Temperance
I looked out over the vast city before me, shimmering buildings blending into the clouds. A warm sunset painted the skyline a dirty shade of gold, like a woolen carpet of thick sunbeams had been tossed atop the buildings. The flood of beauty and the twilight of the moment was not lost on me, the hot glowing day still flickered behind my eyes, and the warmth of the sun was still seeping through my skin down to my bones. The clouds dotting the highest heavens began to go purple with night.
Over one hundred meters of cold rock and metal lay empty beneath my feet. The sunlight’s retreat was imminent, its caress warming only my ankles and shoes. My single and solemn figure stood silhouetted against a burning horizon.
The sun turned the day over to the moon.
Turning from the window, I looked towards the dark space ahead. The room had begun to lose its color to the night. The table where the day had unfolded unto and then eventually closed upon shifted from a charming and rich brown into a muted and drab shade. The sun had shone onto the faces of those of us who had gathered here in the morning, and at my departure the space would be left senseless in the night. Our day had been filled with the flushed red faces of temper, matched by the cool blue, sharp green, and careful brown of cunning eyes, and it resolved under the solemn blacks and whites of tailored formality. Now, all hung suspended in dull grey eve. The room was no more sacred than the dry air within it. To those of us who gathered it was only a place, hardly an idea, and certainly nothing significant. There was nothing more than five sides, a table, and chairs.
The distance to the far wall stretched, and my eyes tore the room in half. The table weighed down my vision, as if it were the monolith horizon that swallowed the sunset. A universe separated me from where I would go. In the space between, specters of our gathering tormented my mind. Ghosts of the day’s events danced around and across the table, heated debates had flared, the rare agreements emerged, and a constant challenge had pounded through my bones. The table pulsed with the power that had infused into it today, its wood hummed with alien life, far removed from the kind that once flowed through its leaves and bark.
A single second of hesitation pressed into my brow.
No. This place was not sacred, despite what others said. There was nothing more than six sides, tables, and chairs. This was a place of work and labor. Someday, another floor would be built, and a higher peak reached. The sun would shine a degree brighter, for a dozen seconds longer.
The final rays of light departed the room as the shadow which blanketed the city cooled it with the first touches of the night. The table sat lifeless, the chairs empty, the day’s power faded.
Far in the distance, one hundred meters below me yet still atop the solid earth, two figures walked towards the city, casting only one shadow.
