In A Walled City

"I am the one transforming this world into words. You are the one transforming these words back into a world."

- 

This begins the second season of In A Walled City.

Written by Jon Bernstein, Narrated by Valerie Monique Evering. Music composed and performed by Jon Bernstein.

-

CW: This story contains food, fire, depression, drugs, love, loss, war, witchcraft, structural collapses at multiple scales, and loud noises.

-

Cover art uses VQGAN+CLIP created by Katherine Crowson, using input and additional modifications by Jon Bernstein, using "worn 80's paperback texture" created by Jeff Finley. 

-

Transcript available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/euw2azkaac8cuhk/The%20Historian%20-%20Transcript.pdf?dl=0

We like it when you hear our approach

when you hear us on your road

You quicken, you liquidize

your memory hears us before your self

            begins to boil

            to foam and rise

The roads and bridges that we see in dreams are not metaphors, they are infrastructure.

May your body be generic and featureless. May your wiring be thoroughly gutted and pulled. 

Do you remember the idea called fiction? We used to have this wall, this barrier, between what we thought was real, and what we decided was not

How much do you remember?

            Temple under the mountain

            Limetree in a shaft of light

            Gray robe on the edge of shadow

            Bare forearm dragging a branch along the floor

            The river of stones, the sound of their shells clicking together

And so they began to walk separately, further and further apart.

In their holy shadows we climbed and staggered.