The Empire of Reimia (3)

-- Rational, -- said Marey, just to say something. He stood in silence for a while, looking at the long rows of houses on the artisans' street. Many years passed before his eyes, countless people who had lived before – a deep sea of the past under a thin, but insurmountable layer of ice of the present. Something can be seen even through the ice – the history of a wood craftsman, traces of vague times, but most of what was once reality has turned into an insignificant part of the dark depths of the water. The capital suddenly appeared before Marey as a monstrous spider. Having caught people in its sticky webs, the city devoured them by the thousands, and it itself grew fat, expanding ever more. And people keep coming and coming to feed the spider... They choose a place for themselves, thinking that they own the city. No, the city owns them all. The city will devour them, making them a part of itself, of its monstrous vastness of the past.
Not the happiest of thoughts. Marey shivered and buttoned his coat tighter.
-- It's time to go back.

They walked back in silence; Marey didn't like to pollute the air with verbal garbage, and everything important had already been said. He didn't want to think about anything; he simply walked, surrendering to the quite pleasant atmosphere of the winter evening.