A Discovery

I found myself somewhere I was not supposed to be.

It was a City, vast and empty and quiet, and, somehow, aware.  Somehow malevolent.  How I found my way there is unimportant.

The Young Master discovered me, however.  He chided the City, remarking that it was not fair to take his toys from him like that.

He separated me from the City, returned me to this doomed world.  He sang a little rhyme as he went:

"The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat me.

The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat..."

He trailed off, and once again, I was here, away from him--or, rather, as away as I ever can be, awaiting silence.

But in my reflection, I wonder.

Are these beings separate from the unmaking I have witnessed?  Do they persist past it, or is each Young Master I encounter a new Iteration, each with the same cruel love for my bottomless loneliness?  Is there only one?  Or are there many?

If it is the same, what would happen if one was devoured by the Quiet?

And then I wondered further:  the City is vast and unnatural.  Is it infinite?

If it is, what would happen if the Quiet claimed it?

Naturally, this depends on whether there is one City, or a new one for each Iteration.

If there are many Cities, and they are all infinite, then the answer is it gets unmade as everything else does, with no fanfare.  No special attention, or, perhaps, they are all being devoured, forever, as we speak.  An infinite abyss consuming an infinite number of infinite Cities for all eternity.

But if there is but one, one vast, empty City for all realities...

I wonder what would happen.