For as long as I can remember I measured time by the comings and goings of bats. Even after the first people came to paint their dreams on my walls, the great autumn swarms of bats were my best timekeepers. My stalactites dripped and my stalagmites grew year round. Insects and their predators constantly scurried over the great piles of guano left by my
summer tenants. One of my front rooms even housed strange little fish, white and sightless. Their entire ecosystem was based on the summer clouds of bat mothers and their babies. But the summer bats didn’t keep the years for me and they
never came down to visit my cathedral.