If I look from my perch upon the tower balcony, I can see, to the west, the farms. No one takes care of them anymore. They are overgrown with weeds, and no cattle graze there today. I remember when I was a child, from this spot I could see the fields of barley stretching for miles on end, then disappearing onto the horizon. Cows, sheep, and horses would walk through the meadows, looking to my eyes like ants on a log, though I knew them to be much larger than me.
	If I glance to the north, old, abandoned houses from the village are scattered across the hill. Moss grows over their walls, and no lights flicker in the windows. I don't know when it went silent. I know when I noticed it, though I'm sure that was not the day it happened. Father used to trade with the villagers. He'd bring them food from our farms, and they'd give us clothing, supplies, and anything else we needed.
	To the south is the forest, dark and foreboding, just as it was when I was a child, the only thing unchanged. It stands there, and will not budge. I have only been in there once, even though my mother forbade me from going. I had only ventured in 20 paces when I heard the howl of a wild beast. Fearing for my life, I had left at once. I never did find out what that animal was, nor have I heard any howls coming from the forest since.
	To the east is the tower, the way I entered the balcony from. The heavy wooden door is closed now. It leads to a spiral staircase, walls laden with tapestries clad in mold. Torches pierce the gloom, though they occasionally sputter and die out. At the bottom of the tower is the Large Room, or so I called it when I was young. I never learned its formal name. A throne of pure gold presides over the chamber. A hallway leads off, peppered with doorways, to rooms I have never been in. The only one that matters to me is the one at the end of the corridor. The locked, iron door, which I have not been able to open in all my years of solitude here.
	There is a beating heart behind that door. A human, beating, heart, pumping away in its loneliness, in the darkness of the Iron Room. Blood is absent from its chambers, though it does not care. It beats nonetheless. It sits upon a pedestal, unreachable for all these years. I can feel its every beat. I know when it constricts, and when it relaxes. I can sense its every action. I know this for one reason.
	It is my heart.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I am down there now, standing in front of the door. My fingers instinctively go to my chest, feeling the ragged edges of the hole left by the absence of my heart.