Thrown to the Lions
Jul. 17th, 2010 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talonkarrde(Hush, son, let me tell you a story.)
A long time ago, there was once a small village called Shefford which had been around for a few hundred years, and they had developed very specific ways of doing things. The miller always named his son for his grandfather, the farmer always gave three of his best ears of corn to the owner of the pub, and so on and so forth.
Aside from all the usual, boring ones, they had two traditions that were interesting: they threw all foreigners to the lions, right before they left the village, and they didn’t feed stray kittens.
Now, the village was quite out of the way, so that it was very, very rare that anyone but solitary explorers would stumble upon them. But explorers did come in from time to time, and well, they didn’t end up coming back out. For the villagers, it was just a tradition that they had handed down from father to son and mother to daughter; it was so old, they didn’t even know where they got the lions from, except that there always had lions. As for questions as to why they did it —
well, the best anyone could come up with was that Shefford was a quietly prosperous village and outside influences could only be bad and unbalance things.
As for the prohibition on feeding kittens, one can only speculate that a long time ago, an elder was bit by one and made the tradition up in a fit of rage. (Why else would someone specify kittens, really?)
Anyway, around the time of Marcus Baker and Jonathan Miller (this was the type of village they lived in), there was an explorer named Kingsley who came into the village. Kingsley was a handsome young man, full of wanderlust; he had left his hometown to explore the world, and to find one more thing that he would tell anyone — he was looking for love.
True love, the type that that make women swoon and men scoff.
Kingsley had been wandering for years now, crossing deserts and fording rivers, and had visited many places. He was very charming — he had, in fact, charmed a girl in every little hamlet and village he had been to...and could tell if he had been somewhere if a girl rushed to embrace him at the inn a few minutes after he had settled in. News travels fast in small villages.
It was actually a remarkably useful way of telling which places were new and which weren’t.
The problem was that he loved none of those women. Sure, some of them were attractive, and some of them were funny, but there was something missing there. An appreciation for his love of adventure, perhaps, but whatever it was, he left his many varied lasses when it was time to move on. To his credit, he was always upfront about his actions; he only said that he needed to move on, and there were terrible storms and times of intense hunger and thirst and that he wouldn’t always be able to provide for them.
Okay, so he was a little sneaky. But still, he tried not to promise anything, and always told them before anything happened that he was a wanderer and would move on eventually.
Anyway, Kingsley came to this sleepy small village after a long journey through the woods and wilderness, and eagerly accepted a room at the inn. After no one came to search him out after five minutes, he figured that this was a new place, and set to get to know the village properly. He talked to the farmer and his family and visited the seamstress and was his friendly, honest self, learning names and helping out as best he could with small jobs here and there. He was also his usual charming self, always looking for love, and met quite a few single, attractive girls, but there was something odd about them.
They would politely greet him and make small talk, but even with his charm turned all the way up, no one would flirt back to Kingsley.
This was intriguing to him, and a bit of a challenge, and he resolved to stay a few more days than he had originally intended. He made a deal with the innkeeper to help out there, and around town, and ended up staying at first for a few days, and then for a few weeks. Every day, he would help the miller grind the grain, help the farmer with planting, and do anything else that he could; every day, he would flirt with the girls, and wonder why, exactly, they didn’t flirt back.
The second week that he was there, he heard a kitten mewing in the middle of the night, and promptly went to find it and give it some shelter. When he commented to Marcus Baker that he had found a stray last night, the man asked him with such intensity if he had fed it that he said no.
After all, he thought, sheltering it is different from feeding it.
Then Marcus explained the prohibition and Kingsley almost let the kitten go, but it looked so sweet, snuggled in his knapsack, that he couldn’t. So he started feeding it, of course, and it started growing, and when it was awake, he told it to keep out of sight. He figured, well, it might not understand him, but what was the harm?
Aside from raising the kitten, though, he made little progress. The girls never warmed to him, no matter how much he proved that he was an excellent worker, was funny and told amusing jokes, and wanted to be with them. So it was there, after a month and a half, that he finally had his last day there, and decided to move on. He told the innkeeper that, had a bowl of porridge that was graciously provided by the apothecary (no, the sharpest tool in the shed), and fell asleep.
He woke up in a tunnel, with the kitty licking his face.
Now, Kingsley didn’t know that the tunnel led directly to the lions den, but the kitten did, and the kitten knew what it had to do. It watched as the man lit a torch, and then led him forward, into the tunnel, until they were just at its mouth. And then she turned on him, and bit his wrist, and he dropped the torch.
And the kitten walked forward, next to the torch, and her shadow was cast upon the walls, and it was great and terrible. And then she walked forward to the lions, who had grown stupid and fat and lazy because all they did was eat those that were brought to them.
“Did you see that shadow on the wall? That was me! That was my real body, which could eat all of yours quickly! Do you want to try me?!” she said to them, in hisses and purrs and with strength born from dedication and desperation. (Son, this was a long time ago, cats could communicate to each other)
The lions looked at each other for a second and decided not to chance it.
No, we do not want to fight you, great cat,” they said. “What do you want from us?”
“Let my man go!” the kitten said, her head tall and eyes bright.
And they thought for another moment, and then they shrugged, parting as Kingsley walked forward after his kitten, and she led him between the two rows of lions on both sides, out the exit across the back, and to safety.
Kingsley left that village alive and stopped charming girls from little hamlets, though he didn't stop exploring. From then on, though, he always traveled with the cat by his side, having learned something.
The kitten had loved him enough to save his life, even though it could've run away. That, he thought, was true love.
(So be good to your kitten, okay?)
A long time ago, there was once a small village called Shefford which had been around for a few hundred years, and they had developed very specific ways of doing things. The miller always named his son for his grandfather, the farmer always gave three of his best ears of corn to the owner of the pub, and so on and so forth.
Aside from all the usual, boring ones, they had two traditions that were interesting: they threw all foreigners to the lions, right before they left the village, and they didn’t feed stray kittens.
Now, the village was quite out of the way, so that it was very, very rare that anyone but solitary explorers would stumble upon them. But explorers did come in from time to time, and well, they didn’t end up coming back out. For the villagers, it was just a tradition that they had handed down from father to son and mother to daughter; it was so old, they didn’t even know where they got the lions from, except that there always had lions. As for questions as to why they did it —
well, the best anyone could come up with was that Shefford was a quietly prosperous village and outside influences could only be bad and unbalance things.
As for the prohibition on feeding kittens, one can only speculate that a long time ago, an elder was bit by one and made the tradition up in a fit of rage. (Why else would someone specify kittens, really?)
Anyway, around the time of Marcus Baker and Jonathan Miller (this was the type of village they lived in), there was an explorer named Kingsley who came into the village. Kingsley was a handsome young man, full of wanderlust; he had left his hometown to explore the world, and to find one more thing that he would tell anyone — he was looking for love.
True love, the type that that make women swoon and men scoff.
Kingsley had been wandering for years now, crossing deserts and fording rivers, and had visited many places. He was very charming — he had, in fact, charmed a girl in every little hamlet and village he had been to...and could tell if he had been somewhere if a girl rushed to embrace him at the inn a few minutes after he had settled in. News travels fast in small villages.
It was actually a remarkably useful way of telling which places were new and which weren’t.
The problem was that he loved none of those women. Sure, some of them were attractive, and some of them were funny, but there was something missing there. An appreciation for his love of adventure, perhaps, but whatever it was, he left his many varied lasses when it was time to move on. To his credit, he was always upfront about his actions; he only said that he needed to move on, and there were terrible storms and times of intense hunger and thirst and that he wouldn’t always be able to provide for them.
Okay, so he was a little sneaky. But still, he tried not to promise anything, and always told them before anything happened that he was a wanderer and would move on eventually.
Anyway, Kingsley came to this sleepy small village after a long journey through the woods and wilderness, and eagerly accepted a room at the inn. After no one came to search him out after five minutes, he figured that this was a new place, and set to get to know the village properly. He talked to the farmer and his family and visited the seamstress and was his friendly, honest self, learning names and helping out as best he could with small jobs here and there. He was also his usual charming self, always looking for love, and met quite a few single, attractive girls, but there was something odd about them.
They would politely greet him and make small talk, but even with his charm turned all the way up, no one would flirt back to Kingsley.
This was intriguing to him, and a bit of a challenge, and he resolved to stay a few more days than he had originally intended. He made a deal with the innkeeper to help out there, and around town, and ended up staying at first for a few days, and then for a few weeks. Every day, he would help the miller grind the grain, help the farmer with planting, and do anything else that he could; every day, he would flirt with the girls, and wonder why, exactly, they didn’t flirt back.
The second week that he was there, he heard a kitten mewing in the middle of the night, and promptly went to find it and give it some shelter. When he commented to Marcus Baker that he had found a stray last night, the man asked him with such intensity if he had fed it that he said no.
After all, he thought, sheltering it is different from feeding it.
Then Marcus explained the prohibition and Kingsley almost let the kitten go, but it looked so sweet, snuggled in his knapsack, that he couldn’t. So he started feeding it, of course, and it started growing, and when it was awake, he told it to keep out of sight. He figured, well, it might not understand him, but what was the harm?
Aside from raising the kitten, though, he made little progress. The girls never warmed to him, no matter how much he proved that he was an excellent worker, was funny and told amusing jokes, and wanted to be with them. So it was there, after a month and a half, that he finally had his last day there, and decided to move on. He told the innkeeper that, had a bowl of porridge that was graciously provided by the apothecary (no, the sharpest tool in the shed), and fell asleep.
He woke up in a tunnel, with the kitty licking his face.
Now, Kingsley didn’t know that the tunnel led directly to the lions den, but the kitten did, and the kitten knew what it had to do. It watched as the man lit a torch, and then led him forward, into the tunnel, until they were just at its mouth. And then she turned on him, and bit his wrist, and he dropped the torch.
And the kitten walked forward, next to the torch, and her shadow was cast upon the walls, and it was great and terrible. And then she walked forward to the lions, who had grown stupid and fat and lazy because all they did was eat those that were brought to them.
“Did you see that shadow on the wall? That was me! That was my real body, which could eat all of yours quickly! Do you want to try me?!” she said to them, in hisses and purrs and with strength born from dedication and desperation. (Son, this was a long time ago, cats could communicate to each other)
The lions looked at each other for a second and decided not to chance it.
No, we do not want to fight you, great cat,” they said. “What do you want from us?”
“Let my man go!” the kitten said, her head tall and eyes bright.
And they thought for another moment, and then they shrugged, parting as Kingsley walked forward after his kitten, and she led him between the two rows of lions on both sides, out the exit across the back, and to safety.
Kingsley left that village alive and stopped charming girls from little hamlets, though he didn't stop exploring. From then on, though, he always traveled with the cat by his side, having learned something.
The kitten had loved him enough to save his life, even though it could've run away. That, he thought, was true love.
(So be good to your kitten, okay?)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 02:30 am (UTC)good thing little cat saved him.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:38 pm (UTC)...or, I guess, he could warn travelers away. Either way :P
no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:40 pm (UTC)Then it looked at me reproachfully, and I said, okay, I'll write a story about a kitten, and it jumped off. The rest, as they say, is a story ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 03:59 am (UTC)Fun, fun, fun tale here, my friend. Nicely done.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 10:15 pm (UTC)...Then again, maybe they do. In slightly more seriousness, though, I don't think I'll ever be without a pet if I can help it. Just something about that unconditional love and all (though I hear dogs are quite good for it too)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 12:28 am (UTC)