“They silenced me,” I said, turning away. I forced myself to look at them and felt my face twisting itself into some sort of smile, probably a grimace. “Banished me out here hoping I would die. It is rather inhospitable. Still, you’re not banished, just lost. Nothing stopping you from finding your way back.” I watched their expressions. Confused, worried, scared. Understandable, I thought. “Just, if I could ask, do any of you know about the others? The Chamberlains got rid of me first. I don’t know what they did to my friends or if it was only me they…”
“Who are you?” one of the children asked.
I wondered what time had done to my face. I reminded myself that they were probably all born long after I was gone. Perhaps there was a damnatio memoriae, and they had never learned.
“You know of Pergos? Big city by the sea? Sometimes called the City of Night because of all the storms?”
The eyes of one of the children suddenly grew bright.
“I read about that,” he said excitedly. “Pergopolice of Night, where the heroes were born.”
“Made,” I sighed to myself.
“My uncle talks about it all the time. He says it’s a real place somewhere.”
“It is,” I said, wondering if the boy was only fooling with me. A clever child to lie so indirectly.
“Nobody believes in Pergopolice,” another child added with disgust, “only children.”
“You are children,” I said, and by those words, felt the horrible weight of time.
And if all things are past and done and all forgotten, I thought, all that I loved or hated or cared about are fallen to dust and memory, and if my name’s erased from time, my face forgotten—perhaps, just perhaps, I can return. I might end this long banishment and see my home again, though it were only ruins in a desert.
Tale Told 