The old stones of the city stood silently, as they had throughout long ages past, while the rain fell. An old church, empty—its vomiting gargoyles and sneering grotesques giving faces to the stones—rose with tall, pointed spires. Was this steeple what pierced the sky’s bladder and brought down this flood?
For a time, Chance stood in the thickening rain, his old eyes piercing the precipitous veil and the night-black shroud with wearied curiosity. The form of the church came to him like a shadow, a great vague something, like a worrisome, undefined shape left in the wake of a nightmare. Unlit, abandoned, window-eyes; yet the silent stones seemed pregnant—with what, Chance did not guess.
Stones remain when all else has passed. Stones have good memories. Chance, too, remembered; he too, remained as the years turned to decades. Continent as stone, he felt as old. His flesh hung from him like an ill-fitted suit. He had no energy to guess.
As dead as the stones, he mused.
Chance stood opposite the sleeping church, facing its tall doors. The din of the rain filled his ears, the burbling cascade of the gargoyles like some sort of fantastic laughter.
“Waiting for an invitation?” The voice came from over his shoulder.
Grunting, he nodded.
“Yes,” he finally said. The forced syllable had a sort of worn quality, as if the journey from the heart to the mouth were a long one and this tired word was an aging pilgrim far, far from home and far too old to ever return.
“Come in. They’re waiting.”
Tale Told 
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