It's a derelict space; a land of bygone wealth and broken stones. You meander along the laid path, letting the rain pelt you as the clouds pass by.
It's peaceful. Even magical, maybe. Just a little bit. And as the pitter patter of the waterdrops speed up on your umbrella, you close your eyes and see it as it once was, bustling with people and furs and nobility, with children and coal and bales of hay. With injustice and slavery and prejudice. You see a prince pass by, and a maid sweap the hearth. You watch as a mother quietly nurses her babe. You breathe in the wonderfully cold air, and add a fairy or two to the scene in front of you. Goblins underneath the grate. Ghouls in the highest tower. Gryphons descending from the skies to feast on the grazing sheep below.
And you smile. Because you can still see that world, the past one and the magical one. It's still in your brain, in the deep recesses of your mind. Age has not taken it away from you. Yet.
You sidestep a sprite that's sticking its tongue out at you. Step carefully over a toadstool house. And then your brother calls you from the bottom of the hill and you accidentally leave the place you were just in. But he's calling you to a perch on the cliff with a view that takes your breath away.
And as you stand there, with your brother, with your family, in a fog that the worlds would envy, you remember, again, that sometimes the real world is even better.
Sometimes.
(Quick! Look! That dragon is waving hello!)
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TEXT: JOHARA ALMOGBEL
ART: AZIZ