Inktober 2024 - 31 - Landmark

"You can't just leave like this!"

She slammed the door he'd just opened back closed, and kept her hand on it, ostensively standing in his way.

"Watch me," he answered calmly.

His eyes matched his tone as they confronted her angry glare. He didn't try to go around her yet. It was like he knew she would move eventually and had time to wait for it to happen.

"There's still some things left for you to do around here. There must be."

He sighed with melancholy.

"When I first got here, the Grand Canyon and Ayers Rock were pretty much the only things that stood out on the surface of this Earth. Maybe Mount Fuji, too. Not that I don't like the Everest, but I find it overrated. The point is, since then, I have travelled far and wide, and I feel pretty confident in saying that I have, indeed, seen everything there is for me to see."

"I can't believe that."

"Try me. I have walked the Great Wall of China back and forth a couple of times. The Colosseum and the Acropolis were complete when I first saw them, the Leaning Tower of Piza was standing straight, and the Great Sphinx had a nose. The Pyramids of Giza, Chichén Itzá, Angkor Wat, the ruins of Nasca, the Macchu Pichu, Petra: been there, done that. And in their glory days, too. The Sydney Opera house, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Saint Basil: I have selfies with all of those. I'll spare you the exhaustive listing of every place I've visited, but you get the gist. What more is there?"

"They built those; they can build more."

"Can they, though? All they've done is destroy, lately. The Lighthouse of Alexandria is just the earliest and most notable loss off the top of my head, but every time they fancy a war, they can't seem to keep it at killing each other – as if that weren't bad enough – they also have to take priceless monuments with them. And they're done rebuilding. Too much effort, I guess. Face it: this civilisation is done. They've bounced back too many times, they've grown complacent, and now they're too far gone to come up on top. The bad is overthrowing the good. I've seen it happen before, and beauty never comes out of that situation."

"Maybe something greater will take their place."

"Then maybe I'll come back at that point. If it comes. I have all the time in the universe. And so do you, by the way. Why do you care so much whether I stay or go?"

She recoiled almost like he'd physically hit her. Up until that moment, she hadn't imagined he could possibly be oblivious to the answer to this question.

"Forget it. You're right. It doesn't matter. Go, if you must."

All this time spent sightseeing around the globe, and it never even occurred to him that he might have become someone else's landmark, in the end. Was it really worth trying to explain it to him?