Skin

They pass the dead forward.  He slathers mortar down and adds them to the wall.

He doesn't mind the work.  He knows it is necessary.  Dimly, through the cracks, he can see another walled city scudding on the cold winds.  But today it does not draw near to smash and crash, breaking the dead of both away to oblivion.  Such things happen, too regularly to be only chance.

There are always more of the dead.  Sometimes the wind blows hard or fester-demons come to pound on the shell and the walls grow thin.  Other times he must push the wall out himself and listen to the dead outside fall away, their sacrifice wasted.

Somewhere far away, somewhere so distant that it might as well be a different country, his cousins and fellow citizens work to keep the city alive, work to build the ships that will carry the exploratory teams outward, perhaps to found new cities where they land.

He smears another layer of mortar.  His joints creak.  Soon he will climb up and sink into the mortar, join his wall and protect the city himself.  But not today.

Today, they pass the dead forward, and he adds them to the wall.