text: Hi, this is my first piece of writing in about 5 years, so i would love any comments / feedback! This was inspired by a painting by Jonathan Viner : "Watchdog" \ The wind nipped at her hair and slapped the midnight strands across her face as she looked up at the façade of the decaying building. Once imposing, its panes now rattled, cowering at the threat of the yelping wind. One of the windows lay in a shattered heap at the bottom of the stairs, a jailer no more. The mutts quivered a little around her ankles. They whimpered as she approached the steps, their mangy bodies shaking as they braced themselves against the wind outside and the frost that threatened to grab them by the scruffs of their necks into its hollow bowels. She was taller now, but under the arch of that roof she did not feel a day older. Hers was not the home that bore witness to her growth. No walls lovingly etched with names and numbers in a line, a ruler of memories warmly awaiting her return. Hers was the home that bore witness, and the walls were scarred with the marks of objects flung. Plates, a chair, a little girl. Her mutt yelped a little as she pushed open a creaking door. She held her breath, but the decay and rot muffled her face, worming its mouldy way into her pores, entangling itself into her hair. Her eyes searched the ceiling for that elephant-shaped patch. The elephant had offered neither comfort nor warmth. Its companionship came alive solely in the head of the little girl as she lay in her bed, legs entangled in the threadbare blanket she had owned all her life. She had often lain there, tracing Ele’s shape through the curtain of tears that eventually did dry up. She couldn’t remember, now, the conversations they had. Perhaps they were nothing. Perhaps her soul had once been bared, and Ele now, with her bloated snout and misshapen leg, would forever hold. Perhaps when the men finally came with sledgehammers and the walls crumbled, Ele would finally take the memories of that broken little girl and let them turn into dust. Perhaps she could stay until the sledgehammers came. How fitting it would be, to shatter in that room, with that room. That thought first flitted in the edges of her mind, then slithered in, demanding an immediate answer. Yes, why couldn’t she stay? These walls were her only sanctuary, so many years ago. These walls held her, kept her. These walls were the only one who ever knew her. The wind howled through the broken window and pierced through her reverie. She took one last look around the box that used to own her. She was not the same girl who left that room so many years ago. She who had cowered and trembled, whose existence was witnessed only by Ele and those cold uncaring walls, had left those walls behind many years ago. She has a name now, and a home with one of its walls lovingly etched with names and numbers in a line. There is an elephant in that home too, in a room painted sunshine yellow and plastered with pictures of animals. That room knows laughter, and its elephant holds no secrets. The door creaked behind her as she stepped across the threshold of the house she was leaving behind for the last time. Her hounds softly padded around her, their paws thudding reassuringly on the ground. Plumes of dust danced around their paws as they paced ahead of her, their protective presence enveloping the woman who had emerged. The wind caressed her hair and the sun warmed the crown of her raven hair as she looked away from the façade of the dying building. Her home awaited.