The Urban Elf

There seems to be this common misunderstanding that those who comfort and coddle and advise and encourage are somehow pathologically self-sufficient, resolute, iconic, like some great standing stone of lost function but enduring significance, immune in the eyes of observers to the monstrous relentless onslaught of time. Yet in truth, secretly, the stone feels keenly its constant diminishment, mourning every bit lost to the erosion wrought by each of the centuries' raindrops. Perhaps the knowledge of its function is lost not only to the vagrancy of witness memory, but also to the nihilistic indifference it cultivates, a response to the apparent invisibility of its plight.