It was my moat where I was safe. What was your moat?

Drudging through muck, the hot reek of stagnant water, grown thick with weeds, pollution, pieces of the castle that had crumbed as it aged over time. The castle that had once stood, although not the tallest, but surely close, as proud as we were, maybe too proud, of the world we had built under this hot hot sun. But the people never came. Our halls were never full of music, laughter, the scent of baking bread, chicken, a pot of soup bubbling in the kitchen. But we did dream. We dreamt of the perfumed gowns, the soft whisper of fabric against our smooth smooth floors, floors we had polished to a shine, grown up from the ground like so many sprouts. We dreamed of the yelling, the blood, the drama unfolding between our walls and under our roof, the safety of a womb, the growth of a family, the illness that took them, the emptiness again, as we woke, the tang of something missing as we sat, as we drooped, as we crumbled into the moat, not knowing if we should be sad of something lost, or happy that we had something to lose in the first place.