Analogue Sheep : Vol 8 : The Parliament
We were never in charge, not really.
We watched.
We watched you crawl from the caves, all soft skin and sharp voices. Watched you discover heat in the belly of stone, watched the first ones strike spark from flint with such trembling joy.
We watched you fall in love with fire.
Your world got louder.
You built things that whirred and smoked and spat. You fenced off the wind and told it where to go. You tamed light, captured time, turned seeds into scaffolding and ash into currency.
And still, we watched.
We never envied you.
Not the towers. Not the gold. Not the numbers.
But we remembered.
Long before your cleverness, we were here. Picking through carcasses. Finding ways. We carried the bones of giants in our beaks, made homes where no one else dared.
You were always in such a hurry.
We always knew how to wait.
In the early days of your forgetting - when the world hummed with digital lullabies and your machines whispered back to you in perfect mimicry - we gathered on rooftops and wires, heads cocked sideways.
You didn’t notice.
We were already planning.
Not to interfere. Not to save you.
But to survive you.
Again.
The fall wasn’t a bang. Not like the old stories.
No comet. No war.
Just quiet.
Like someone unplugging a party.
One minute, your lights sang. The next, they didn’t.
And then the soft ones starved.
The angry ones broke each other’s ribs.
The clever ones, the real clever ones, wandered into the forests and tried to speak with trees again.
Too late.
We found the fields first.
Wheat taller than memory. Grain stores cracking open to sky.
We brought news to the others.
The Parliament met in the empty shell of a supermarket.
Nestled between expired packets and ceiling tiles.
We spoke of maps. Wind patterns.
Of where the wolves had returned.
Of where the bones were freshest.
I travel now.
Wings old, but steady.
They say I’m the last of the Rust-Flecked.
That I’ve seen more than most.
I tell the young ones stories - of what came before. Of the sun-catcher cities and the talking glass, of your airships and appetites.
They peck the dirt and pretend to listen.
They don’t believe me when I say you taught us things.
Not in words.
But in warnings.
Sometimes I visit the last perch.
The old bronze man, still pointing west.
His name long gone. His face worn smooth.
I land on his shoulder, the way I did when the world still buzzed,
and whisper:
“They gave it all away. For comfort.
For speed.
For control.”
And the wind whistles in reply.
We were never your pets.
We were your witnesses.
We remember.
