Pteroguin Fledgling & Domino Fox

A Domino Fox, for whom sympathy was not a common feeling, felt such connection when she happened upon a wounded Pteroguin Fledgling. Studying the natural born enemy from afar, she could tell that ripped through Pteroguin Fledgling’s expansive wings were huge holes, and to her best estimations this creature could not fly.

“Have you come to mock me?!” snapped the Pteroguin Fledgling, as it stirred and raised to its feet.

The Domino Fox watched from afar, and she had good mind to mock the Pteroguin Fledgling when it flapped and raised no higher than she could with a hop. “No, I’ve not come to mock you,” said the Domino Fox.

“Then you’ve come to end me,” assumed the Pteroguin Fledgling, “I would not blame you. How I sorely relish to start anew as a fresh hatchling.”

The Domino Fox scoffed at the once terrible beast’s sulking. “Nor have I come to do that!” she barked. “As horrid you creatures are in good health, you’re pitiful when wounded. I can see now,” said the Domino Fox, “you could all benefit from lessons of those you hunt and often maim.”

Departing the Pteroguin Fledgling, the Domino Fox concluded, “A long and experienced life is a worthy goal,” as she limped on an old wound with several of her pups in tow.

Despite your wounds, hold on for long life.

Awesome work! Please tell me you're going to be a scribe? I'd dig to start a library of sorts :)

Posted By Pteroguin at 5:03 PM - Tue Oct 11 2016

Awesome work! Please tell me you're going to be a scribe? I'd dig to start a library of sorts :)

I won't have characters across all planned servers (leaning toward NA-W), so that being the case, these are definitely up for grabs for scribes all over to copy, provided that's something scribes can do.

But, we'll see what happens. All of these stories fall under 2,000 characters used, and I'm wondering what the upper limit would be and the style limitations for scribing texts ingame.

I do want to write larger IC texts designed to exist in-game, but right now, I don't think the essential limits are defined in any Dev Journals or forum posts. So, I will just have to adjust to the things set in stone and keep investments low.

I wrote these fables in large part because they're both pithy and unintrusive, and because even at exposition I want the world to seem to have literature in a foundational way, and because fables spread obscurely, it's definitely fair to say 'via way of Titan's Steppe link,' a library curator acquired these.

So, have fun!

The Baker & Boy

A Baker, who thought a dog came behind his shop, found instead a Boy whose stomach snarled with fierce hunger pangs. There, the Boy rifled through the Baker’s refuse, unable to find any such rubbish as truly edible.

“Boy,” said the Baker, inviting him in, “come, and I will make you a loaf that you can take in your travels.”

As the Boy came into the kitchen, the Baker first helped to settle the child’s present hunger with cold biscuits from early that morning. The Boy shared profuse gratitude.

“But Boy,” said the Baker, “biscuits will not last you through the week,” and he proceeded to mix water, yeast, and flour, then pound a firm dough. Setting it aside, the Baker asked the Boy to tell him his story, but found the boy much more interested in the mixture.

“Boy,” the Baker said, grabbing his attentions,

“Bread rises despite hungry eyes.”

Otter Bear Pup & Otter Bear Sow

Upon a great and winding river lived an ambitious Otter Bear Pup, though only in name, because as his mother Sow observed, her Pup was quite generally a layabout. “Learn from my example,” said she to her Pup, “you may find reason to rest on your back all evening, though be assured, on the strong currents you live, this river will take you for doing nothing.”

The following evening, the Otter Bear Pup caught a fresh meal. The Pup, while gnawing away, drifted on its back as otter bears often do. The Sow then said, “Come away now, there are yet more things to see finished on this great river.”

Except, the Pup did not listen and gave way to what the Sow observed as her ambitious Pup’s chief ambition: long naps. So the Pup listed, careened and was victim to all manner of whimsy by that river, and before long, the Pup was lost to the river with no hope of returning.

Ambition moves against the current.

Farmer & Daughter

A Farmer and Daughter collected, from a large orchard, their apples, which began the long duty of harvest.

Basket after basket, they collected an impressive number of apples and when the Daughter became tired by the many trips, the Farmer asked that she begin sorting the apples and showed what was a good apple and what was a bad apple.

Sorting apples until sundown, the Daughter complied.

When the Farmer came to both join the sorting and inspect her effort, he found a mistake in his Daughter’s work—set aside with the many good apples was one bad apple.

Briefly expressing his disappointment in this discovery, his Daughter replied, “Papa, it is but one bad apple.”

This excuse was not satisfactory. “Daughter of mine,” said the Farmer, “it is crucial to learn:

One bad apple spoils the vessel.”

The Brute & Phoenix

A Phoenix in the company of a Brute rebirthed from recent demise, as is the custom of the bird, and after years of aiding the Brute, the Phoenix admonished their late massacre of travelers.

To the Brute, the Phoenix said, “Master, our mortal blows were not mercy strokes, nor comeuppance in deserving fashion. In point of fact, our conduct,” said the Phoenix, “weighs heavily on my conscience.”

The Brute, caring not for counsel but companion struck the Phoenix, quickening it to another cycle of revival. When it returned to conscious form, the Brute rebutted, “my pleasure is without compunction.”

Having suffered more catastrophe and incapacitation than the Brute, the Phoenix did not believe its master would understand, but all the same uttered these words:

“The soul is strained with every vice.”

Ursaphant, Owl & Horse

On a quiet night, Owl witnessed an important message cast over the stars. Obliged to report its meaning, Owl began flight, but was too tired. Supposing he could not reach further than a stone’s throw, Owl visited the stables to wake its residents to a challenge.

There, Owl charged Horse to carry this star-writ omen to every animal in the realm.

Ursaphant, who slept in the stables, huffed at the task, slowly rising to the notice of Owl and Horse. “I can do that,” said Ursaphant in a deep rumble, “much quicker than Horse. I can do that.”

But Owl was in disbelief spinning his head all around to gauge the reaction of the stable. “You needn’t do that,” said Owl to Ursaphant, “Horse is much quicker. This we all know, and will carry the message faster than you.”

Ursaphant then goaded Horse into a challenge. “Me against you,” she said, “I can carry Owl’s message quicker.”

Horse blew harsh words and disbelief into the air, and Owl had to concur, as well as the whole stable who heard the insult—because indeed, Ursaphant did look clumsy and weighed down by her size.

So, in witty retort, Ursaphant blew on her trumpet a loud and raucous joke about Horse, and the entire village erupted in laughter, and not just the stable.

Witnessing the effect of Ursaphant’s trumpet, Owl then said,

“For tremendous ground, use boundless sound.”

The Grave & Scholar

On a late and unlit hour, a Scholar, whose company was the Grave beyond her window, heard on the wind an ageless and whispered command. The Grave called to the Scholar, like an ill elder, for consultation on its health. And the Scholar, whose habits are oft pursuing the strangest of occurrences, visited the Grave, placing her ear to its soil, as though it were a chest with beating heart.

And after compliance, she could hear little more than the slow weaving crawl of the worms underneath, scraping through wet and clumping earth. She began to wonder, more seriously, if she had been imagining the call, or perhaps that the villagers or even animals themselves could be playing a prank against her.

Per all she was taught, she found nothing upon the Grave. Nothing blighted the grounds. Nothing stirred past the markers for the dead. In all she could reason, save for the whispering she heard, nothing was peculiar for this site beyond her window.

Then again she caught the disembodied voice on a foggy breeze. To the Scholar, the Grave offered peculiar gifts—alarming promises for unattainable reward. Worrisome chatter ensued, and an accord was struck beneath night’s black disk.

The Scholar put her back to the ground, and the Grave swallowed her, hungry not for good health ensured by the knowledgeable, but for the company of another warm soul to lock away into its cyclopean fields of lifeless vapors.

Some discoveries grant an early grave.

The Fisherman & Well

A remote and inland village sent word to the coast for the most renown Fisherman in residence. There, their envoy visited with the Fisherman, explaining their condition. As it so happened, from their Well in town, this remote and inland village suffered the emergence of an aberrant odor of fish.

A smart man, the Fisherman asked toward obvious causes, and it was concluded that no errant barrel of fishy stock, or rancid cause of any kind was reason for their plight. Indeed, the villagers around this Well covered it on and off again, but hopelessly the smell would seep from the pit.

Unusual to his normal work, the Fisherman agreed to travel to this inland village and fish out their pungent problem.

Save for the stink, it was such an ordinary Well, thought the Fisherman, and with all options exhausted he rappelled into the abyss which soon hollowed into a larger network of tunnels.

In the rank and yawning caverns below, even silent thoughts could echo, and the concern of petty odors seemed to dwarf in presence of such awful rarity. Perhaps it was his frightened thoughts compounding upon one another, but his senses seemed to suggest that from a spiraling and effulgent passage escaped some immemorial warning:

“The greatest depths are astir with horror.”

The Linguist & Arctic Poppy

Travelling between towns, a Linguist spoke aloud her notes and flattered herself about her many successful translations. The Linguist was pleased she knew all the words for sky and earth, for day and night, and that she knew the obscurest words for water in the west and could share this with thirsty folk in the east.

It was on a day in transit, like this, when she heard words she’d never witnessed, and indeed, a whole conversation rose around her in exotic voice.

The Linguist bent to the noise and laying among the flowers began to make out complaints. The Arctic Poppy, or so she gathered, was furious. Her keen sense built a portrait of an oppressed world of innumerable plants.

“We’re fighting back,” said the Arctic Poppy on behalf of all vegetation, “we’ll reclaim your roads,” they threatened, “overtake your towns, your nests, your sunken ships. Where we’ve been uprooted, we’ll re-emerge.”

It was through all this floral blustering the Linguist finally realized that in her self-interest she crushed a bed of flowers when she laid to listen. “I have been unaware,” she remarked. “Through all our own gains, we’ve not been very considerate.”

So, the Linguist continued her path to ponder this world’s spoken and unspoken connections.

Disregard is the harmful cousin of self-regard.

Shrubland Wildcat & Conifer Rats

Though the Conifer Rats are known to be easily startled, by so much as a flitting fly, nothing strikes as true a terror as the Shrubland Wildcat, who stalks the fields called home.

After a devastating night, in which Shrubland Wildcat dined on the meek creatures, the Conifer Rats met in secret to devise a plan toward justice.

“Who can expel the Shrubland Wildcat from our home?” asked the elders.

“It cannot be the pterroguin,” said one in response.

“Nor fox, nor otter bear,” concurred a third.

“We are alone in this and need to show courage,” said a precocious youth, which caused a great blustering among the elders. “I am serious,” the youth continued and caused a great laugh.

“And where do you suppose we’ll find the courage?” humored one elder, who wiped away spittle through the howling amusement.

“No matter how deep our fear,” said the youth, “just beyond that is what we care about, and beyond that is the courage to preserve it.”

Fear clings to what is cherished, hiding the courage to keep it.