Work Text:
I want you to imagine yourself standing in an empty room.
The only thing in the space, apart from yourself, is a tall, carefully engraved and skillfully painted vase. Intricate designs mark its surface in a vibrant display of subtle-yet-stunning artistry, crawling up it’s body and wrapping around a thin and delicate neck. Days and months and years of careful brushwork are evident in the precisely crafted item that sits across from you, it’s soft, warm exterior beckoning. Welcoming.
It sits on a podium. And as you watch it, it begins to fall.
You want to save it, to catch it, but you don’t know how. You could run to the podium and try to stop it from shaking, but no, it’s too far gone at this point to halt the inevitable drop. You could dive to the floor below, but you’re too far away. You shout for someone else to help you, but no one is there.
So you stand, and you watch, as ideas about how to save the masterpiece drift across your mind. But soon, too soon, before you have even reacted, it shatters. Clay connects with concrete and there is absolutely nothing you can do, because it’s too late. Because it was always a lost cause, broken before you even saw it falling. Perhaps you were too slow, too foolish, too busy observing the catastrophe to stop it.
And now it’s gone.