She tried too, but the language was too strange, sounds my mouth would twist and turn to try to replicate a found she was making.

I didn't understand her very much in the beginning, but as time moved on, I could no longer sneak from my camp

It was until a decade later when my people have developed so much when we arrived again at the strange shores.

The land was the same, but the air. The air was too different, suffocating, and too chaotic.

I meet the person again, but this time I finally realized this person was a man along. This is where I learned that others like I could live as long as well.

The language was still too different, but the effort was there and sometimes I could understand what they were saying.

That's where I learned what friend was.