It's just past midday, but it barely looks like it.
The sky isn't particularly cloudy, but despite the sun being completely unobstructed, it doesn't seem very interested in shining its light on this misplaced village.
Calling this somewhat endearingly small town “misplaced” might sound a little harsh, but spending years of your life wandering these ever-empty streets that never lead anywhere, the only impression you can be left with is that this village itself must be out of place.
“Who would think of starting a community all the way out here, so far from everything else?”
Those are the kind of thoughts that inevitably fill my mind, as I watch the seasons come and go—the only thing that ever changes here.
Of course, I’m old enough now to understand what really happened.
Apparently, that big, empty place on the cliffside that I used to sneak off to and play in as a kid was once a very active quarry—I don’t remember what kind of stone it was that was being, but it had a prolific enough output to spawn an entire village by itself on this otherwise barren hillside. There were dreams of wealth, stability, a nice life in a nice house, those kinds of dreams that are all too easy to believe in, even with just the slightest hint of hope. Someone must have bungled the assessment of the area, though, because it only took a few decades for the quarry to be forced to cease activities completely.
Perhaps now satisfied with the nice life they had led until then, or maybe disillusioned by its early conclusion, a lot of people left for the city.
So, pretty soon, this village built on a dream grew quieter and quieter.
Not that I ever knew it as anything but a quiet village.
Even the canal that ran by the foot of the hill had dried up long ago, as if it too had given up on this village.
In this misplaced town, this place itself was particularly out of place. Even though this was just a small, struggling community now, it still used to be bustling, and a lot of development had taken place in a short amount of time. Since the municipality budget sank, the village was set on a path of inevitably rampant disrepair, but the houses and the streets still managed to maintain their charm—at least for the time being.
This dry stream of concrete and overgrown ivy, on the other hand, was pretty unsightly.
I guess that this was never built with the idea that it would ever be seen in such a state, so there was never much consideration for how the hastily poured, deformed lumps of concrete would appear if the canal was ever to lose its primary function.
The houses that relied on it for water are empty, and the fields are overrun with wild grass. Its primary function, now, it seems, is to give loiterers like me an uneven path to meander through when the weather is nice, and a bit of shade to light a cigarette under.
“I’m out of smokes, though…”
Without thinking, I threw away a half-empty pack just over a week ago, and I was still living through the consequences now.
All I could do was breathe out an empty sigh as I leaned over the rusty fence.
Back then, I was rambling something about ending things—not anything as drastic as it sounds, I was just looking for a conclusion to a particular chapter of my life.
But, maybe it’s the curse that was placed on this village—nothing ever seems to come to a clean-cut conclusion, here. The history of this town stopped being written before I was even born, and yet everything, everyone here is still frozen in time. Those that moved on have left already, and those that can’t leave can’t seem to move on. Everything about here gets older by the day, and nothing new ever comes to fruition.
This village isn’t a place for dreams anymore—but it refuses to wake up all the same.
