Hornblower Fic: Signal Tower
Written for the WILLIAM BUSH ALPHABET SOUP CHALLENGE
Word Count: 229
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit
Notes: Not exactly inspired by Thomas Cole’s painting Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower since I first saw the painting after writing this, but there are so many similarities it’s a little disconcerting.
On a windswept coast in Spain, near the bay of Rosas, lie the crumbled and blackened remains of a signal tower. Alone, it commands a brilliant view of the Mediterranean, watching the endless horizon and waiting for the day when the sea shall give up her dead.
That stump of a tower dominates the sky, as if defying the world to speak against its ruined and crippled condition. For, a closer inspection reveals a proliferation of scars upon the aged stones that belies the neat masonry of the structure’s base and foundations.
But it is the stones alone that bear testimony to a great battle from a bygone era that has long since faded from memory. As the sole surviving evidence of a valiant defense and a most tragic conclusion, the tower posses a distorted splendor, a most singular beauty.
Abandoned, nature took over. The grass grew long and wild while creeping ivy enveloped and engulfed parts of the tower. Rabbits and deer graze in the nearby valley, which in summer is carpeted with poppies. But when December comes, everything is cold and grey.
He who formed part of its history may have passed on, but throughout the decades, centuries and eons to come, the tower will remain, standing resolutely against the forces of nature and the erosion of time, a final monument to the glory of his memory.
Word Count: 229
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit
Notes: Not exactly inspired by Thomas Cole’s painting Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower since I first saw the painting after writing this, but there are so many similarities it’s a little disconcerting.
On a windswept coast in Spain, near the bay of Rosas, lie the crumbled and blackened remains of a signal tower. Alone, it commands a brilliant view of the Mediterranean, watching the endless horizon and waiting for the day when the sea shall give up her dead.
That stump of a tower dominates the sky, as if defying the world to speak against its ruined and crippled condition. For, a closer inspection reveals a proliferation of scars upon the aged stones that belies the neat masonry of the structure’s base and foundations.
But it is the stones alone that bear testimony to a great battle from a bygone era that has long since faded from memory. As the sole surviving evidence of a valiant defense and a most tragic conclusion, the tower posses a distorted splendor, a most singular beauty.
Abandoned, nature took over. The grass grew long and wild while creeping ivy enveloped and engulfed parts of the tower. Rabbits and deer graze in the nearby valley, which in summer is carpeted with poppies. But when December comes, everything is cold and grey.
He who formed part of its history may have passed on, but throughout the decades, centuries and eons to come, the tower will remain, standing resolutely against the forces of nature and the erosion of time, a final monument to the glory of his memory.