The Fall of an Empire, the Rise of an Ocean

Prologue

He watched it crumple to pieces before him. 

His land, his kingdom, his people. Destroyed and slewn by the invadors, by the men as white as snow who came into his country speaking tongues and bearing guns. In the courtyard of the palace, sprawled out at the foot of the window he gazed out of, bodies lie in the masses, trails and pools of blood surrounding them. In the distance, the sacred tree that had stood tall since the time of Andres had fallen, torn down by the pale men and their horses, its long, thick roots ripped from the ground and hanging up in the air like a canopy, still attatched to the trunk. In the distance through the trees, smoke rose from various fires, the burning of homes that belonged to civilians, flames that within hours would whisk the branches of pine needles and light the entire forest aflame. 

He watched it crumble to pieces, and then he fell with it.

Falling, falling, until he was one with the polished wood beneath him. 

When he woke up, he was surounded by the men that had burned his nation to the ground.