Beneath the Glittering Dust

In the heart of the jungle, where trees whisper secrets to the wind, the earth bleeds gold, and with it, dreams torn from the hands of the desperate. Here, shadows move in silence, not creatures of the night, but lives unseen— women with hollow eyes that hold the weight of too many nights and not enough mornings. The air is thick, heavy with promises whispered by men whose hands reek of violence and greed— gold-streaked hands that clutch at flesh as if it were the earth they are mining. Despair lingers in every corner, in the broken smiles of the forgotten, in the laughter that turns to sobs in the small hours when darkness swallows the stars whole. Loneliness stalks like a predator, its claws raking across fragile dreams, its breath hot with the stench of lives reduced to shadows, of hopes smothered under the weight of the unyielding soil. Each day begins with the same question: how much is a soul worth when weighed against gold? How much blood for a fleeting glint of sunlight in the dust? Memories of home— fields that once held the promise of fruit and freedom— haunt the edges of their minds, replaced by barren landscapes, by rivers poisoned and hearts hardened. And yet, in the spaces between despair, there is the faintest trace of a song long forgotten, a fragment of a dream that refuses to be silenced. But the jungle hums louder. The machines roar. The men shout. And the women walk on, their bodies bearing the weight of the world’s greed, their lives swallowed by the glittering dust.