Flowing To The Same Rhythm

            The orator lingered on the last few syllables, shouted his refrain one last time, and walked resolutely off the podium. The crowd transformed from rapturous attention to frenzy in an instant, forming a wall of sound built of claps, shouts, then thudding feet as a flailing mass moved forward through the narrow street. Each voice carried its own gravity. They stepped deliberately up to the heavy doors of the capital and hammered them with their thick fists, each with blood flowing to the same rhythm, blood from a myriad of ancestors. High in the building, a lonely man listened impassively.