The tower stood on the island just beyond the horizon, walls as smooth and white as bone. It was older than the villages, older than the towns, older than memory, older than myth. It just was, and always had been. The tower was a monument to its own silence and immensity. It signalled nothing but itself.
It had about it an aspect of smoke, as if you could see through it at times, as if it was built from the constant movement of elements that took the appearance of stone but not the substance.
At night you could only tell it was there by the absence of stars, or the half-occluded moon, and even then at times you could swear you glimpsed them still. Lights, perhaps, from impossibly distant rooms.
Or more likely just inventions in our own minds, as they try to fill in all the gaps our eyes have a tendency to leave.
__________
Notes:
1. Written in May 2023
2. When I wasn’t feeling well
3. And now a year later I’m not feeling well again
4. Which is why I remembered this
5. I expect