(no subject)
Note: I wrote this on a whim. I apologize for the nonsense (sorry, Victor Hugo).
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When the gray dawn - smoky and silent and unnervingly cold - finally passed into the pale wash of morning, it took something with it: the certainty of the night, the anguish and the waiting and that persistent hope of a better day ahead. Motionless forms lay as if sleeping across the stained floors of the café, as if at any moment, they would rise as if nothing had changed, as if their worlds hadn't abruptly fallen into absolute darkness.
As the sunlight drenched the Parisian streets and the people awoke none the wiser to the events that had unfolded only minutes before, everything that had been dreamed of, hoped for, wanted, faded as quietly as the smoke from the still hot barrels of bayonets.
Time went on, as it has been known to do. Uncaring, perhaps, but steadfast - time itself was hardly bothered by the wishful longings and passions of a people. The world that had been centered around the great cities of Europe for centuries soon receded as people begin redefining their social attitudes, values, and beliefs and created radically different rules for a new century. Great wars shook the foundation of an ever-changing society to its roots; cultural pariahs in the form of artists, musicians, philosophers, and authors made their marks; and the immobile social and economic ways that marked centuries past gives way as a young, upstart nation began fueling the flames of promise for something more.
In those changes, in a century that accelerated at an even faster pace than the one that preceded it, came something even different, a physical change in the people themselves. There had always been that fight for equality, for freedom ever since the concepts could be grasped. Now, it comes to a head, uniting people of all backgrounds under the one single defining mark of "us" and "them".
It was in this new world that a new vision began to grow, a vision of what a new world could be. In a small, unremarkable cafe in one of the bustling cities of that youthful, fiery country, they met again. No sense of déjà vu reminded them of another time, of another fight so hauntingly similar. It may have been the universe smiling at those young revolutionaries, it may have been sheer coincidence, or it could have been something no person could ever grasp.
And perhaps one day, someday, when the dawn would break, it would be a glorious morning.
Someday soon.
---
When the gray dawn - smoky and silent and unnervingly cold - finally passed into the pale wash of morning, it took something with it: the certainty of the night, the anguish and the waiting and that persistent hope of a better day ahead. Motionless forms lay as if sleeping across the stained floors of the café, as if at any moment, they would rise as if nothing had changed, as if their worlds hadn't abruptly fallen into absolute darkness.
As the sunlight drenched the Parisian streets and the people awoke none the wiser to the events that had unfolded only minutes before, everything that had been dreamed of, hoped for, wanted, faded as quietly as the smoke from the still hot barrels of bayonets.
Time went on, as it has been known to do. Uncaring, perhaps, but steadfast - time itself was hardly bothered by the wishful longings and passions of a people. The world that had been centered around the great cities of Europe for centuries soon receded as people begin redefining their social attitudes, values, and beliefs and created radically different rules for a new century. Great wars shook the foundation of an ever-changing society to its roots; cultural pariahs in the form of artists, musicians, philosophers, and authors made their marks; and the immobile social and economic ways that marked centuries past gives way as a young, upstart nation began fueling the flames of promise for something more.
In those changes, in a century that accelerated at an even faster pace than the one that preceded it, came something even different, a physical change in the people themselves. There had always been that fight for equality, for freedom ever since the concepts could be grasped. Now, it comes to a head, uniting people of all backgrounds under the one single defining mark of "us" and "them".
It was in this new world that a new vision began to grow, a vision of what a new world could be. In a small, unremarkable cafe in one of the bustling cities of that youthful, fiery country, they met again. No sense of déjà vu reminded them of another time, of another fight so hauntingly similar. It may have been the universe smiling at those young revolutionaries, it may have been sheer coincidence, or it could have been something no person could ever grasp.
And perhaps one day, someday, when the dawn would break, it would be a glorious morning.
Someday soon.