She steps down from atop a stone on the shoreline. She wears a toga, hair tangled with salt spray and sea-breeze. She turns to the land. She takes a determined step away from the shore. It recedes behind her footstep after footstep.
She is Lady Consequence. She acts against her will, driven by purpose predefined. She is a terrified witness, observing the the state of things as they change from time to time.
This time, that time. Tick. Tock. Time to her is not a smooth continuum. It is a discrete, jagged edge transitioning from moment to moment with violence and jaw-jarring interference. Where a normal person may perceive the tree moving in the breeze. She perceives it from root to seed, to glorious canopy, to mass market furniture - to waste decaying in the landfill.
Behind her vision, visible through the sheer, shimmering fabric of the wind-swept toga, the sea devours the shoreline as she continues to put distance between them. The cities expand like balloons toward her. They sprawl, and grow up, from houses to sky scrapers, and as she approaches, they crumble back into the to dust they were as rapidly as they were constructed.
Her time is not. As she moves toward the dust storm, the rate of decay accelerates such, that in the dust, new creation manifests. The dust forms dunes as it settles, and the breeze from the sea sweeps against her back with intensity, sculpting and resculpting them in the sandstorm.
Her face had beauty in it once. Now, her face is painted in a permanent expression of horror. She is able to witness both the growth and collapse.
Author's Notes:
I am forever fascinated by the writing of Walter Benjamin, particularly his work on the Klee image, Angelus Novus. In his writing on this, he has quotes that sit with me and inspire me, both visually and literally.
The Benjamin quote:
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
So that piece of writing is why this piece of writing exists, and why this piece of writing is simply labelled Progress. Only, perhaps it is not the progress of humanity, but the of a cold and indifferent universe.
But! I am not yet done rambling on this topic. Progress also has consequence, which gave this character their name, and is also a writing experiment of sorts that I will use in another story that I am writing, which has a working title of Wed not to the Arrow.
This seems all very interesting to me, especially in light of a recent video that was brought to my attention by 
I'm done rambling now, you may return to your ordinary activities. Thank you. This story will continue.
