The light filtered down from the skylight, the dust of the attic spiraling in its wake, and alighted upon the dark polished wood of the carved and engraved edifice. The attic was filled with relics, the wrinkles of time showing upon the features that encapsulated a time gone by. The week before, such things were open to the air, but now the air in the attic was still, but for a slight breeze that drifted in from the stairs that lay beyond the door that sat, illuminated, in the dead center of the wall. It guarded the past from the future, but couldn't save the shrouded and huddled shapes from the dust that billowed and tumbled around the small space, nor the piercing ray of light that escaped around it's bulk, and through the small skylight.
A chair sat by itself, in a corner, representative of a tie that had long been left to itself, but for penpushers and students who's interest could never compare to that of those who could not see beyond the world of their birth.
A uniform hugs the last body that would ever fill its skin. The dusk holding it close in its hollow emptiness, a belt hanging round a waist, that missed but one leg that it used to stand. Its owner, long gone from thoughts of glory and light, beyond the veil that words imposed upon them. A cold night years earlier, papers sorted told the tale of husbands, brothers and sons returning only in the hopes and thoughts of their relatives.
A flag draped a small chest, its contents taken, one by one. Other packets and cases of glass consuming them, their importance shifted from a personal to a historic. The era becoming them far more than their owners could ever bestow.
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