It’s not that I think every available space should be clustered with the sprawling stamp of modern society; I find nothing more peaceful than a quiet forest or a still lake.

Buildings can be empty, too. Sad, abandoned, left to decay, with no one to give them life, just waiting for a bulldozer to come and knock them to the ground. Empty buildings are sad, unloved, but nature can be empty too.

I think it’s most noticeable during the winter, when half the trees are nothing but sticks and any foliage is dry and colourless, or covered in snow. Maybe in the spring it’s full of the promise of new lief. Summer might see it full of colours and warmth, and even autumn brings a torrent of reds and oranges to the otherwise bleak landscape.

But it’s winter, now, and I stand in the snow up to my ankles, my toes growing numb. My hands are thrust deep within my coat and the wind bites at my face as I peer through the metal fence to the emptiness within. To the right, Erik’s building is still within easy view, and behind me cars speed down the road, not stopping to notice anything that veers off their set course. On the other side of the road are rows of houses, the modern ones that are painted cheerful colours to hide the fact that they have no character.

In the middle of all of this, in a bustling city, in the dead of winter, is nothingness, undisturbed, untroubled, and unnoticed by the rest of the world. What care have they for the inherent sadness of nature, those with their busy lives?

The fence, reaching higher than my head and topped by barbed wire, merely seems to punctuate the apathy of the rest of the world. What purpose does fencing off nothingness serve? I wonder this, slowly walking alongside the fence and looking through the pinched metal diamonds to the whiteness within. Without warning, the fence is suddenly gone and for a moment I stop, dumbfounded. But there’s a gate, flung wide open, as if saying, after the fence and the barbed wire, that everything is irrelevant, because no one would ever want to go inside such a desolate, unloved place.

I lean on the fence and stare inside, and the view not improved when it’s no longer hindered by the metal grill of the fence. An empty, snow-covered landscape, stretching out so far that I can’t see the fence on the other side.

Maybe there isn’t one.

There’s no variation in the ground before me. It’s flat, constantly flat, unchangingly flat, as though the land hasn’t the energy to be anything but flat. There are breaks in the snow, where the wind’s shifted it, so that patches of scratching, yellowed grass pokes up erratically through the surface.

It does nothing to improve the scenery.

I crane my head around the fence to see in the other direction, to see if I can find hope in the direction I came from.

There are a handful of shrubby, stick-like trees, completely naked and scattered haphazardly but close to the fence, almost clustering against it, as though they knew that on the other side is freedom, and if they try with everything they have, they’ll be able to break into a better world, away from this desolate land of nothing.

My heart aches on behalf of the trees, blocked as they are from their goal by the treacherous fence, barbed wire biting at any branches that might dare to grow overtop or through the wire. It hurts for the land, too, without hope of change or salvation, to the point that all those who live within are fighting to leave instead of fighting to change it into something more than nothing, something beyond empty space. Nothing could bring life to this emptiness, though. It’s so desolate I can’t even make out the gleam and colour of a discarded candy wrapped or a stray pop bottle on the white and beige land before me.

Logic dictates that in a few months the snow will melt, leaves will begin budding, and the grass will be green once more, but who’s to say that logic always triumphs? And if it does, will this piece of nothing still exist, or will it be a different place altogether? Green and bright, full of promise, this gate will probably be locked then, the life inside protected as the emptiness never was.

If the emptiness was protected, it would not exist.

I sigh and watch my breath form a brief cloud of vapour before it drifts away. Even it doesn’t want to be near this void of life any longer than absolutely necessary.

I continue to stare, hypnotized by nothing, my heart filled with loneliness and compassion for something that doesn’t exist until a voice jolts me from my thoughts.

“Hey, man! There you are! Worried we’d lost you!”

I lift my eyes to Erik’s wind burnt face, his cheeks red and his breath coming out in short puffs. I look back at the empty landscape, my mouth slowly forming a syllable.

“Ah.”

He moves to stand behind me, and stares into the emptiness as he catches his breath. “What you get distracted by, anyway?”

I shrug.

“Well, come on. Ray and Ash are probably already at the arcade. Let’s get out of here. This place looks like a damn graveyard.”

“Mm,” I disagree, and turn away, trudging off through the snow. The very existence fo a graveyard implies that someone, somewhere, cares.