Ode to a dream I walked

On a cracked plain which extends as far as the eye can see, and the mind can conceive, there stand two civilizations. One is great in number and need. It lies behind a Great Wall constructed of earth and toil. Like a bowl, the wall contains a great volume of humanity, sloshing about and rising up its sides. In days scarcely remembered, the city was a hub of commerce, caravans appearing daily on the horizon. The artisans and merchants grew fat, and the rest lived peaceful lives. There was always bread and water within the Great Wall for those with a strong back or sharp wit, and the the bastion rendered the water starved marauders of the plain a distant concern. But the plain does not care for human life in all its complexities and joys, and like a river upon a rock, the dust and dry cracked humanity, and blew it away like so many motes of dust. Foreign merchants arrived in fewer numbers, more weary and tattered with the each passing season. The People of the wall, though diminished, carried on. Though growing population was, as ever, a concern, the coursing underground river which fed the city always proved sufficient, and tough clay piercing tubers were grown in abundance. What was lost in commerce was, in part, made up for by a growing mutual reliance forming between the people of the Wall, and those of the Hill, so called for the broad clay structure which rises in layers, each made up of many large haphazard rectangular edifices. With each layer, the number and size of of the clay buildings decreases, culminating in a single, humble room. Those committed to the study of history or the arcane sometimes call it the Pueblo Ziggurat, although the origins of either of these words have been lost to the dust…TBC