I apologise for having been absent for so long, but I was captured by a group of terrorists who took me away to their penthouse in Bora Bora when they held me for ransom until they realised that noone was going to pay...
Anyway they felt sorry for me so they bought me an ice cream and let me go. The trip back cost me about 20.000, but im sure you dont care about that either...
Moving right along, my mailbox has been flooded with submissions for the contest. Im pretty sure ive received all of them because the worried e-mails asking where I was or if I was all right did not take up much space...
So... I have been editing them, sorting out the worst obscenities, and I will post them as they clear. Here is the first one, by Varatesh, high priest of the Troelsian order.
Personally I think it is a bit sentimental, but it is the thought that matters. (Not!)
Enjoy...
The Helper
Once upon a time a small river tortoise was being carried down a long wide river. Its little tortoise eyes kept closing, for it was on the brink of exhaustion. But luck was on the side of the wee tortoise because soon the river took a turn and it was able to drag itself onto the shore. The tortoise squinted its little eyes as an altogether heavenly sight appeared before it. Birds and butterflies in an endless array of colours circled gently above a garden of flowers and little bushes where a variety of animal species lived in perfect harmony. About half a mile inland rose, from the fertile ground, a huge rock. It stood two miles high and so it had stood for ages. Naruda, the animals called it, and this, in their tongue, means the helper. Naruda loved his little garden, and he protected it well. On the rare occasions when bad weather would strike this land he held out his hands to shield it. On a few occasions he had even let at stone fall from his heart onto cheeky wolf packs that had strayed onto these Elysian Fields.
But all good things must come to an end and the little tortoise was not the only new arrival on this day. Up the river, travelling against the current in the wombs of dead trees, came strange two legged creatures. As did the wee tortoise, these “orcs”, as they called themselves, stood long on the shore looking at all the wonders in front of them. But unlike the tortoise they did not then lay down to bask in the sun. Instead they soon began to chase the other animals, even kill them. Naruda was enraged that predators had been able to enter his domain. As soon as they strayed too close to him he would crush them. But the orcs never did. They stayed by the water where their behaviour quickly became even stranger. They actually began to cut down the bushes and trees from the surrounding forest and stack them in big piles. These piles they used for shelter against the elements and so they had no need of Naruda. Once in a while curious youngsters would go to Naruda, but they never spoke to him nor asked his council. Instead they climbed onto his feet and brought pieces of his toes back to their burrows on the shore. They soon gave up this behaviour as Naruda’s penalty was swift and hard. So hard, in fact, that he, in the legends of these people, was a model of pure evil.
Many years passed and, while the orcs grew ever more numerous, entire species of animals were eradicated. And to add pain to torment many of these species lived only here and so their kind was lost forever. Over the years Naruda had grown weary from the pain and agony he felt every day from his dear children below. Many times he had tried to reach out to the orcs but it was as if they were def to the sound of his voice. Filled with anger as he was in every corner of his body he wished dearly that he could destroy the intruders before they destroyed what was left of his world. Sadly though, as he knew all to well, the only way he could reach all the way to the waters edge was if he let his whole body fall over. This would, unfortunately, apart from it wrecking havoc on his view, kill off all of his little friends and destroy the rest of the plants, and the mere thought of this was too much for his gentle heart to bare. And so he just stood there until the day when the last musk rat was dead and the last flower had been trampled. By then the orcs had built their houses all the way up onto the very rock. Naruda did not even bother to drop rocks on them, for this tide of irritating little creatures could not be stopped so easily. Eventually Naruda fell into a deep sleep and he slept for a thousand years.
When finally he opened his eyes he thought what he was still dreaming. A cloud of black smoke rose from the burning ground and almost blocked out the sun. The creatures had set the world on fire, destroying the very shelters that they had sacrificed the trees to build. A colossal blast ripped the very fabric of existence and Naruda was almost frightened into an early grave. Full of despair and bleeding from a broken heart he once again fell into a deep sleep filled with dreams of burning houses and dying orcs, birds falling dead from a blood red sky, and a wee tortoise choking to death on the very air that it relied on for life.
Another millennium passed in the life of the helper before he once again rose from sleep and dared to open his eyes. What he saw may have surprised him even more than the burning sky. Below lay the flattened ruins of the world of the orc and on its back and down its sides and all the way around it, all the way to the waters edge, lay a blanket of soft green grass covered with flowers so rich in colour that Naruda thought he had never seen anything like it since the dawn of time. Birds and beasts were so abundant that it seemed the ground itself was moving. It was spring and the butterflies had just left their cocoons and they were everywhere. Suddenly the eyes of the helper were caught by something very tiny on the riverbank. There sat a wee tortoise, basking in the sun. When the wee tortoise sensed that Naruda had awoken, he had waited long for this moment, he looked up at him, squinting his little eyes, and spoke with the littlest voice, which only the helper could hear. And as he told the story of the darker years Naruda’s face first turned to sorrow and then at last to joy, for the words of the little one consoled him and he would never fear the orcs again. For with all their might and fury they can only spoil what has been created and not the very fabric of live, and so when the world is utterly destroyed, life will rise again and soon they will be but a distant memory in the mind of the helper.
