Title: City of Lightning Dreams
Fandom: Original
Challenge: Games
Bingo Prompt: Did What Where?
Rating: G
Length: 150
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Summary: A view of Las Vegas, NV


City of Lightning Dreams

What is this place, this city set in arid, empty land?
Spirit made, not grown of rooted earth,
Sprung from human hands, conceived of eager minds.
This structure: sand of lightning fused and formed,
Steel set by sound and fantasy; flash and fury,
Glitter, gold and dreams —
Of fame, of wealth, of wonder: of Otherness here now.

The rock beneath the neon also sings:
Ancient songs of wind and water,
Lightning struck from thunderclouds and stars
That have looked down on every incarnation
Each aspect of this edge of earth:
The drought endured, the flood, the rise and fall
Of mountains, built on weathered bones.

This place is human magic, Will made Form,
And shaping - charging - changing - what is real
By thought and time, all light and fascination
Unanchored to the old, unyielding earth.
No business, right or reverence, and profligate
Of resource — this vitrine habitation;
Yet, withal the dream persists.

Tread wary on these stones:
Both drought and dreams can kill.