It was a hot wind that chafed the frangipani and jasmine, drawing out their scent, to then carry their floral soul through to the One, who was laterally impaled for all to see.
Once plump raisins were also expiring in the sun, and the stench from their ferment travelled the alleyways and backways, throughout the sweating city, past the fumes of ovens and pipes, invading the temple and the bath-house alike.
The stables exuded their excrement, and the blood from the butcheries stuck its tacky stink onto every dwelling besides.
There were smells of bread and peat, and oriental offerings; of mule, of rug, of dried and urine soaked mud.
Pomegranates choked the aqueducts along with cart-loads of bitter oranges and sweet limes, that had fouled, from an excess of party, committed to the waterways, bobbing the canals, riding their rush into the open sea.
Vegan meats and floral tributes graced the merchants roadside stores. Tents with souvenirs and flags, with cages of pets to be bought for sport, or confinement. Rodents were free to forage, tourists followed the circuit of the city; donating to the priests who strode the roads, with coin gatherers following behind.
By and large the world was not watching - it did not see, and if it had done, it would not have understood. For the God who was betrayed by His own, was but a ghost to them. The Christ was made of ephemeral stardust. His consciousness was, and is, the Sun. His life and death was of Earth but not of this World - for it was out of time, and of the making of worlds to come.
"I ask only that you love as I do" his thought called to the vacated streets and sleeping souls. And they slept on ...
