Weekly Writing Prompt No. 75. Once upon a time in the land of t’Internet there lived a woman called Gem the Word Weaver. Her fame had spread throughout her village for she spun words into gold before the very eyes of those who purchased them.
In the beginning some daft sod thought making a universe was a good idea. Probably just bored. Must have been raining or something. They should have considered who they put in it though, as the people really didn't agree, either with the Creator, or with each other. The bus dropped them all off together, which was nearly disastrous and left them to fend for themselves. Some of them really liked tea, but there being none around got pretty angry, so set off on great adventures to find some, eventually settling in a cold place to drink it.
The rest decided to set up shelters and use what food could be found locally: snails and frogs mostly. This habit lasted for many generations, even after other things like pancakes were invented. That's when the trouble started. The pancakes smellt so amazing that just the wafting scent attracted the tea lovers in their droves and they popped over to see what was going on. Big mistake. While there, the tea lovers discovered other smelly treats like cheeses and baguettes which they carried home in net bags, shouting and drunk on the local juice, called vin-something. Some though decided to stay and never go home again, except by now they all spoke different languages and could not make themselves understood, no matter how loud they tried.
The locals were not very keen on the tea drinkers for some reason, so ignored them mostly, while carrying on with their lives of eating long lunches and sleeping it all off afterwards. The tea drinkers thought them mad at first, but soon succumbed to the delights of the siesta. And that's when it happened.
One day, those travelling tea drinkers woke from their naps to find out Creator had played a trick on them. Suddenly, they could understand the locals. They could speak the same lingo and appreciate all the same jokes. Now they had nothing left to moan about. The weather was actually quite good and tea could be shipped over to them whenever wanted, so life was good.
It was not to last though. The shivering tea drinkers over the water were so annoyed at being continually told how bloody marvellous it was over there and how they should drink their tea cold, eat their sausages spicy and leave off the ends of words so they could be better understood, that something snapped in them and they revolted.
This resulted in a severance of communications, no more tea nor cheeses being exchanged and a general irritation amongst the young who had grown up able to sample delights from far away.
The elders knew it would all pass over one day though and decided it was worth it to stop the harassment. If only other would-be tea drinkers would stop sneaking over the border too and snaffling supplies. Creator would have to have another bored afternoon to solve that one though. And so far, it's not happened.
“In the beginning there was a beginning in which the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” The crowd fell silent around the story-teller. They looked at one another with puzzled expressions. To be fair, a lot of their puzzling was because they were trying to read the expressions on the faces around them.
The rabbits weren’t so good at beetle-facial-recognition. The stoats were sure the rabbits weren’t angry – except when they (stoat-folk) got into the warren – but that wasn’t existential anger…well, probably it was…but only on a very personal level. It’s hard to tell an oak expression, because of how slowly it passes over its trunk, but that particular shiver of leaves sounded more like confusion. Birds chittered, asking each other about it. Spiders spun their own version of the tale.
None of them could come to a version of events that made them think the universe was a bad idea. Silence resumed. Everyone looked at the story-teller.
The story-teller sat down. Then he jumped up again, asked holly’s forgiveness, moved her spiky bits carefully aside and sat again. He was dejected. He came from the city. He knew people…city people…were angry. They told him all the time. He was used to starting his stories by stirring up the latent anger and following it where it led. He didn’t much like where it led, but it paid well, so he kept doing it.
Then…well…then one day it led to his abrupt departure from the city. Under cover of darkness, crowds, carts, whatever was available, until he found himself somewhere not-city. It smelt different. It felt different. “A new market,” he thought to himself…and let the word be known, that tales would be told in the wood. No charge, no fee, but any kindness gratefully appreciated.
It was not going well. He didn’t get it. Not even two sentences in, and he knows he has lost them already. Not his usual crowd. Mostly not even human – though he was sure there were a few green-clad villagers lurking…or loitering…or maybe just skiving off a shift, but listening anyway. They didn’t seem any less confused.
Without his anger, and the way it led him down all the known paths, all the things there were to be angry about, he was lost. Empty. People wanted the anger. They wanted the drama. They wanted the misery. They wanted the fear. They fed it and fed off it, and that was the power that turned the world.
It didn’t work here.
As there didn’t seem to be any more entertainment, the woodland collective shrugged its shoulders and wandered off to do their normal job of living their lives. Except for oak. Oak wasn’t known for wandering about much. He shook a branch and dropped an acorn on the young man’s head. It didn’t achieve anything – other than a lost young man cursing a non-existent squirrel.
This mattered though. Oak knew how much it mattered. Oak knew what happened when too much anger pervaded the world, he’d lived long and seen enough of it. He was worried enough to reach deep into the earth and wiggle a toe.
The root shifted, holly toppled a little, but she was used to oak’s moods and valued his shelter enough not to take offense. The root shifted, the story-teller fell off. “Oi! he angered, briefly. Only briefly, because he landed looking up through the beautiful twisting branches of oak, to the blue sky beyond. He landed in bed of soft moss. He thought he heard a rabbit giggle as it came to nuzzle and make sure he was ok. A moth flew surveillance. The spiders went back to spinning.
“Oh!” he thought. “It’s all very calm and peaceful and beautiful.”
“Mostly,” said the stoat. “We have to eat,” said the owl.
“But so do we, and we’re no angry about it,” said a chorus of smaller creatures. “Sad, when it’s us, when we’re not quick or clever enough…grateful when a trick works…but we’re not angry.”
He looked at the wood. It had its misery. It had its drama. It hurt and had bad times, got wounded deeply in the big storms. And then it healed as best it could. Those were the stories it told. The healing stories. Those were the stories the young creatures gathered to hear. They didn’t want to dwell in the misery of others. They felt there was enough hardship in a life without generating more of it.
If our wandering minstrel was going to make a living in the wood, he would have to learn a new repertoire…and when he had learned all the old stories from all the small villages and farms he passed through…and gathered everything the oak and holly and rabbit, stoat, spider and beetle could teach him…he would have completed his true apprenticeship. Then maybe, just maybe, he would venture back to the city and write a whole new raft of tales. Create a whole new way of talking about the beginning. In the beginning, there was a beginning, and everything that walked and swam and crawled and flew saw that it was good.
Oh my, truly a tale worthy of the great Aesop Lesley and so timely too. I absolutely loved the phrase you used "People wanted the anger. They wanted the drama. They wanted the misery. They wanted the fear. They fed it and fed off it, and that was the power that turned the world." It captures how captured we are by our own species willingness to succumb to the easy lie. And it might make a great story introduction for another prompt in the future, if I may .... :-)
And thank you too, for giving me the opportunity to be proper silly at regular intervals. It's getting to be a bit of a silly habit.
🤪
A habit maybe, but never silly - it’s fun!!!
In the beginning some daft sod thought making a universe was a good idea. Probably just bored. Must have been raining or something. They should have considered who they put in it though, as the people really didn't agree, either with the Creator, or with each other. The bus dropped them all off together, which was nearly disastrous and left them to fend for themselves. Some of them really liked tea, but there being none around got pretty angry, so set off on great adventures to find some, eventually settling in a cold place to drink it.
The rest decided to set up shelters and use what food could be found locally: snails and frogs mostly. This habit lasted for many generations, even after other things like pancakes were invented. That's when the trouble started. The pancakes smellt so amazing that just the wafting scent attracted the tea lovers in their droves and they popped over to see what was going on. Big mistake. While there, the tea lovers discovered other smelly treats like cheeses and baguettes which they carried home in net bags, shouting and drunk on the local juice, called vin-something. Some though decided to stay and never go home again, except by now they all spoke different languages and could not make themselves understood, no matter how loud they tried.
The locals were not very keen on the tea drinkers for some reason, so ignored them mostly, while carrying on with their lives of eating long lunches and sleeping it all off afterwards. The tea drinkers thought them mad at first, but soon succumbed to the delights of the siesta. And that's when it happened.
One day, those travelling tea drinkers woke from their naps to find out Creator had played a trick on them. Suddenly, they could understand the locals. They could speak the same lingo and appreciate all the same jokes. Now they had nothing left to moan about. The weather was actually quite good and tea could be shipped over to them whenever wanted, so life was good.
It was not to last though. The shivering tea drinkers over the water were so annoyed at being continually told how bloody marvellous it was over there and how they should drink their tea cold, eat their sausages spicy and leave off the ends of words so they could be better understood, that something snapped in them and they revolted.
This resulted in a severance of communications, no more tea nor cheeses being exchanged and a general irritation amongst the young who had grown up able to sample delights from far away.
The elders knew it would all pass over one day though and decided it was worth it to stop the harassment. If only other would-be tea drinkers would stop sneaking over the border too and snaffling supplies. Creator would have to have another bored afternoon to solve that one though. And so far, it's not happened.
Must be on a tea break.
You have a habit of making me chuckle whenever you allow yourself to be overtaken by the moment and the silliness of life in general Sue, thank you xx
“In the beginning there was a beginning in which the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” The crowd fell silent around the story-teller. They looked at one another with puzzled expressions. To be fair, a lot of their puzzling was because they were trying to read the expressions on the faces around them.
The rabbits weren’t so good at beetle-facial-recognition. The stoats were sure the rabbits weren’t angry – except when they (stoat-folk) got into the warren – but that wasn’t existential anger…well, probably it was…but only on a very personal level. It’s hard to tell an oak expression, because of how slowly it passes over its trunk, but that particular shiver of leaves sounded more like confusion. Birds chittered, asking each other about it. Spiders spun their own version of the tale.
None of them could come to a version of events that made them think the universe was a bad idea. Silence resumed. Everyone looked at the story-teller.
The story-teller sat down. Then he jumped up again, asked holly’s forgiveness, moved her spiky bits carefully aside and sat again. He was dejected. He came from the city. He knew people…city people…were angry. They told him all the time. He was used to starting his stories by stirring up the latent anger and following it where it led. He didn’t much like where it led, but it paid well, so he kept doing it.
Then…well…then one day it led to his abrupt departure from the city. Under cover of darkness, crowds, carts, whatever was available, until he found himself somewhere not-city. It smelt different. It felt different. “A new market,” he thought to himself…and let the word be known, that tales would be told in the wood. No charge, no fee, but any kindness gratefully appreciated.
It was not going well. He didn’t get it. Not even two sentences in, and he knows he has lost them already. Not his usual crowd. Mostly not even human – though he was sure there were a few green-clad villagers lurking…or loitering…or maybe just skiving off a shift, but listening anyway. They didn’t seem any less confused.
Without his anger, and the way it led him down all the known paths, all the things there were to be angry about, he was lost. Empty. People wanted the anger. They wanted the drama. They wanted the misery. They wanted the fear. They fed it and fed off it, and that was the power that turned the world.
It didn’t work here.
As there didn’t seem to be any more entertainment, the woodland collective shrugged its shoulders and wandered off to do their normal job of living their lives. Except for oak. Oak wasn’t known for wandering about much. He shook a branch and dropped an acorn on the young man’s head. It didn’t achieve anything – other than a lost young man cursing a non-existent squirrel.
This mattered though. Oak knew how much it mattered. Oak knew what happened when too much anger pervaded the world, he’d lived long and seen enough of it. He was worried enough to reach deep into the earth and wiggle a toe.
The root shifted, holly toppled a little, but she was used to oak’s moods and valued his shelter enough not to take offense. The root shifted, the story-teller fell off. “Oi! he angered, briefly. Only briefly, because he landed looking up through the beautiful twisting branches of oak, to the blue sky beyond. He landed in bed of soft moss. He thought he heard a rabbit giggle as it came to nuzzle and make sure he was ok. A moth flew surveillance. The spiders went back to spinning.
“Oh!” he thought. “It’s all very calm and peaceful and beautiful.”
“Mostly,” said the stoat. “We have to eat,” said the owl.
“But so do we, and we’re no angry about it,” said a chorus of smaller creatures. “Sad, when it’s us, when we’re not quick or clever enough…grateful when a trick works…but we’re not angry.”
He looked at the wood. It had its misery. It had its drama. It hurt and had bad times, got wounded deeply in the big storms. And then it healed as best it could. Those were the stories it told. The healing stories. Those were the stories the young creatures gathered to hear. They didn’t want to dwell in the misery of others. They felt there was enough hardship in a life without generating more of it.
If our wandering minstrel was going to make a living in the wood, he would have to learn a new repertoire…and when he had learned all the old stories from all the small villages and farms he passed through…and gathered everything the oak and holly and rabbit, stoat, spider and beetle could teach him…he would have completed his true apprenticeship. Then maybe, just maybe, he would venture back to the city and write a whole new raft of tales. Create a whole new way of talking about the beginning. In the beginning, there was a beginning, and everything that walked and swam and crawled and flew saw that it was good.
I've just read this story by Denarii Peters and it compliments yours beautifully, thought you might like it too Lesley: https://denariipeters.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-revolution
Oh my, truly a tale worthy of the great Aesop Lesley and so timely too. I absolutely loved the phrase you used "People wanted the anger. They wanted the drama. They wanted the misery. They wanted the fear. They fed it and fed off it, and that was the power that turned the world." It captures how captured we are by our own species willingness to succumb to the easy lie. And it might make a great story introduction for another prompt in the future, if I may .... :-)
Ach...I got it wrong. It sounded like Terry Pratchett - but Douglas Adams! Brothers-in-arms (or at least in pens). :)
Nope, definitely Aesop Lesley .... definitely Aesop ....!