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Fionn fell silent as they entered the deserted town. It was so still here. It just felt wrong. There should be people in these houses, voices on the air. There should be the smells of cooking food and the sounds of people working. But there was nothing. The entire city was... dead.
That was it, Fionn realized. He knew what the empty town reminded him of: A skeleton. A great, lifeless skeleton, hollow and devoid of everything that made it a creature.
When Fionn was younger, he and his little brother had discovered a fallen bee's nest, abandoned and empty after the first frost. He remembered breaking it open and looking in wonder at the hundreds of empty little rooms and hallways. Together, he and his brother crafted a story about the lives of the bees who once lived there. This place was like that nest. Abandoned. Empty.
Empty. The word echoed for a moment in his mind. This city had been evacuated. His town, too, faced evacuation. Would little Bregoware share this fate? Would his home become one of the gaping skeleton-houses, left abandoned on the silent plains?
He wanted to speak, to clear the air of the heavy and deadly silence. But he couldn't bring himself to disturb the dead village. This place was like a graveyard, and it deserved respect.
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