This is the story that came to my mind.

The hero is one of us. An American in our world. Probably a teenager or young adult.

Something happens, and he is called out of our world into a land of villages. It is a real world, but it is also something like a game. He is a Level 1 Hero with stats. He gets little notifications and can see popups giving basic information about the people he meets.

He starts doing small favors for the villagers, fights animal pests, and grows in level. He unlocks achievements and new skills. He becomes more capable and faces larger and larger threats. The villagers cooperate with him and eventually he even acquires the ability to recruit them as militia and watchmen. But it bothers him that so much depends on him. Granted, he is a Hero and they are Villagers, but they aren’t just props in a game, they are real people, and it bothers him that they are so oddly unconcerned about their own safety. So willing to just leave it to him.

But one Christmas Eve he is out in the lonely moonlit snow on patrol. And he looks down from the slope he’s on, and through the firs he can see one of his villages, windows lit, the people spilling out into the streets singing and rejoicing together, the little church, post out over fires cooking good things, and he feels that it is all worth it. He feels their happiness, and he wants them just they way they are.

Achievement unlocked: love.

(more…)

It’s a story that has been told many time before.  Page 1 is a peasant boy living an ordinary life; he and his friend are away from supervision hewing wood and drawing water and being comically boyish.  Imagine that this book is copiously illustrated, so on the facing page there is a warm, funny line drawing of two boys hanging upside down from branches trying to wrestle.

Page 2, they come back to their village to see it in ruins.  There had been a sudden raid by evil creatures out of legend destroying and burning.  Horribly, they also kidnapped.  The drawing is a view from behind the boy as he stands looking at the shattered hamlet.  The drawing is smudgy and chaotic.

Page 3, he discovers his parents are dead and his younger sister was kidnapped.  Here we have a picture of a young girl with her head turned to look back to us–she is distressed and sad–while a dark and inhuman arm pulls her into a brooding forest.  This drawing is detailed.

Page 4, he runs off into the local woods to boyishly grieve.  The drawing is him alone, dejected, and crying.

Page 5, he makes a vow by a spring to get his sister back and a supernatural experience ensues.  Some holy presence in the spring witnesses his vow and rises up to bless him and prophesy of his destiny.  The drawing is the boy in awe at the angelic being rising above him.

Page 6, he heads back to the village, but it is now night.  He hears noises and grapples with his own terror.  This scene is played comically.  The threat is no threat at all.  The drawing is a little boy with a stick clutched in his hand, marching truculently and grimly towards a skunk.

Page 7 onward, he is back helping the village.  We meet other friends and neighbors and we learn some of the lore of who the evil raiders may have been, what it portends, and our first hints about the meaning of the boy’s prophecy at the spring.  The drawings are scenes of ordinary life; they are calm and hopeful.

Page 38 onward, the boy’s first quest, something minor to help the hamlet.  Perhaps he and a companion or two (including his friend from page 1) are sent to plead with a Lord  for help for the hamlet.  There is the comedy of him and his bumbling companions being fish out of water, the touching simplicity of an overmatched lad still determined to do his mission–and succeeding!–and the warm personal relationships between him and his companions.  One of the pictures  shows the reception scene at the Lord’s hall.  The Lord and his court are shown very straight and graceful like a pre-Raphaelite painting while the boy and his companions are drawn more in a Norman Rockwell or Peter-Breughel peasant key.

Page 54 onward, on their way back they have an encounter with danger.  It is small but real, and requires them to fight.  Afterwards they have a second encounter with the supernatural beings of Light.  The boy receives more direction and his companions are recruited to help him.  They discover there is a rising Dark Lord who cannot be defeated by ordinary means.  A final drawing in this segment is the three of them kneeling humbly.

Page 75 onward, he decides he has to leave to discover a source of power that will help him fight the Dark.  He and his companions leave for good this time.  The drawing of the village farewell is touching.

They have major and minor adventurers.  He acquires an animal companion, a very comic older friend, probably not exactly human, he grows in skill and power.  There are long segments where he is being closely hunted by the Dark and must flee and lurk and hide.  He wins fights.  He meets with the King.  There is an unexpected treachery.  There is also a peril that he only escapes through the brave sacrifice of a friend and he weeps.  He discovers that his own nature can betray him, that he himself has bad flaws that holds him back, and he has to face his own fears and weaknesses.  He discovers more about the Light, what it is, and why it relies on him and others like him. The peril grows and becomes suffocatingly menacing.  The hero’s plan fails and he is badly defeated and wounded.

All copiously illustrated.

But when all seems lost, some weak and helpless friend gives him unexpected aid and the prophecy is fulfilled in a surprising way.  The boy’s own weaknesses and unsophistication turn out to be his greatest strengths, and the ruthlessness and malice that gave the Dark Lord his power turn out to be the Dark Lord’s downfall.  In a dramatic confrontation, the boy and the Light defeats the Dark.

The Light chooses and honors him in front of all the people.  The drawing shows the boy now become a young man, full of strength and nobility.

But what comes after that? (more…)

They were all poets and cavaliers.  If you asked them a question, they would respond with a flight of fancy. 

“What is the weather like?” 

“Whether the weather likes what the weather is like I am not disposed to say.  Yet I vow my sunny disposition is brightened by this sun, which steadfast glow shall never be put out, be it enclouded or endarkened to our view.” 

You could not break them out of it.  If you pressed them hard enough for a straight answer on some practical point, they simply switched and let their other head talk to you. 

You see, all these creatures had two heads. (more…)

By chance three young men met at the beginning of the Path, the one true Path that runs east of the Moon and west of the Sun, the Path whose entrance is hidden and narrow.

Each marveled that he had found the Path and marveled that fate had sent him companions with which to travel it.

“Are you like me, gentlemen?”  the dark-haired one said.  “I found the path by reading old books and discovering the lies that modern scholars told.  I asked the questions they avoided and traced the logical implications that they refused to even acknowledge.  The gap in the leaves that leads here was hard to find, but it was there, and they said it was not.  So I walked through it.  Was it the same with you?”

“No!” the freckled one said brightly.  “One night I heard music.  I got up from my bed and followed it to a dark crossroads, where a voice from the wood told me to always follow signs and  my heart.  I rush in without thinking about the consequences, because I know it will be all right.  Today I saw a dove flying and it shone like it was purest gold.  A crow larger than I have ever seen rose up and attacked it.  I was angry, and called on the powers that be to drive off this crow, because the dove was fair and beautiful.  When I did, an eagle swooped down and struck the crow.  The dove flew on and I followed it here.”

The third one with yellow hair looked curiously at them both.  “I am here,” he said slowly, “because my grandfather and my father walked this path when they were my age.  They told me to come.  They showed me the way.”

The freckled one laughed.  “I love how different our stories are.  We should become companions on this Path.  It is obviously meant to be.”

The dark-haired one nodded.  “Mutual aid and taking advantage of unexpected good fortune such as this are policies that maximize expected value in outcomes.  It is not probable that our presence here at the same time is coincidence.”

The other boy agreed.  “Like my father and grandfather always said, ‘Journey with friends, you’ll all win your ends.'”

Then, because it felt right, because it was customary, because an understanding of evolved human nature suggested it would have positive effects on the primitive subconscious, they clasped hands and swore fellowship.

A wolf found that a local lion frequently took the wolf’s kills.  The wolf would patiently stalk and hunt and kill, only to have the lion drive him off before he had eaten more than a bite or two.

The wolf brooded on this injustice but could think of no other remedy than to avoid the lion in his hunting.  But this often meant hunting in areas with less game, and still resulted with the lion driving the wolf off more than the wolf would like.

The wolf then hit on a clever plan.  Instead of avoiding the lion, he would hunt only where the lion was.  Over time, the lion would become dependent on the wolf’s hunting and would be unable to survive on his own.  The wolf would then flee and the lion would starve.

The wolf then set about his plan and was well on his way to success when he himself died of starvation.

Moral: Your plans always affect yourself.

Comment:  The wolf’s plan is clever in its way and could probably be the basis for a fable that illustrates the folly of becoming too dependent.  Yet this fable makes what seems to me to be a more important point.  Too many plans fail because they see the world as static.  Even very smart and experienced people make plans of this kind.  In the fable, one way the wolf’s plan could fail would be the lion figuring out the danger of dependency and hunting on his own occasionally just to keep his skills up.  The wolf would have no way of preventing it.  But an even graver error, and one that has a moral dimension, is that people forget that they themselves will be changed by their plans.

(more…)

These build on each other.  We’ll start with the First Parable of Rule again.

(more…)

A traveler on a long journey came to a ford.  Due to recent rains, the stream was swollen to a flood.  The traveler was perplexed to know what to do and exercised his mind for a solution. (more…)

In the grove in the evening, the lion heard a great racket from a father robin and his brood and went to investigate.

“Friend Robin,” the lion said, “why do you make a fuss?”

“Look at this nest, O Lion. All my work on it is ruined.” The nest was a ring of thorns the robin had woven to keep the young away from the edge. But in the middle of the ring at the bottom of the nest there was little. The pine needles and other such stuff the robin put here had mostly fallen away.

“Do not fret, friend Robin,” the lion said. “As I walked here, I saw several empty nests. I will lead you to one. Then it will be as if your mistake never happened.”

“O Lion,” the robin replied, “what a piteous state would be mine if all my work for my brood were meaningless. I cannot bear that they go to another nest as if all my work had never happened.”

“Then you will have your brood sleep in this nest?” the lion asked.

“No,” said the robin, “they would fall. It is not fair to them to suffer for my mistakes.”

“And you see no way for the nest to be repaired?” the lion asked.

“Oh no,” said the robin, “I built it wrong from the start.”

Then the king of beasts took the ring of thorns and placed it on his own head. “Let your brood nest in my mane, walled in by you’ve the ring you made.”

Someone must bear the consequences.