I'm not sure why I was built. I was born a plan, shifting and hazy, traveling by mouth and lingering in thoughts. It's hard to remember your birth; you'd understand. Different people had different ideas about me, even then. They all knew I'd be big, though, and important. Why that mattered was a different matter for each of them. Even now, nobody seems to have the right answer. Disagreement all the time. Quite confusing. Humans never have that problem, I'm sure. You all exist for the same reason.

Anyways, my memory gets a little clearer as they start building me. First, they put me down on paper. My facets are sketched out, solidified, and the shifting slows to a few changes a day. The paper has a permanence that the whispers didn't. I like permanence. Suddenly I'm moved, transported across a continent as they lay the first stones. The humans who planned me had flames in their hearts, but the people who lay the stones hold a light. I can feel the differences in their touch as hands graze stone, connecting me to my creators. I can feel the dimming light's resentment where I once felt the ambition of the spreading flames. They don't want me here, where I am.

My memory gets stronger and stronger at this part, where I'm almost built. They build me big, very big, but fast. Everyone knows it had to be fast. So many people, so much labor, and for what? When I'm done, I barely house a hundred. I know I'm fulfilling my purpose, though. I just can't seem to remember what that was.

It was then that I began to recall the people. First it was the parents and the boy: King, Queen, and Crown Prince. I could feel their pain as they leaned on my pillars, tread on my floorboards. I didn't know what they'd lost, but I could feel it in their touch. They felt me as if I was something foreign, something that didn't quite belong to them. Of course, there was also the child. I felt nothing in its touch; it wasn't meant to be there. The boy kept it hidden, then, out of sight. Then, not even a year since their arrival, the red visitor came, and suddenly there was no Queen. After that, the King sank farther into despair. His light dimmed over many years, until finally it extinguished, leaving only the Prince, barely more than a boy. Except, he was not a Prince. He was a King.

Thirdly. the woman arrived. Her touch was also empty, ringing with an hunger like clawing and grasping, envying what she couldn't have. She felt her hate and the child's touch changed, weakening. She brought forth the fourth arrival. The new Prince. She lasted only moments, though, in my memory. She was gone just as quickly as she had arrived, fading into me when only the wretched child looked on. It's been them for a while, now. The young King, wretched child, and new Prince. Touches all emptying, all draining. It seems as if no others will come. My walls will be empty, my purpose served.