Empires

"What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one… There's good money in empire building. But, there's more in empire wrecking."

No, maybe most don't.

And maybe that isn't such a bad thing at all.


After all, I've seen more than a little of that wreckage first hand, watching the last of my kind and kin get caught up into slavery. We were just cattle to be used and discarded in just that order. What happened in between was never as clear. For some it was just impossibly hard to bear, the lucky ones at least. For the rest? Well, it just wasn't that nice.

They used you until you were clean done in. And all along there was the knowing that there would be no one to cry over the pieces of you that were left.

We were traded for, and bartered, money and goods trading hands even as ours were tied up tight. Their wealth and status lifted, but we stooped, and crawled, and less brave things in the dark of the night. There's a moment when you forget what standing tall's like, even though you can never pick out exactly when that is.

Probably because you don't want to know.

So sure, maybe most people don't personally know what it's like to take another living thing, a whole host of lives and destroy them. Maybe they deal in the smaller things like white lies and fumbled emotions.

That's ok.

As far as I'm concerned? The less that know, the better.