You wake to the sound of flowing water, a calming refreshing thing. Look around you, there is only peace, only beauty as the sun touches your face. Warming, you daren’t think of it as burning, not in this place. The trees are vibrant amber, the traces of autumn now apparent. There is a breeze caressing you lightly, alive against your skin but you scarcely realize it’s there. You look up. The clouds above are scarce and well parted – the sun’s early ascension into the sky outlines them in gold. But you are tired of scenery and wish to know more of this place. Walk to your left.

Down this rustic dirt path you begin to see people, but they are somehow different than you. It is hard to think in a place like this. They are low to the ground, barely going above your knee, and measure two cubits in height with their limbs and torsos proportional. They gather to the center of a field, a green clearing in the expanse of golden leaves that surround it. A man sits, similar to the others, yet he is golden, like the leaves, and carried on a pedestal by four others. He is fat, but you should feel no signs of judgment. He is smiling, he is radiant, but his lips are marked with signs of what you believe to be sadness, perhaps even regret, but you have no more time to ponder on this as the people are acting. They have waited for so long, and now, with defiance and throbbing hearts, they tear this man, this icon, from his seat. His clothes are torn from his person, and the skin beneath is caked with filth. With ferocity, hatred, and rage for this man formerly glorified do these beasts desecrate his being with mud and spit and you feel their rebellion inside of you; the tumult of action, the frenzied screams of resistance! You look at the fallen’s face, into his eyes. He does not scream, does not mutter even a word to what is being done, but still you notice the regret, the guilt, the shame. To your horror, he is bound and murdered, and though you wish to turn, to run away, you cannot escape that which is all around you. There is no man anymore, only these barbarous creatures with their bloody satisfaction. This was noon.

At dusk, you see these people work in their fields; they go about as if nothing at all has happened. No, they are happy; they toil next to that forest which has such a dark history in your eyes. You detect the stench of blood in you nostrils and taste the iron through your teeth. This paradise now seems a hell to you, this dream a nightmare, twisted and perverted. You believe these trees to be lies, their beauty’s purpose to trick you, to cover up its guilt with gold. They only seek to deceive you. The sun, clouds, sky; they are all now to blame, and to you nothing pure could ever dwell here again.

The moon can be seen now, not white, but sallow against that damned sky. It casts an eerie glow onto the land. The stars can be seen, though they do not shine. They are on the verge of dying; preparing to flicker out like a candle whose wick is finished. Again you feel that rage within you, and as you look you can tell it is cast by those people, now arguing over petty, useless things. Watch how they leap onto one another and murder over balls of lent, crumbs of bread, spindles, pine needles, and scraps of dog. A hunger is in these people that cannot be sated. Their parched throats wouldn’t notice the water they were drowning in; it wouldn’t be enough. The whole spectacle is evil, even absurd; there seems to be no reason for the killing that is happening before you.

You begin to notice a change in the trees. You can see them clearer now, the brilliant oranges almost shining as those beasts begin to fade away. Don’t trouble yourself with the thought of them yet. The clouds race across the sky, glowing once again. In the east, you see that sun rise once more, gloriously radiant, it drowns away all the fear from the previous night; you almost laugh at the memory of it. So cover that day with beauty again and live for that moment; pretend that those trees have a purpose, that those people will always carry the golden one happily on their shoulders. But be warned – when you strip it all away, only shame is left.