The day Hell Ascended

We have been guarding the city since our birth. From the sky, we have watched how Good prevailed over Evil, how people looked up and saluted us with devotion

Our creation was not a casualty. The Saviour enlightened the Master of Construction's mind, and he began to sculpt our faces on the hardest stone, the future guards of the Cathedral. At least, that is how Father told us the story, the oldest piece that resists on the walls of Notre Dame. I, personally, was made around 1832, thanks to a man called Victor Hugo. Still to this day, I do not know who he was exactly, but I consider him a kind of human Father. Thanks to him, the Parisian people recognized our existence and importance and drove their attention to the building that crowned the city.

We do not have names, but Paris knows us. Father has been here for more than a millennium, and the stories he tells, macabre and encouraging alike, keep us all at the edge of the cliff. Our task is to guard the cathedral called Notre Dame, but we cannot forsake our vigilance of Paris either. Father says that, during the course of history, there has only been one reason to abandon our perpetual post. It happened long before my birth, back in the year of the Saviour 1431. A peasant, apparently harmless, had fought alongside king Charles VII in a big and tough war. The English, an enemy nation, had captured her and burned the little girl in the stake. The pain reached our door and penetrated through the deepest cracks of our stone.

The injustice was too much for Father, and leading his own army, sought revenge for the brave warrior, flying over the city to alert everyone that wanted to hear. The streets of Paris burned, while the city succumbed to panic and grief for the death of Joanne, even though the citizens knew that the creatures, my ancestors, just wanted to help. The martyr was vindicated, and the power of the gargoyles displayed.

Our problems started some weeks ago. A gray day was dawning outside, and we overheard strange men lean in big suits talking about the restorations, to preserve in a better way the building. They mentioned the word tourists many times over. Father was preoccupied: we could not leave Notre Dame abandoned, and those people meant to take us away to some dismal and dark laboratory. And they achieved their goal. Like a cursed omen, the men, armed with unimaginable utensils, moved us away from our eternal resting place. After a journey in the darkest ignorance, we woke up in a clean, white room. We were no longer home. The Dame was alone.

When the news about the fire reached our ears, we felt that our mission had failed. Father would never recover from the burning of his home, he would rather abandon his stone recipient than seeing the place blackened from the flames. With a deep sigh, he left us. My siblings and I mourned his loss, and when a woman dressed in a white coat informed our restorers about the Cathedral damages and losses, blood tears run down our faces. We could smell the smoke and desperation, and not only could feel the sadness, but multitudes had gathered to pray together, protecting Notre Dame for us. Because, dragging us away from our home, the older prophecy had come true: without us, the Cathedral was condemned.