Work Text:
The Lion lies dead
Its skin turned to rust
Corroded by the gentle touch
Of a thousand rain drops
The Fire in its belly
Naught but dust.
Once a century and a half past
It charged; dominant over
A territory of hills and fields and forest
Its belly fed by coal
Its metal tracks scarring the landscape
Belching steam
In high pressure, whistling roars.
But that century has past.
Now the Lion lies dead.
One of the later extinctions
From the fallout
Of the collapse of that predator Empire.
Sleeker,
More efficient predators were born
From the Empire’s corpse.
Their world
No place for a Lion of Steel.
And so, withering
Under rust and neglect
The Lion lies dead.