Welcome to Gaia! ::

Enjoy:

The statue was erected in shortly before the war came, sweeping over the land. Its concrete grey detracted nothing from the aquiline beauty of the naked form that was meticulously sculpted. It was the only grey object in the square, a brown mismatch of cobbles below its plinth and the shops standing sentry around the perimeter of the square: monolithic and gothic. It was a bold statement at the epicentre of the city, a woman unclothed, one hand stretching up towards the pale blue heavens and the other thrown out to her side as if to embrace the world. Despite the rough texture and dull colour there was no argument: this was a thing of beauty.

Then, terrible in its wake, was the war. As if fate, should such a force exist, had lined up all the dominoes-hundreds, thousands, of small lives all interwoven in a delicate pattern-before, destructively, pushing them all down. The sky, once a bastion of innocence and wonder became threatening. The thrum and roar of engines often filled the sky, against a ragged stormy backdrop. Attack could come from above, at any moment, blasts tearing asunder years of history and culture. The clouds burned red with the reflected projections of the city alight. The people, the dead, were all stacked up in the square. A large open area, it saw them piled, carelessly, on top of each other. Men, women, children, elderly, disabled, death did not discriminate. Neither did bombs. Great flowers of flames bloomed often in the night, petals licking the lives of all beneath them, and the piles of grey faces grew more quickly than they could be buried.

Eventually came the enemy. Executing, subjugating and rarely merciful they came. A well ordered army, all dressed in grey, grey helmets, grey uniforms, grey guns. They flooded the city, often in ordered marches. When they were not, chaos they brought. The freedom, innocence, was destroyed for this new unity: unity through fear. The city was lost and a new reign established. With fire they had come and now they ruled the ashes.

And the survivors, now bowing and scraping, looked once more upon the statue, a torn and bloodied battlefield around it. They saw that they had missed, for wondrous rapture at its beauty, a lone tear rolling gently down the statues cheek, poised to fall onto the ground below. Poised, it will be forever.

A most apt observation that first one but its not something I've been made to do, none of it was contrived. It was one of the pieces of my writing that has felt the most natural, but I'll go throughit with a fine haired comb to see what made it seem stuttery.