but all i have are images in this head of mine
the smell of ash and smoke and regolith on the wind
the texture of banners hanging from centuries-old concrete
the thud in your heart and your feet and the ground, as an RKV makes landfall a mile and a half away
the furtive, fractal movements of a civilization rebuilding itself, heads ducked to avoid the gaze of whatever fell and terrible thing moves in the shadows beyond the heliopause
the sound of papers rustling, of muttered frustration as generation after generation of archeologist and historian and forensic eschatologist ask themselves, over and over again, "why?"
the feel on your tongue of the two-word, all-caps codenames of ancient artifacts at once both more terrible and more mundane than the labels they bear
the sensation of a dietary craving for ceramic and titanium
and all of these things, i am meant to somehow weave together into a story, a narrative, a world
how can i? how can i not?
i know exactly what is supposed to happen but i do not have the words for it