On Dwarves I. Time of life and hunger.


    A fortress has survived. Its roof carved basalt, its floor bedrock. Its doors sealed; its people locked. High above it are openings, mouths of dim light for a few hours a day, indistinguishable from the stone at night. A path connects it to the outside world; on the surface obsidian statues linger unmaintained and unworshipped.


    Inside, the halls are still lit by torches, the houses still lit by hearths. The workshops still work, the forges still burn. There are those who carve stone and those who weave cloth, those who buy it and those who steal it. There are still saloons, taverns and councils, they still meet there. There are still people, who live.


    They marry, but only when the time comes. They wait even longer to have their children. And still more they wait, when an important decision has to be made; more than one died waiting. If you wanted to make them hurry then they will only hurry to shut you up.


    Their thick legs hurry through the streets, there are no longer crowds to slow them down. Their halls are very wide, not because they used to be full, but because of the satisfaction of the agora without horizon, the impression of generational work; the ultimate sacrifice was not prompt death, it was to work a lifetime.


    But when a sacrifice includes the words life and death, it is made for those who endure, for those we beget to replace us. Before, yes, but now... now one did not live in the same world, now it was the sacrifice, the expense, the waste, that is made for the dying, when one knows, for certain, that there will not be a worthy tomorrow, and then, there will not be.


    Because the Sun was always hidden by clouds, because our allies had committed suicide, starting wars when there was not even time to arrange the next harvest. Because our enemies had hidden themselves under the sierras and mountain ranges. Because we did too, when we accepted that it was the only alternative that would preserve us.


    Every colony was abandoned, every road too. Every brother on the surface was selected to stay where he was, off the mountain. The councils initiated debate and consensus won. All the brothers inside the gates would stay, all the cousins would leave. The councils wielded their arguments, the cousins were tall and fast, the surface their place of origin and the food under the mountain was limited and not suitable for them. It helped that the cousins had no representation.


    All patrols would come back, garrisons would return, delegations would be called. All pacts would be broken, promises would be abandoned, enterprises would be sold. All friends would be forgotten, hatreds would be forgiven, values would be given up. Everything would be given up, except life.


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    Such betrayal and such abandonment could not be forgiven, and so it was waited, time the healer cured. There was no longer anyone to reproach us, no one was left to claim revenge, the criminals and their responsibilities had died in bed, their children after them and then their children''s children. Get lost adding generations and then with ours you will find yourself, still no one has knocked on the door to ask for explanations since then nor is it expected.


    Indeed, there was no time for the next harvest, at first cousins came asking, then demanding, the former received no answer, the latter did, coming from cannons and crossbows. Then whole armies coming, the former armed and armored, the latter starving and in rags. None could enter, not a single one penetrated, the foundations too solid, the gates too thick, the arms too weak. They went to seek another place to raze, on the spot multiplying, as the hosts of the starving increased.


    Our enemy also came, afflicted now by the same problem as the cousins. Among them only violence reigned, with a dash of the worst kind of intelligence. But now it was not so, there was no one to plunder, no one to rob, no looting, no boarding, no time for warriors, but for vagabonds, vagrants, beggars. They too had no answer, but they found another entrance, and their eyes see in the dark, they can eat anyone else and each other. They survived.


    Thus, the door to the deep was also closed, the pits sealed and the wells collapsed. Still the most pathetic war was fought, the most desperate, one so miserable that no ancestor would be satisfied. The enemy was weak, weak as never before, brainless, shameless, desperate. They dug holes with their hands, but were collapsed. They charged together and held hands, but died and failed. Morale could not hold, armed with stones and sticks. In the end they fled, into the deep, even knowing that others awaited them there.


    Never, since the last years of our grandfathers'' grandfathers'' grandfathers'' grandfathers, has anyone come to the gates, never has anyone sent any more messages, never have they attacked, from above or below. This circumstance has changed a lot, nobody goes to the battlements anymore, nobody studies to be a diplomat. The knowledge about cousins and enemies, about distant brothers, about lost plants and animals on the surface, are a thing of legend and astonishment, like any fascination impossible to verify, before the silence of the ages.


    Such is our time, silent, absent and monotonous. No change in circumstances, no change in laws, no future, only the present. Now there is no different thing in sight, it is clearly not a time for heroes. Perhaps only curiosity, because a lost world is a great catalyst of this side of nature. Add to this, youth, then add the loyalty of small groups of friends or perhaps just acquaintances. Finally, let''s mix with the second part of the apocalypse that preceded us, also ready to succeed us.


    They say that through the great west crack you can see the moon for a few minutes, let''s go tonight, now that the guards leave the gap where the river, let''s say that only to drink wine we went. For a moment the light of the luminary illuminates a fissure that to the black depth leads. Shall we hear above the wails of the abandoned cousins or below those of the expelled enemies? I do not know if we will dare to hear it.