Tale #106: To Be Kept Safe

There once was a town that was besieged by beasts. Cats caught the fish from the lake, curling their paws beneath the waters and hooking them out with a quick swipe of their claws. Foxes ate the chickens in the hen house, biting off their heads with a single snap of their jaws. And packs of wolves… well, they would eat your own grandmother in her bed if they caught so much as a sniff of her.

So to keep themselves safe, the people of the town built a wall that stretched around the whole of the town.

In the days that followed its completion, the cats climbed over it, the foxes burrowed under it, and the wolves bit through the wires as if they were string. Only the people of the town were stopped by the wall, trapped inside and unable to escape.

“What’s wrong with the wall?” they wondered, and together set about identifying where they had gone wrong. It needs to be higher, they said. Deeper. Stronger.

Those were the faults they identified. Those were the faults they vowed to fix.

__________

Notes:

1. Written December 2019

Tale #105: Beneath A Ceaseless Sun

A prince set off in search of the spring of eternal life. Even though his navigator would assure him each morning that it was just a little further, and soon his journey would be complete, the prince travelled for many years without ever seeming to find himself any closer to his destination.

One day, the prince was overcome with thirst as they toiled across the shifting desert sands. He drank the last of the water, and then declared that they must arrive soon, else surely they would die beneath the merciless sun.

The prince’s navigator once again assured the prince that they were almost there. He spread out his maps on the burning sand and said, “Look, my Lord and Master. You are here, and the spring of eternal life is there, and this path will lead us there by nightfall.”

The prince studied the maps, and it was apparent that they were not here, that their destination was not there, and the path, if it existed at all, would lead them only in spirals. It was only now, after so many years of ceaseless toil, that the prince realised that the navigator was mad.

He offered his navigator to the gods, but neither blood nor prayers were enough to grant the prince his salvation. By the time he was found, his skin had burned to dust, his bones to sand, and the only evidence of his existence was the gold of his many rings, which still shone out from the shifting desert sands as brightly after a thousand years as did the unceasing sun above.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on November 12th, 2019
2. And based on true events
3. Also the title is derived from Beyond A Steel Sky
4. Which I’ve never been able to complete

It was a Sunday

__________

Notes:

1. Written on 23rd February, 2011
2. I don’t know if that was a Sunday or not
3. But it’s okay
4. As now every day is a Sunday
5. Not that I knew that at the time
6. Also I think this is the last of my old comics
7. That I’ve been republishing
8. Slowly
9. Since accumulation of things started
10. Nearly two years ago
11. Although no doubt there’s hundreds more somewhere
12. Unrepublishable
13. And incomprehensible