Judgment

When the battle was over, a ghost approached me on the field of corpses. Laid a cloth. As though to display trinkets for sale. I looked away. The bodies of the dead were rising from their pell-mell stillness. I felt myself pulled by whatever animated those fortunate souls, some call or music. “Don’t get distracted,” the ghost snapped. I looked back at him. “Is the world good or bad?” he asked. I looked out upon the dead, and the light in their astonished eyes as they returned to the world just as they were leaving it. “It is both.” The ghost asked again. “Is the world changing or is it staying the same? “Yes,” I answered, “yes, absolutely.”