The Hourglass, an elegant thing, holds more behind it than meets the eye. For behind its pane of glass there flows an ocean of time, infinite, perpetual, eternal, its waves flowing as the minutes, the hours slowly drift away. Memories spiral, drifting in and out of focus, windows to a different time, another place, a world at your fingertips, yet somehow eons away. But there is more too, a whirlpool of sand, collapsing into the great unknown of what is to come, an unfamiliar realm cloaked in shadow and mystery.

Before you know it, the waves of sand flow on. Time drifts immeasurably, unquantifiably yet the effect is crystal clear. Incomprehensible by the mind of man yet still the nature of the reality around him. A consistent unit, but to the human mind seems to be the contrary, a thing that speeds up and down before our eyes, a paradoxical illusion.

Thus time is a thing of change. Quickly it can plant seeds of doubt into a ruler's subjects and start a revolution. It can turn glorious edifices of a powerful empire into rubble in a wasteland. In a blink of an eye it turns peace to war.

Time is the overseer of all things. It heals all wounds. Yet it can bring about the end of anything.

In the hourglass one sees paradise and pandemonium. Utopia and chaos. Liberation and oppression. The end and the beginning.

Time brought about all things. And one day it will destroy them forever.

By Andrew Florescu, Form 2P