By Jack Moore
I have been completely and utterly defeated.
The world truly does feel like it has ended. Yet, I cannot help but consider myself one of the lucky ones because I realized it. Everyone else has become pacified with the idea that fighting in itself was just as long as you hated the people you were fighting.
I deserted just under three weeks ago into a foreign land I had no chance of ever really knowing. It is a place beyond my understanding since its history goes back before my bloodline was ever a thought.
So I just wandered for days upon days until I ended up here, a graveyard of old marble sculptures lying in the luscious grass alongside a stone path beaten and worn by centuries of neglect. There were no destroyed buildings, nor roads tattered by the ongoing war. This place had to be sparse and unnecessary. My former compatriots would never have left this place untouched if the statues were important.
Figaro is the first and only person I have met after my desertion. He has been around this collapsed garden for a while. At least, that is what he told me. A small spring is nearby, and he gets by on what small game rustles the bushes and the tiny garden he started. I have no clue where he got the seeds.
I am lucky he was willing to house me. He is a good man and lives as well as an old man can. He does not talk much, though. The pastime he and I share most is silence, sitting on a stone overlooking all the remnants of the past, remnants that in their proper time would have towered gloriously over men like me.
Night has almost fallen today. Figaro has returned to the meager shack he and I call home.
I have not called anything else home but that shack. My old life is unattainable. My family, my house, my friends, my everything… I left it all behind knowing it to be corrupted. Nothing could escape the sickness that permeated everything. Call it by any name, it decays all the same.
Something as simple as human life became worthless. I realized that in my time during the third war that threatened the lives of everyone on the planet. In comparison to the other two, the logic behind it was putrid, far more than the evil that preceded it. All efforts were meant to destroy. Nothing was meant to protect or to build a better world. That better world had already arrived, and I, like everyone else, was simply supposed to accept that.
“How could it come to this?” I say to the oncoming darkness of night. “I thought everything was supposed to be fine. The future is supposed to be bright, but I don’t see a light at the end of this anymore.”
“Everyone was so impacted by everything that none of it was memorable.” Figaro’s voice calls to me. He walks up to where I sit on a gray stone. “They forgot what it meant to live. Every action meant nothing. If the end has come and this is the best it gets, what are they supposed to do then?
“Do not hate them for wandering, my friend. All they know has no true importance anymore. Statues become at best memorabilia, at worst knick-knacks. History became fantasy, because no one could understand how vital the past is. With nothing to do, it became routine to destroy.”
“All of it, is it worthless now?” I ask him. “I can see these statues in front of my eyes. They have persevered, but they have no purpose now?”
“Like all things, purpose comes from intention.” Figaro responds, taking a seat next to me. “Every one of these marvels was made for the beauty it personified. Every bit served its role to create a masterpiece meant to last forever.”
“Left alone though, they’ve fallen to ruin.” I say. “They have no purpose anymore. What they once were no longer exists.”
“Even you cannot deny that their purpose lives on.” Figaro replies. “All these statues were crafted for the glory of something greater than themselves. The people who built them did it not for themselves, but to show that there is beauty in this world worth preserving. Humanity lives upon this earth for a reason, even if we never truly feel at home here. It is divine, the art of building. To destroy these things, and make things that are meant to be destroyed, is the worst of man.”
“Like what?” I ask. “Why would we build to destroy?”
“Urns.” Figaro says. “Coffins. Burials. In a world with no reason to live, the only end is death. There is nothing else left for them to do. You know that well. How many died before you realized you yourself were searching for a place to die? Too many, I think. That is why you came here, to a garden filled with seeds of the past waiting to prosper once more.
“In my soul, I know that these creations will rise once again. Humanity will realize it still has purpose and live once again. I truly believe that.” Figaro stands and beckons me to the shack to rest. I wave to him, letting him know I will soon follow. But, for the time being, I sit and watch the sun fall behind the horizon, casting the night’s curtain over the ruined garden.
And in the night, I feel a calming breeze. The figures of the remnants are mere outlines, but in their size and grandeur, I know that they were made for a refined beauty, a sign of victory, and a note of the magnificence of creation. I do not wish to live like this. Figaro is my friend, and I was content with mere escape from the decay of my old life. But I do not want to stay here and whither away as time passes. Like these statues, made by men filled with a transcendent purpose, I want to be a mark of triumph, a man who no longer stands idle in the wake of destruction.
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