Straightening his head, the wanderer only chose to do what he had been doing.
To remember.
To remember each mural, irrespective of what he thinks they mean. If living in Beret had taught him anything is that art contains as much history as the anecdotes of the survivors holds. Both invaluable to a future we cannot see.
He chooses to remember them as shown. Not as he interprets them.
Taking a long deep breath, he proceeded. His footfalls echoed. Every echo hitting his ears at the exact moment he took his foot off the ground, the very one that had made the sound.
The wanderer stood in the next archway. He looked up, left and right in that order.
The three murals showed an epic war, creation of a world and the little layer of tears becoming a sea of tears that enveloped the little girl too. She was surrounded by beings born of the tears. Lands floated above them as their shadows were cast below.
He once again walked ahead.
This archway had three murals like the last. Mural on the roof a war between giants who could create worlds, mural on the left contained a different world formed by the man, and the mural on the right showed the little girl tearing her own hair off.
Hair strands fell down becoming a layer in the empty canvas. The windows on the left and right murals repeated in their own fashion. While new windows showed up with the worlds that were in the previous mural.
Except the world made of little girl's tears had tiny tears flowing out of it into the new world being made of hair strands.
At the same time, the little girl never seemed to lose hair.
Wanderer wandered ahead by taking sixteen full strides reaching the middle of the next pathway.
The left mural shone in his eyes in pure monotone colour of black. He had noticed it right after the worlds before had been burned asunder to ruin that the white colour vanished again.
What this mural held was pretty simple. Another new world. Completely looking and feeling to be different from the previous yet all so similar. The shapes of beings different each time yet understandable since every being drawn on the canvas showed what movement each could do individually.
The mural on the right however had been filled to the brim with hair strands. Still the little girl was in front of it snatching her hair off her head. Beings born of the hair tried to comfort her. Coming close to her as they attempted to hug her. But it also showed some beings getting undone.
'Did touching her undo them? It did not happen in any of the previous ones. The beings from previous murals could touch her. So why this?' Wanderer thought of the peculiarity. He did feel a sudden hotness spreading through his overcoat.
He looked up too. "The war continues."
He moved along to the next.
Left mural again showed the man having crafted most of a new world while the previous ones were present in one of the windows existing on the canvas.
The mural on the roof held the giants. 'Maybe they are gods too?' Fighting each other for unknown purposes.
Mural on the right, it held a heart-wrenching scene. The little girl breaking off her nails and tossing them down forming a layer of it in a blank canvas holding only windows to her previous worlds.
"Could she even be a god? I am doubting if these two are even gods. Let alone the ones on the roof." He disputed his recent thoughts. 'Just remember them as it is. After all a mural is just a mural.'
"But then again didn't the priests in that cathedral in Ashtrim say that the Lady of Repentance does not call herself as a god? Then what about the Master of the Realms?"
Wanderer felt the oddity as perplexing but rather than thinking of it more. He looked ahead. At the shimmering shroud of the human-like being walking ahead of him far away. He was still visible enough to not be considered as barely there.
Nodding to his want to know why the being appeared and why the castle was there in the desert, he went after it entering the next part of the same corridor.
Looking at the left mural, he witnessed the man building a new world again. 'He is getting faster.' The world had advanced far beyond what he had seen in any previous ones.
Glancing at the right mural, he only saw the little girl surrounded by layers upon layes of her broken nail while beings and creatures formed of it tried to reach her. Try to calm her. And yet again be broken apart as they reached near her.
Windows on the left and the right murals had glimpses of the previous worlds.
Wanderer looked down at the black canvas of the floor. No cracks on it.
He looked up and puzzled. 'There's a white oval like an egg? A large one at that.'
Indeed there was one right in the middle of the mural. It towered well over the most giants. And it was white, oval and cracked everywhere. Like as if the oval was formed by putting in the small pieces of white together.
Some of the beings who had come from the cracks tried to reach it. Others cut them down to reach it themselves. Everyone fighting to reach it.
"But when, no, who made it?"
He saw no sign of who made it. Every mural he had seen till now had someone there that made something. But the white cracked oval? It seemingly held no creator.
His eyes stayed hinged on the roof while he involuntarily took many steps to cross into the next archway. There too the roof mural held the white oval and beings fighting each other with weapons the wanderer did not understand.
Mural on left held another new world. One with things slightly having more shine than any before. Windows displayed the previous just as seen in any murals of the left. The ones that had been destroyed showed glimpses of the remnant destruction.
Mural on the right held a different perspective. The little girl now crouched in the center of the canvas. The windows leaked something or the other out into the canvas. Like tears, hair strands, blood, leaves and so much more. Each forming a fused layer in several places of the canvas.
Yet, the striking feature of the mural was the absence of emotion on the little girl's face.