On the Scale of Elephants

This morning I was in a small boat, a makeshift raft of sorts, floating in a silty sea. The water slapping the sides of the boat was a sludgy yellow, the sky bleached of colour.  I was in a sulphorous valley, sunk beneath reality. There were ruins sunk into the sea, towering walls of concrete casting shadows that spread to the horizon. These were the ugly survivors of a past world, and disappointed with their fate, they glared at all below them with a vitriolic menace. Lumbering under the concrete monsters were creatures of a whole different material. They were giant, elephantine, tortoises wading through the watery caramel ocean, with legs so long their feet trod the dusty sea floor, with their hard-shelled bodies seeming to bob along the surface. Watching them through my sleepy, poisoned eyes, I wondered when the last time they had seen their own feet had been. 

There was a man with me, I had a feeling he was bearded, but I could only see him through the corner of my eye, perhaps he was not there at all. He was telling me that these tortoises had destroyed the earth, that they had existed since prehistoric times and were nearly the only beings alive today. 

"You and I, of course, don't count. We don't exist at all, never have," he said. I tried to think about this, but felt my mind haze over. It is quite difficult, after all, to conceive of one's nonexistence. He said it wasn't the tortoises' fault, they were just so clumsy, and at their size they couldn't help knocking over buildings, unsettling venomous pits in the earth's skin that wiped out civilisations and ecosystems with mysterious, ghostly coloured vapours. 

The poor monsters had sad faces: great watery eyes framed by drooping wrinkled skin, their heads swinging low on heavy, trunk-like necks. It was easy to believe that these creatures did not die, and had seen every atrocity the world had to offer, through all the histories. I could only feel sorry for them, wandering through the wasteland they had created.