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Alas,
the vicissitudes of life are evanescent like the evening wafture, and
the time of Havean glory has faced it's final inhibition - for brine
shall be the last to sing our swan song. Once in my quarter market, I
saw a sibyl imprisoned in a cage of godsweave. I queried her: "Sibyl,
what is to happen?", and to my surprise she replied: "Inundation,
compleat and inescapable shall be preceeded by your first fall of a
white strand". On this I pondered, but my thoughts were most cruelly
stifled by the slave-taker, who had heard the telling, the mordant
portent, and had begun to assault me with his stick! Obviously, his
intention was to belie the propecy by beating me to death, and thus I
ran as only an urchin may to evade his fate.
Ten cycles have
passed since the sibylline malisons were muttered. After the decadence
of the Black Rain, which whisked away the colours of that wonder we
once called radiant, leaving it anaemic and miasmal, many have fled,
but alike those of the patrician caste who dream high in their spires
of safety and luxury, I stay. My hair yet retains it's hue, but the
despair I have harbored over that divination so long ago fills my heart
as ashes fill the hearth where once a great fire has died. The
watchtowers of that age of dynasties long past take part in my solitary
vigil, as I abide nigh the accumulations on the eastern shore, awaiting
endlessly for that last wave that shall claim the city for it's own.
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