Ramos gazed further ahead, all around him a sense of the perpetuity of life. His senses became sharpened as he felt his whole being Illuminated by an aura of wonder and triumph. In an Instant, he came upon the shocking vista which he had sought. Obscured by criss-crossing fronds and creepers was an entanglement of limbs and organic, twisting fibres, writhing and knotted before him. Thick trunks pushed into overlapping folds of delicate tissue, violating the intergrity of the surrounding protesting walls, which ached and strained at the power of their assailant. Life erupted before him. Ramos could almost feel the foetid darkness as he pushed forward. The humidity hung in the air like a sweet smelling fragrance, reclaiming the surrounding area in a voluminous warm blanket.
No one had looked upon what Ramos now saw for a very long time. As he paced nearer, he saw that the forest floor was littered with debris and dust, fragments of what had been forced aside. But the shrubs and creepers had already almost totally replaced the broken bricks and exploded plaster covering the ground. Massive boughs had destroyed walls, and living wood rendered dead beams useless in the rubble. Entwining branches sought sunlight through the smashed roof.
In Time, even the prismatic glass would be buried in a leafmold and compost. Already, the indefilable and mathematical box shape of the building had been eroded and broken into mounds of masonry, apparently bereft of meaning or function. The concrete floor had been turned to gravel underfoot by the forces of the frost and burrowing roots. The monolithic grey and rust of the once featureless edifice were being rinsed away by the greens and browns of the relentless plant life. Leaves shimmered in a freshening breeze where there should have been exclusion and monoculture. The random growth of trees had toppled the designed defoliant of the ones who had built roofs of slate under the forest canopy. The ones who had thought the trees could be slain and defeated. But no. In time, there would only be life.
