Random Shots of a Reluctant Traveler#3: Prague

They had warned me about losing my shadow on this trip. They said he would wander away. So I tied him down to me using my shoelaces.

It broke my heart to set them free. But what could I do? The monsters were never meant to live in such a small cage. I think they would be happy living in the sewers of the city.

The wedding was a simple affair and all the ghosts attended with such solemnity.

Shush, my darling. Don't move, don't say a word. If we stand still, nobody will notice us. Don't look at their sharp teeth or their glowing eyes; I will keep you safe in my arms.

As he stood there, weighed down by all the history that surrounded him, he thought of flying away from this, from time and age and the present.

Do ancient cannons have memories of forgotten wars and battles? Do they remember the smell of smoke, burnt skin, and gunpowder as they sleep the sleep of just?

L'esprit de escalier, they call it, the spirit of the stairs. But they are such unfortunate things, really, tormented by the saddest word one could find in any lexicon: "Wait..."

The House of the Illuminati looks unprepossessing; it does not look like the place the whole world stands balanced on.

Toys are just silent memorials to dead heroes.

Can you hear it? The laughter of ancient cats sounds strangely like running water.

I visited the toy shop of the old Doctor who lived up in the castle. His marionettes always look so lifelike.

He manned the walls of his heart vigilantly, until at last he became a ghost of his own making.

These things we leave behind to mark our passage-- would people in the future see them like they see this seal? Take pictures and move on with their lives?

When the fossil-like disease first spread throughout the houses of our city, the doctors recommended using nets to prevent it from spreading. But eventually our houses died, suffocated by the suffocating stone, and we had to move to other cities.

The fortress sighed; where they used to be martial glories of soldiers marching on its roads, now there was only the lazy trample of tourists. Old soldiers never die indeed.

He shivered. He could never get used to the breaches of his reality, where one world melted into another.

"Help me!", he cried out to the people, finally wandering out of the maze. And with the last of his strength gone, he faded away unnoticed.

At first I spent my days of imprisonment looking through the bars at the world passing me by. But then they decided that the sight of my incarceration was bad for business so they covered my cage with a bamboo fence imported from the Far East.