Saturday, July 21, 2018

A fairy tale

I'm transitioning this site to be about writing. I suppose I should start putting up some writing.

Here is a little fairy tale.

Winning.

By me.



There once was a boy who loved winning. 

Silly, isn't it? Everyone loves winning. 

But this boy loved winning quite a lot. Much more than the other children. 

The other children loved winning too, but they equally loved other things like flowers, and music, and chocolate.

The one little boy thought they weren't very smart. After all, if he won, he got rewards too. Especially when they played games for chocolates.  And when he won, he would sing a song too, but about himself and how great winning was. 

The other children didn't like to play with him. When they told him they didn't like playing with him because he took all their chocoaltes, he said he didn't care. They just didn't like winning as much as he did. 

So the boy looked at the other children and said, "You're all too easy to beat anyway." Then he clapped his hands together and walked away. Besides, they never sang the songs about him, even when he won. 

He went into the world in search of people who would play with him. Maybe they had chocolates, and other things he could win from them. He thought of the great songs he would make them all sing. 

He met many other people and it turned out they like to win quite a lot too. They were very good at winning. The boy couldn't beat everyone anymore. Some would beat him and he grew very angry. Then, one day, he met a man who said he knew why all these other people were beating him and he would tell him if only he would give him all of the chocolates he had left. 

"My boy," The man said, "The reason they are beating you is because they are CHEATING!" 

The boy thought hard about all the times he lost and became convinced they all had cheated him. Of course they had! They could never have beaten someone who loved winning as much as he did without cheating.  

The man walked away laughing because he had won all the chocolates, but the boy left laughing too. For he knew how to win better than ever before. And winning was better than chocolates. 

The boy went back and cheated and began beating all the other people. He grew so good at cheating that he could even beat the best cheaters. 

Eventually he grew to be a man. 

The man went back to the children, who were also grown, to show them how good he had become at winning. It wasn't long before he had almost all of their chocolates and other things too. Because he had gotten so good at cheating that he had invented games where he could win even if the others didn't know they were playing. And the man laughed and made them sing songs about how wonderful he was at winning. But eventually he got tired of even that. He had won all the things he wanted from the people and rode a chariot high above them all. 
So again, he went off again in search of someone else to win against. 


But not just anyone would do. He wanted to find the most difficult thing to ever win. If he could do that, he wouldn't have to make up his own songs, others would make them up for him. They would have to. He would have won everything. 

No matter how many people he asked, none of them knew the hardest thing to win that he hadn't already won. So, one day, while walking down the street, he saw an old man and an idea came to him. Maybe if he asked a different question. 

"You, old fellow... What is the most powerful thing in the world?" He asked to a humble man pushing a cart down the road. 

The old fellow squinted his eyes up and answered him, "Why, nature is." 

And the man knew it was so. He set out to find nature, and everywhere he could, defeat her. 

The man had become quite powerful and was able to do much damage to the workd before Nature herself heard about the man and set out to meet him. 

She came to him in the remains of a forest. He was chopping down the trees to make musical instruments upon which would be played all of the songs about him.

Nature became the largest tree in the forest. When he walked up to her with his ax, she introduced herself. 

He smiled. For he had been waiting for this moment a long time. 

"Why would you try to defeat me? I am everything you are."

He spit on his palms, picked up his ax and said, "Because I can win at anything, against anything." 

Then he started chopping. 

Nature shook and cried in the way of the tree. Her leaves fell down around him. She had seen this before and knew how it would end. 

She cried out, "You cannot win. For I am you and all your children and their children after that, forever until there is nothing more." 

The man just laughed at her nonsense and kept chopping. He was almost through the tree. He could hear the smaller cracks growing louder. 

"You must stop now. For when you are done, it is forever. There can be no turning back."

"Of course you would say that," He screamed at her, veins bulging out in his neck. "That is what anyone would say if they didn't want to lose!"

And with one last mighty swing, he buried the ax into the tree. A loud crack sounded in the forest. The tree began to fall. He had done it. He had defeated to most powerful thing in the world. 

And there was nothing left to win. 

He sat down next to an old tree stump with a smile. He'd beaten everything, but he felt strange and knew that death was upon him. Looking around, he realized that, even though he had chopped down the tree, he was dying and Nature still remained.

For Nature was weakened. But, like the stars, she could not be defeated. As she weakened, all the creatures of the Earth weakened with her. For they relied on her for everything. She was them and they were her. 

The children of the man and all the people of the Earth did not sing songs about him. They tried not to speak of him at all but, when they did, it was to frighten little children into going to bed. The damage was done and Nature had been made too weak to nourish the people and they died. 

Then Nature grew stronger and returned.


The END.