The Tower Room

The ornament in the corner is a game piece. Nobody here has played the game it belongs to in two thousand years. The board was melted down for wiring.

That’s how every tower room ends up: one piece left over from something people used to do for fun, sitting beside the thing that replaced fun. The stained glass has cogs in it now. It used to have saints. Before that, birds.

I’m not saying the birds were better. I’m saying I’ve watched the windows change three times and nobody alive remembers the first one, and that’s the whole trick, really. You don’t take things. You wait until nobody remembers having them.