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The forest of Hatuga is alive. Not merely in a general way, by association with the organisms that populate its endless expanse, no – the forest itself is truly living and breathing. In every speck of dirt, every trickling stream, every quivering palm frond, one finds a beating spirit. Despite this unusual consciousness, the roles of its eco-organs do not change in the larger body. Each has its own place in Nature, and naturally gravitates towards a nature that is natural.
It is still possible to be almost too enthusiastic about one’s place in nature, however – to emphasize what is natural, and forget what nature must do. One such speck of Hatuga, overflowing with enthusiasm for itself, is Ammolite.

Ammolite is an ancient gemstone. Primarily an emerald green, yet somehow shining a whole cascade of colors when sunlight glints just right off its ridges. And there was nothing Ammolite enjoyed more, nothing at all, than staring into its reflection as it tried to bring those hidden colors out. When the other residents of Hatuga stopped for a glimpse of its reputable sheen – that was what gave the Ammolite purpose. These eyes, gazing in wonder and respect at this gemstone of many colors. To absorb these admonitions was its role in nature.

An acorn’s purpose is to grow a tree. That tree will provide refuge and nourishment for a great number of diverse creatures. But sometimes the most important actions are not part of nature, and set something in motion that seems rather unnatural. When an acorn falls, that is a part of its purpose; it falls towards the dirt, where it will burrow and take root. But what happens when Ammolite, mesmerized by its multi-layered reflection in a rippling pond, obstructs the path between acorn and dirt? Then the acorn never meets the dirt, plinking off the Ammolite’s hard carapace and plipping into the water. Nature is not disrupted; it ceases to exist within the acorn.

The Ammolite did not feel this mere tree nut. It was only irritated by the ripples caused, disturbing its reflection. This lasted for but a moment, and the reflection burst through once again with untouched splendor to the Ammolite’s relief. But relief is unnatural, especially for the idealistic nature of the Ammolite. Horrified, as it stared harder and harder into the glassy surface, the Ammolite realized that a chunk of itself was missing. Right where the acorn plinked, an iridescent chip had dislodged and vanished.

A gleam blinded the Ammolite from the depths of the pond. Past its reflection – in fact, forever dissolving that reflection in a rainbow light – was the missing piece. Smudged with mud, mired in moss, but struck by the sun in a way that permanently achieved the Ammolite’s optimum optics. Enraged at the audacity of its missing piece, horrified that it could not be gotten back, Ammolite was so besieged by feelings that it didn’t know what to do.

The pond was deep. In actuality, it was only six feet deep, but such diminutive depth is just enough to frighten our Ammolite crouching at the water’s edge. It lamented its lost piece, for how could it hope to become whole again when rocks and gems are famous for being denser than water, in practically every situation? Down his whole would sink, lost forever for the sake of a part. What a measly, chalky part it was, compared to the whole! Who needs a chink as weak as that? Still, it was part of the Ammolite, and it longed for that piece. That piece justified its role, the purpose given to it by the forest’s accepting glances, which said, “We see and know your value.” The whole was now worthless, so long as that piece remained out of reach.

Refusing nature has a way of wearing you down – especially since wearing down is just as natural, and refusing to understand this only expedites the process. It began to show on the Ammolite, more and more pieces flaking off its beautiful coat, until it realized that completeness was more than just sediment packed together. Completeness was a fundamental foundation in its own understanding of Ammolite-ness. But then the Ammolite stopped thinking, because those thoughts made no sense. All it needed to know was that it would never be whole again without that missing piece, and that this diminished value was not worth protecting. Which, of course, it had determined at the beginning.

The Ammolite stopped its waiting, stopped its worrying, and tumbled headlong into the pond – to sink, yes, but to be made whole again. So what if it was trapped at the bottom of the pond? This insignificant pond would be made greater, for then the Ammolite’s purpose would become the pond’s purpose! All of Hatuga would gather to gaze upon the enlightened Ammolite, who turned waters to rainbows and muds to clouds. That pond would become a portal to heaven, and all of Hatuga would appreciate and understand just what that flawless gem brought to nature’s order. And so the Ammolite made peace with its piece, becoming whole once again as it settled on the pond floor atop its wayward chip.

But then something unnatural happened.

Against all odds, against the very fundamentals of science, the Ammolite began to float. With its missing piece in tow, the Ammolite rose up, up out of its watery grave! It rolled onto the shore, rejuvenated and rethinking the very understanding of its Ammolite-ness. It could float! What does this mean? Well, firstly, it meant the Ammolite could continue staring at its reflection day in and day out. So that was the very first thing it did.

One could say the Ammolite was petrified, in both figurative and literal senses. The Ammolite now saw a stranger in its reflection – not an Ammolite, not a gem, but an unimpressive grey stone. A Pumice stone, to be precise, in all its pitiful porous plaintiveness. Pumice, by nature, can float, explaining the Ammolite’s miracle. But what was the cost? Now it was no longer defined by Ammolite-ness; rather, it was condemned to see itself only in terms of Stone-ness. What the Ammolite refused to understand is that stones, like Pumice, serve an important role in the nature of Hatuga. They were not fragile colorful things to be looked upon, but hearty and practical, useful and reliable, active and essential.

But the Ammolite had been used to being praised as Ammolite for so long, it could not come to terms with the fact that it was no more than a simple stone. Instead, it sought to uncover how this unnatural state of nature came to be. Was it a mystical transfiguration? Were the waters blessed with Alchemical properties? Was it a stone all this time, deluding itself into appearing more valuable than it actually was? Then what was the point of diving in after its missing piece?
After weeks of searching for answers to no avail, the Pumice plunged back into the pond. It hoped it would change again, returning to the state of Ammolite-ness it once lay claim to. Better it would be, the Pumice thought, for me to become Ammolite again and sink to the bottom, forever remembered for my beautiful being!

Such a change never happened, would not happen, no matter how much the Pumice wished. No, it could only float where its shining reflection once stared up, dreaming of what it had thought itself, or what it once was. Floating in its own remorse, until water seeped into the holes that peppered its entirety, filled its Pumice-ness with the heavy weight of natural order, and sank the former Ammolite into the pond’s murk where it has been remorselessly forgotten.

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The insects of Hatuga are the most fascinating creatures. Touting numbers as vast as sand on the seashore, yet with species varying more than the clouds in the sky, they go about their day-to-day-lives, engrossed in miniscule projects, unaware that all the effort they put forth makes hardly an impact on the forest’s designs. They are as inconsequential as…well, insects. But, as inconsequential as they are, it does not mean their lives have any less worth within Hatuga’s complex ecosystem. They are a necessary factor; the health of the forest relies upon them.

Among Hatuga’s insect species, the most beautiful is unarguably the Luna Moth. Every night, when the moon climbs high to shine in orangeish glory, flocks of Luna Moths on their luminescent wings act as paper lanterns of the forest. The floor would be awash with fluttering blue-green ripples, as though the Caribbean itself was reflected along the trees. Hatugan Luna Moths live three years without eating, content to spend their lives in a flight propelled by electricity that sparks inside them with every flap. They do not bemoan their lot, regardless of what you might think. It is a sweet, short cycle – to live and perish in the service of beauty.

There is fulfillment in that.

One day, a new batch of Luna Moths were born into this cycle. As larva, they are solely dedicated to consumption, feasting on knowledge and resources until the trees in one area are almost entirely bare of leaves and wisdom. When they finally realize the extent of their destruction, these larva form a cocoon from an awareness of their emptiness – a cocoon of shame, you might say – so that they might grow up. From this cocoon…a miracle! The larva are reborn as matured Luna Moths, complete with a new perspective on the world. They become desirous of nothing else but to light the way for their fellow creature, through the midnight darkness of Hatuga. They fill their emptiness with moonbeams.

Or, so is typically the case. There was born into one batch a break in the cycle. That day, from two parents who loved him very much, a Very Ignorant Caterpillar was born. No one quite figured out why he was so ignorant, or if that’s what he chose to be, but there was no doubting that ignorance was his lot in life. He ate more than any other larva, but was never full. He lived on the ground, though he knew he would be happier in the trees. He drank water from the stream rather than from dewdrops on leaves, and was half-drowned each time. But, worst of all, he hated his parents, and tried incessantly to become anything other than a Luna Moth.

As the time of shame fell upon the Luna larva, the Very Ignorant Caterpillar was overcome with fear. How could he draw his cocoon, and resist the metamorphosis from child to adult? There was no logical or biological way around it, so he sought out other insects of the forest. In them, perhaps, he would find some sort of final form he could aspire to, a construction that would be entirely to his liking and against his lot. The Very Ignorant Caterpillar began his search for the perfect metamorphosis.

The first insect he happened upon was the Flower Mantis. Besides Luna Moths, Flower Mantises were the most beautiful species of insect in all Hatuga. Their abdomens resemble billowing vines, their thoraxes are like the thorny stem of a rose, their heads blossoming petals. The Very Ignorant Caterpillar sought out one of these brilliant specimens, preening its patterned wings on a branch.

“Hey! Pansy! Tell me, how can I become a Flower Mantis like you?

The Flower Mantis cocked its head, dumbfounded, and marveled, “Well, now, aren’t you a novel breed of fool?”

“A lot of insects call me that,” replied the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. “But they are just insects. What do insects know, besides eating and flying and breeding? Honestly, it’s all just a pathetic existence to me.”

“But you’re an insect, too.”

“I am what I call myself. And I call myself an aspiring Flower Mantis.”

The Flower Mantis failed to see the logic in this, as a Flower Mantis was as much an insect as any other. But he was busy trying to look beautiful, and so wanted to get the Very Ignorant Caterpillar off his back as soon as possible.

“Well, the first thing about being a Flower Mantis is that you must be beautiful.”

“Check,” affirmed our scholarly bug-worm, though he was objectively quite ugly. But it is hard to tell with compound eyes sometimes.

“The second thing is, that you must be an extension to the glory of the tree.”

“Check,” affirmed our discontented larva, though he was confused in thinking that robbing the tree of its glory was the same as prospering it.

“The third thing is,” swooned the Flower Mantis. “Your beauty must captivate a female, so that she might devour your head and ensure our mutual beauty survives.”

“Che…Wait, what?” exclaimed the Very Ignorant Caterpillar, who did not expect that being beautiful required such a finite end.

“I said –“

“I heard what you said,” he interrupted hotly, “ and I refuse to believe it. Give my valuable head up to be eaten? Ridiculous. Laughable! No, I refuse your way of doing things. You are stupid to be content with that sort of life. Where is your desire for freedom? Where is your love of free will?”

The Flower Mantis shrugged. It was not his problem that this immature little insect refused to understand how most insects live and die in fleeting beauty. Instead, he used his free will to fly off to a higher branch, hoping any more argumentative bug-worms searching for reasons to be angry wouldn’t bother him up there.

So, having your head devoured was what it meant to grow up? The Very Ignorant Caterpillar needed no more interviews. This Flower Mantis was enough to make him realize that his species was not the problem; it was the entire insect population itself. Why bother growing up, why take on the responsibility of life and action, why serve the forest by furthering the glory of the tree or lighting up the jungle, if it ended in such cruel ends? It was a predicament that bore heavily on the bug-worm’s mind, which could now focus on little else but finding a way to live forever.

The Very Ignorant Caterpillar decided he would not be an insect any longer. And, weaning off the last essence of the withered tree he called his new home just yesterday, he was struck by inspiration.

To insects, the tree is the essence of life. It is where they are born – it is where they live –
it is where they die. They were formed from the tree, and so, in gratitude, they live for the tree. It is the thing they worship, the thing they adore, the thing they strive to be closest to. Insects may pass on, naturally, but the tree lives forever, growing stronger and yielding more life each passing year. Even though they try to be like the tree, never, not in their wildest dreams, do insects dream they can actually become a tree. That would be too brash. That would be too stupid.

The Very Ignorant Caterpillar decided he would become a tree.

While all his brothers and sisters were wrapping up in their cocoons – their cocoons of shame – his parents realized their son’s absence. They knew that this particular larva was a problem child; yet they loved him all the same. They only desired, despite his objections, that he should become the brightest and most beautiful Luna Moth of all. They found him on a tree, trying his hardest to become a tree. Or, rather, thinking hard on how to become a tree.

“Why must I grow into one of you,” lamented their child when questioned about his lack of shame, “doomed to serve the forest and live for only a brief, beautiful moment? I denounce you both, you and your way of life. I will live as this tree does! Even if it means my life is no longer beautiful, but ugly as the lifeless dirt.”

The parents of the Very Ignorant Caterpillar were confused – they didn’t know how to respond to such anger – but they trusted their son. They asked him how he would go about becoming a tree.

“Don’t rush me,” he spat, “I’ve just begun to find myself.”

Having finally made a formal declaration to his makers, our little bug-worm began a journey through Hatuga. He witnessed the bird and the beast, their relationships and their way of living. He marked the smoothness of the pebble in the running spring, the crunch of death in browning leaves; he wondered at the falling of pollen from the air, and the flight of spores released by fungi. Hatuga was a big place, and, the more he questioned it, the bigger a question it appeared to be.

Why were things the way they were? The more he looked into it, the more he felt he understood…the less sense anything made. It was during this endless study that the Very Ignorant Caterpillar discovered something: he hated the forest of Hatuga.

The parents of the Very Ignorant Caterpillar fluttered in frequently to see how he was doing. They asked if he had discovered what he would become. He insisted that they give him more time to find himself, but, truly, he was just stalling. How fearful he was of death, and what his hatred of life itself implied! His mother and father, two beautiful, caring Luna Moths, worried over their son’s conflictions. But they trusted that he would work things out soon, despite his breakout of nervous sweat every time they questioned his progress. Inching back and forth along the branches, bullying his brothers and sisters while they slept inside their cocoons by rattling them from outside, the Very Ignorant Caterpillar reached a boiling point of panic. He knew a day of reckoning would soon be fast upon him if he did not come to a conclusion.

But, then, finally, inspiration! Or, at least, we shall call it inspiration because of how it arrived and prompted action; in reality, it was not a very inspiring thought at all.

His thought was this: Breaking from cocoons was the beginning of all misery, of the short-lived pointlessness cursing Luna Moths and other insects. Therefore, in order to avoid it, in order to remain a consumer who lived forever, the Very Ignorant Caterpillar had an epiphany. An epiphany that made his wriggly self tremble in defiant glee.

He would refuse to grow up!

The writhing bug-worm’s second declaration was met with even less understanding by his worried parents. “But what do they know,” he jeered, as they tried to convince him of the error in their ways. “They chose to grow up. Whatever pain they feel now is their own fault!” Little did he guess that the source of their pain was his anger and self-loathing. But he was a Very Ignorant Caterpillar, after all. We cannot expect too much from the likes of him.

At first, the Very Ignorant Caterpillar was not sure how he would go about not growing up. He decided to eat more than usual, growing larger and larger than most Luna Moths in the canopy. But, the larger he grew, the more obvious imperfections woven into the patterns lining his skin. Nevertheless, he kept on eating. These imperfections only fed his hatred, anyways, and hating had become second nature to him.

The Very Ignorant Caterpillar lifted his spirits by berating his entire flock of Luna Moth, denouncing their way of living as “despicable” and “ignorant.” He would lounge about in the highest leaves, hurling down a constant tirade of insults from above. The Luna Moths were too busy doing what nature decreed to hear him – this was a personal outrage to the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. They only began to take notice when he would drop sticks and fruit on them from above, for then he was actually being harmful.

His parents tried, once more, to parent him. They couldn’t bear to watch their child’s degradation, and tried a final time to help him see reason. His way of living was no way to live, and he risked never being happy by refusing to grow up. They did not object to his interrogatory nature, but, by destroying the stability of everything around him in his own mind, he was leading himself to self-destruction. “Self-destruction?” questioned the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. “The essence of maturity is finding fault in the world. It is you who refuse to grow up and understand that growing up is the source of all things problematic.”

He did not necessarily elaborate on what was problematic exactly, but instead chucked a Brazilian nut at a poor Tarantula who wasn’t bothering anybody.

This conference enlightened the Very Ignorant Caterpillar, though. For some reason, no one in Hatuga took him seriously. He couldn’t put his antennae on the reason why – that is, until his parents came to visit. Surely, they did not take him seriously, because they knew it was only temporary! They were secretly plotting in the underbrush how they might force him to grow up with their superior numbers! This revelation terrified the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. How could he preserve himself, since taking on the entire insect population was impossible?

The Very Ignorant Caterpillar discovered an occupation to counteract growing up, and it was in this occupation he found his calling. It was with great pride and pleasure that the Very Ignorant Caterpillar found a calling in educating future larva, to understand just how unfair growing up was. They would become his defense against the Luna Moths.

Seizing a perch on a prized branch, with plenty of space accounted for by an intricate array of crisscrossed twigs, our rebellious wriggler became a professor. He was no longer the “Very Ignorant Caterpillar,” but “Professor Caterpillar,” and school was in session. Few insects came when they first heard the call, but newcomers arrived every day. It helped that Professor Caterpillar spent all his time complaining, desperate to be heard; his rabble-rousing voice was a call to action, a call to seize a new day for the little bug. Some came because of rumors that he held the secret to living forever, but these are unfounded.

Now, there are teachers, and there are professors. The difference between the two is that the teacher teaches, and the professor professes. Some professors are wise, professing wisdoms that expound upon or complement teachings. Some professors, on the other hand, are ignorant, and use their position to tell students semi-truths they want to hear, to leave a legacy of students following their miserable lifestyle.

Professor Caterpillar professed a breed of miserable thoughts. All species of insect larva from all over the forest came to hear him rant and rave on the evils of Hatuga, and how it wished to make them miserable by forcing them to grow up. The secret behind growing up was responsibility – the dignifying of fruitless labor. Or, rather, that the fruit was healthy but didn’t taste very good. Time was much more fun spent on proving how growing up was a bad idea, how adults wanted to make them as hopeless as themselves. His misery was defined so eloquently by big words and academically credited by scholars of the same emotional strand that his class soon became “flying-room-only” by interested youths. Professor Caterpillar had found himself, so he thought, by forming a nest of the classroom.

In the middle of his seventh class, Professor Caterpillar’s mother and father entered through the back. They were surrounded by stinkbugs, blister bugs, centipedes, mealworms, roaches, butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, horseflies, mantises, ticks, and countless other arthropods. The only difference between the Luna Moths and their son’s pupils was that, like their professor, the pupils had refused to grow up. They adored that vehement figurehead. Casting off the pressure to grow into their destiny, they had become like their intellectual idol; defiant, bitter, and cruel.

Speaking of cruelty, Professor Caterpillar saw his parents the moment they fluttered in. With a leer fit for the worst of foes, he aimed the stick-bug he used as a pointer directly at them. It was a challenge to those that bore him into this cruel world.

“Why,” questioned Professor Caterpillar, “have your kind oppressed us so? We refuse to go quietly into the adulthood you have forced upon us!”

Recognizing adults in the room, the students swarmed up to them, forming a wall of disdain.
“Boo! Boo!” The bugs-who-refused-to-grow-up hissed in unison.

The Luna Moths were frightened by unwarranted hatred that they did not understand. But they had to get through to their son. They had to see eye-to-eye with him, no matter what.

“We didn’t force you to do anything, dear. We love you. But that is how Hatuga is, and it’s not a bad life if you look for the beauty in it.”

“Boo! Boo!” shouted the students in disapproval.

“Your Hatuga…” Professor Caterpillar was feeling hot in the head; he had waited for this moment his whole life. “Your Hatuga! Without us to consume it, to take from it and find happiness in eternal youth, it might as well not exist! I denounce a forest that we have to work for!”

“You could have left anytime you wanted to.”

“Boo! Boo!” shouted the students again, though something made sense in what these Luna Moths said.

“Leave? I don’t have to leave! I will do as I please!”

“But you’ve chosen to do nothing.”

“What do you call this, my pupils? There are many of us who agree on Hatuga’s cruelty. You two are in the minority. We question your stupid, selfless way of life, ignorant insects!”

“And have you found the right answer?”

“Boo…” The opposition from the pupils had grown fainter. The opposition was collapsing.
Professor Caterpillar inched back. He wanted to tell them all he had learned. He wanted to tell them the right way to live. But he couldn’t – he had only been looking for what was wrong with Hatuga to condemn it, not to suggest solutions.

With glistening eyes of pity, the Luna Moths glided across the classroom. Not a single bug reared up in their way. The reached the front of the classroom, where their son was quaking with shame. His eyes glowed with the dullness of one who refuses to believe they are in the wrong, yet must tune out to prevent their opponent from showing just how wrong they are.

But the Luna Moths enfolded their son in their wings. They met his screaming heart with a whisper.

“You have done nothing but question and question and search and search your whole life away. Not once were you looking for answers, but just a reason to keep your dissatisfaction alive. You know you cannot solve anything until you become an adult. Then you have a choice: to settle upon your endless questions, or to flap your way far from Hatuga. But at least you will have that choice. Hurry, son! There is not much time left.”

The electricity from his parents’ wings cooled Professor Caterpillar. He began to feel very silly at having spent all his life hating life. Surely there might be something he could find happiness in? There must be something more than this!

Then he realized it, with a burst of glee. Shoving his parents away, he spread all his little legs out, as if embracing instead the entire classroom.

“I don’t need answers, I don’t need happiness. I have my students, my real family, and the solidarity of our hatred!”

The Luna Moths looked at their son, and his fake, condescending grin. For the first time, they saw their son as less than a caterpillar.

In that moment, they saw in him a leech.

“We’re sorry, son. But that sounds just too miserable for us.”

With that, they flapped away to join the flock of Luna Moths overhead. As he watched their figures fade, Professor Caterpillar’s forced smile faded away. The weight of their words hurt his heart, but it had long since frozen over.

He turned back to his students for refuge, but found his home greatly shaken. Not just the words, but the tone, the very nature of the Luna Moths had impacted their outlook on Hatuga. There was a sense of urgency tangled up in reassuring emotions, freed after watching the interaction between parents and son: the urgency of growing up. While his back was turned, many concluded on their own the despair in the Professor’s way of life, the life of always doubting and never being satisfied. Those flew away to form cocoons. Only a few remained behind, and, even then, not with full confidence.

When Professor Caterpillar discovered this wound on his legacy, he seethed with the fury only known by a stricken hornets’ nest. So, they dared attack his source of meaning? Right! Then, he would attack their source of meaning! Professor Caterpillar raised the buzz of war, declaring that the rebels of Hatuga would sneak into Luna Moths’ nests everywhere and force them, one way or another, to reject their old way of living. They would, by his thunder, give up their habits of illumination. So long as one moth had the freedom to practice life without constant questions, life resting in tradition, professor and students would have no peace. Before his infantile army, he bellowed a call to battle:

“My students! My fellows in intellectual ponderings and wonderings! We have frightened the Luna Moths, for they know we know of our knowledge that knowledge means nothing. They know that, by not growing up, we refuse to slave away for Hatuga. And yet, still! Still they stick to it as though their lives depend on it, flitting around in blissful ignorance, while we are mired in sloughs of truth. Today, we open their eyes! We pull them down to our level, by argument or by force, and show that they have every right to be just as miserable as we are. The life of adulthood is just too cruel. Better to eat all you can, and work for no one! You and I, we know that the meaning of life is to be aware of Hatuga, to criticize it, and to become joined in hatred against that mysterious entity. For by its mystery, we know nothing! Let us now shake the larva from their cocoons, shoot down those deplorable moths, and teach them exactly what life should be all about!”

With roars of united fury, the Professor and his remaining disciples prepared for their onslaught upon the Luna Moth population, with sharpened mandibles and as many projectiles as they could carry upon their backs. It was a mob of the worst quality: obsession.

Professor Caterpillar might have succeeded in the onslaught he practiced over and over in his head, except he failed to take into account one fact. It wasn’t the fact that prepubescent insects are very weak, and can’t hold much with their flimsy legs. It wasn’t the fact that the Luna Moths, with their cocoons, were too fast and too many to be intimidated. No, the fact that Professor Caterpillar ignored was none other than timing – the ficklest of all coincidences. The whole purpose for Professor Caterpillar’s parent-to-teacher conference was so he might see his one last chance to grow up, before it was too late.

Only adult insects, you understand, can sense the forthcoming winter.

Upon the eve of the attack, Professor Caterpillar was stunned to find cocoons abandoned, and not a drop of bioluminescence left behind by his species. He and his comrades were even more stunned to be swept up in an ice storm not seen before in lower Hatuga, only in the extreme North beyond. It was as though Hatuga was aware of the fallacy that rocked its goodness, and came to deprive the Professor Caterpillar of the very thing he hated most: life

Shrieking about how unfair it all was, how this chaos was all orchestrated by the Luna Moths out of spite, the Professor and his pupils were swept up into the freezing cyclone. Insects in a tornado, the majority were dashed to bits by hail and branches; Nihilistic splatterings all washed away by that pure white fist from the North, come to wipe the slate crystal clean.

When the Luna Moths migrated Northwards again, they found not a single remain of the Professor’s pupils, or his classroom. There was, however, a hint of where it was once constructed.

That hint was the Professor himself, encased in a solid block of ice.

Professor Caterpillar was now no more than the Very Ignorant Caterpillar once again, on account of he had lost all his pupils. In the thick of the great ice storm, he retreated to his safe haven, the classroom; round and round it broke apart, round and round it was whisked up into the air. Watching his source of meaning vanish, as ethereal as the thoughts he dwelt upon, the Very Ignorant Caterpillar froze from the inside out.

That is the reason, even though he was an adult in age, he did not sense the blizzard; his obstinate anger had long ago frozen his heart thrice over. Thus, he did not sense the cold because he was always cold. This balancing force of internal and external chill preserved him, forever, trapped in the middle.

The Very Ignorant Caterpillar’s mother and father were sad, disappointed – but they did not abandon their son. Every day they would visit them, try to help him see the wonder of life. They taught him that finding solidarity in misery, a thing that can never be wholly solved, is not worth investing one’s precious hours in. Little by little, the ice seemed to melt away from the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. It was a new metamorphosis, one in which the mind rather than the body goes through change, finds new life. The Luna Moths saw this, and eagerly came more often in the hopes of giving their son the love he needed to thaw his heart.

Then came the day of offspring, a beautiful celebration in which new Luna Moth caterpillars find their way into the world. It was a lovely time, full of laughter and the crying of new voices; the Luna Moths were eager to share this miracle with the Very Ignorant Caterpillar. It was the last burst of hope he needed, they were sure, to break free of his icy prison. They all fluttered, as fast as they could with larva in tow, to reach the block of ice. They presented the children to the Very Ignorant Caterpillar with loving smiles and warm feelings, ready to have their son restored to them.

To their amazement, before their very eyes, it was the ice that restored itself, freezing over a new coat. A cruel smile had creaked across the Very Ignorant Caterpillar’s face as he watched these new thinkers, these new minds to mold into ruthless projections of his own failures.
In these children he saw the vehicles for vengeance upon anything that might find peace in a world set against him; in them he saw the next line of Very Ignorant Caterpillars. Nothing gave him more hope, than to continue gnawing away at Hatuga alongside them.

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Deep beyond the Wilds, nestled atop the crook of the furthest mountain, grows the lush forest of Hatuga. It is a trove of the most eye-popping hues of verdant greens, a beautiful, brilliant sea of flowers and broadleaf evergreen trees. Many animals fed on these bounties, and other animals fed on them: the Puma and the Mountain Goat, the Wolf and the Ram, the Bear and the Bison, the Owl and the Rabbit. It was the constant passing cycle of life, making its turns atop the mountain in the secluded forest of Hatuga.

In the center of this cycle, at once both over and under the hills, flowed two waterfalls.

The first was a roaring rapid, confident in her abundance of water and surest of the proper path to wind across. She was broad, powerful, and delicious, blessed with healthy stores of iron and calcium that she pocketed on her way through Hatuga. She was happy to be of use to the plants and animals, soaking the ferns with injections of groundwater and lapping against the feet of predators and prey alike that came for a cool sip. Her surface was a fascinating crystalloid blue, clear to the very bottom. Hatuga was her charge, and she kept very good care of it.

The same could not be said for her twin brother.

He was a small trickle, a hardly noticeable stream. While she was a deafening pound on the rocks, he was an unsteady, unsure plip, plip. The insects appreciated his work, as did the various weeds and moss that grew near enough to drink, but his purpose was an altogether useless one; his sister did the same as he, but one hundred fold. Even the ground squirrels would laugh at him for his lack of a purpose. But still he would pour along at the expenditure of his own pride and strength, growing smaller and smaller every day. What kind of a pathetic waterfall was he?

One day his sister grew tired of seeing him go about his duties in dejected silence.

“Brother Fall, why do you mumble to yourself so?” She bubbled jovially, to cheer him up, “It is a bright day, the birds are chirping, and the land is vast. For what reason could there possibly be to grumble for?”

The smaller brook sighed, for he was growing weary of his apparent lack of purpose.

“Sister Fall, it is not that I see our home and tired of it. No, it is that I see my own reflection in the sky and am ashamed. What can I do that you cannot do better? What purpose do I have if Hatuga can get along without me? I wish Mother Nature would explain to me exactly what I ought to do, to truly find my purpose.”

“Oh, is that all, Brother Fall? I can lend a hand, or at least try! For you know I am a sister who gives help when anyone asks for it, especially when no one asks for it! I’d say that you are in need of help, and I am in need to give. So, come, follow me!”

Sister Fall was determined to find her brother a purpose; she could not stand to see someone so dejected in paradise. They wound their way through Hatuga until she happened upon an opportunity to help Brother Fall, which was discovered deep in a small grove of slightly submerged conifers.

“Brother Fall, see what I have found! I make mistakes, too, for I have flooded these grounds in my hurry. I haven’t the delicacy to open back up and receive the water burdening these poor trees. But perhaps you could stretch wide your mouth and drain these grounds of my mess? Doesn’t that sound like an excellent purpose?”

Brother Fall saw the land and was intimidated. It was vast, and every corner was tree-deep in water. But he intended to find his purpose and not disappoint his sister, so he opened up wide and sucked in the water. The water level lowered, and the trees began to cheer for him as they could breathe below again. Brother Fall felt accomplished. However, carrying the load downstream proved more difficult than simply lifting it. The water spilled out onto trees along his own banks, washing away the soil and causing the smaller ones to collapse. The air was filled with angry shouts from the foliage, and he was immediately ashamed at his failure.
Sister Fall refused to give up – she refused to let him give up, too. They wound their way through Hatuga until she happened upon another opportunity to help Brother Fall. This opportunity was lighted underground, in a dark, damp cave.

“Brother Fall, see what I have found! All this untapped water, hidden from those who need it, floating silently without a life to care for in the world. I cannot reach this water without flooding the caverns…is it possible for you to bring this abundance aboveground, to Hatuga? Doesn’t that sound like an excellent purpose?”

Brother Fall saw the land and was intimidated. It was vast, and every corner seemed jagged and unfamiliar. But he intended to find his purpose and not disappoint his sister, so he began to collect water from the cave. However, when he looked up, his temperature dropped twenty degrees under the glare of hundreds of irritated, glowing eyes. With furious squeaking, they plunged down at him and skimmed across his water with furry wings. Shivering, Brother Fall retreated within himself, only to find hundreds of whiskered pink fish swimming about his depths. They were oddly comforting, until one approached him with a raspy voice.
“Sir, could you raise your temperature a few degrees? It has grown surprisingly frigid.”

The fish had no eyes.

Roaring in fear, Brother Fall rushed out of the cave and back to his sister. The fish and bats jeered and laughed at him all the way, and he was later ashamed of his cowardice.
Sister Fall refused to give up, and refused to let him give up, too. They wound their way through Hatuga until she happened upon another opportunity to help Brother Fall, which was discovered in a very dry, remote area near the face of a thirsty cliff.

“Brother Fall, see what I have found! How the animals and vegetation pine for nourishing mouthfuls of water. You must give it to them! For, surely, if I were to stampede across the land, I would cause a mudslide and ruin hundreds of homes. So, please, Brother Fall, help those who exist in this barren place! Doesn’t that sound like an excellent purpose?”

Brother Fall saw the land and was intimidated. It was vast, and every corner seemed scalding to the touch. But he intended to find his purpose and not disappoint his sister, so he started on his trek across the small desert.

Brother Fall made good progress, and his sister felt pride in her work. As he was reaching the end of the seemingly short journey, something started to cloud his vision. Looking down, he realized with a nauseous feeling that it was steam.

His body was evaporating.

The dirt and sand had looked hot, but never did he imagine that he would wither away trying to conquer it. His sister now saw the danger. She pleaded for him to return, sorry for asking him to do something he couldn’t. But Brother Fall refused to give up, even if everyone stopped believing in him. The edge of the cliff was upon him: if he reached it, Sister Fall would be able to replenish his shallow bed. He ignored her calling and pressed onwards, no matter how the heat bore down on him, no matter how weak and heavy he felt despite how much lighter he was actually becoming. The edge was in sight – he was so close. Brother Fall reached out to send the last drop of himself over the cliff.

But there was no drop left to send. Yet, Brother Fall was no longer ashamed. Brother Fall was gone.

Distraught, Sister Fall’s waters receded as she cried silently to herself. She was sorry for trying to make Brother Fall something he couldn’t be, sorry for pushing him beyond his own limits, sorry that Mother Nature had chosen to bless her over him, though she made them equal. She wished that Brother Fall could have at least found his purpose, disappearing with happiness in his heart.

In a place both near to and far from the forest of Hatuga, Mother Nature heard Sister Fall’s lament – it brought a smile to her face. Little did Sister Fall know, but Brother Fall was not gone. Just because water may evaporate, does not mean it ceases to be; it simply becomes something else. Mother Nature took Brother Fall’s vapor, which had been gathering slowly, but surely, in the air from his hard work, and formed him into a good-sized raincloud.

When Sister Fall looked up to see Brother Fall, now Brother Raincloud, beaming down at her, she rejoiced. He was a marvelous raincloud, gray and gloomy looking, but filled with life on the inside. This life he poured down across all of Hatuga, thanks to Sister Fall’s relentless encouragement, and she passed it down to those who now relied on both of them. This is the constant passing cycle of life, making its turns atop the mountain in the secluded forest of Hatuga.

Mother Nature was pleased at the sight of her domain in its teeming glory, with Brother Raincloud and Sister Fall at the center of it all. She laughed to herself:

“Everything has a purpose, dear ones. Just because it is difficult to attain does not mean it is not there, so long as you keep an open mind. You never know if the path you seek is the one you will excel on or find happiness at the end of, after all. For the land is vast and every corner is concealing a new opportunity; you only need find the heart to reach out and grasp them for your own.”

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The Forest of Hatuga is not merely some plain old forest, a place for trees to grow and birds to sing. It is also a state of mind. And, just as the mind will be distracted by flights of fancy or honed towards grand ambitions, so does Hatuga find itself lined by rocky shores and faced with a seemingly endless sea.

At the Westmost point of the greenery, the greenery becomes grayery. Soft soil gives way to gravel, and the sound of rustling leaves blends with before being silenced by the lapping of frigid foaming waves. Off those shores are depths teeming with life and death, with mysteries unknown. But what is known is that it is almost impossible to reach those waters from the forest. You will find your way barred, for the beach itself is inhospitable to anyone with a working nose and a need for personal space. There is no room to put your foot, and no air for you to clear out that dank, fishy smell. There is only room for blubber.

The beach, you see, is made up of Walrus.

From shore to shore, all the way up and all the way down, Walrus as far as the eye can stretch. This desolate beach is theirs, claimed ages ago by their simply being too massive a mass to move. They have so overrun the shore that there is now more Walrus than beach. And, yet, they hardly do anything with it, other than bask in their odors and bellow occasionally from boredom. Most of these Walruses were complacent in discomfort, supported on all sides by their family, back-to-back with friends who were also most likely their family by some way or another. It may not have been fulfilling, but being surrounded on all sides, being accepted by so many, being a Walrus among Walruses – there was a mutual misery to it. It felt true.

To most Walruses, anyway – but not all. What can be said for one flabby mammal cannot be said for the next, especially if the next flabby mammal was actually two tons of pure muscle, sporting magnificent four-foot long tusks, certain that he had a reason for being possessed with prowess, rather than to just laze about surrounded on all sides by hopelessness. Such a Walrus did exist, and was quite unhappy with his society. He might have still been just a Walrus among Walruses, but he was head and shoulders above the rest in physical capability. Even more impressively, that Walrus had a dream. He had a purpose in life, beyond finding a place to fit amidst a sweaty crowd of complacency.

Walruses, by culture, are not distinguished by name so much as by physical characteristics. But this particular Walrus wanted more than anything to make a name for himself: Ardus. A name fashioned from the word “ardent” which characterized one burning with passion, as this particular beast was. But what exactly did he burn with passion for? Well, even he had been pondering over that question for some time, his ambition and talent finding no direction or focus; it was hard to see beyond the confines of the beach. But then, one day, looking up above the land of brown, wrinkled blubber around him, inspiration struck.

Walruses, not so inclined to move, pass most of their time steeped in stories. Every time they bellow, a new story is being born or an old one is finding new legs to keep running. That is their culture, and many fables from the Hatugan Forest people were actually learnt from this shore. Others were just rumors, dreams; of places where Walrus could live without being so crowded, where fish teemed in unimaginable numbers, and could keep every single vast belly satisfied. But these were just stories, dismissed as nice but fruitless dreams among the community.

Ardus was the only one to stock the rumors as true, absolutely true, as plain as the cliff that rose immediately above the beach. He needed the rumors to be true, for he saw how living in such close quarters, with nothing to distinguish themselves on this murky grey beach, whittled away at the health of his fellow Walruses. Lack of purpose made their tusks brittle, their muscles saggy, and their minds lethargic. So, Ardus took stock in rumors that at the top of that cliff was a plateau beyond the clouds; he was certain that was where the paradise he searched for was. A place with room for all, where no longer they would live nameless – one miserable mass.

Ardus was determined to reach the top of the cliff, and make freedom and his own worth clearer than any coastal afternoon. He had the account supported by multiple birds, each a different species, who relayed eyewitness descriptions that were all the same yet differing slightly by some detail or another. One bird might focus on the types of fruit or layout of the lakes, while another would describe the health of the trees and the flavors of fish. This formed in Ardus’ mind the perfect picture of what he must do, to reach the satisfaction that awaited him at the top of the cliff. He told tales of what he had heard, hoping to spur in his friends and family the same thirst for something more; but they listened as they would to any other tale, and considered only the impossible hope such a climb required, and how little faith they had in eyewitness accounts since their own eyes were still limited to the beach. Tales of the top of the cliff only increased the Walrus’ despair, and so Ardus stopped feeding them hope.

There was one beast, however, who saw something more in Ardus’ desires. That beast was a crafty creature, desperate, starving, the natural predator of contented mammals. Spending his time on the outskirts of the Walrus’ enclave, Polar Bear tried to make himself as scarce as possible, to not arouse suspicion. Little did the Walrus’ realize that their numbers were shaved off every month as this Polar Bear snatched away their sick of body and weak of spirit, making a meal of the worst the beach had to offer. It was not sustainable, though, and the Polar Bear found himself reduced to skin and bones. He was not enough to take on a full-grown Walrus, so he relied, not on his brain, but on pure ill will to survive. And there was no Walrus that he desired to put that ill will upon more so than Ardus.

When word reached his ragged ears that Ardus was thinking of taking on the climb up that mystical cliff hanging over the beach, the Polar Bear was cautious. He knew this was the perfect opportunity to ruin that magnificent Walrus among Walruses, and so set upon unfolding a devious plot to wipe out hope forever. Seeking out the victim was not terribly hard; retaining the inconspicuous nature of his plan was the greater challenge.

“Ho there, you, Walrus!”

All brown wrinkled heads turned towards the Polar Bear with curiosity. They were eager for a new story.

“No, no, not all of you! I’m talking to the guy who wants to climb that cliff over there! Where’s he at?”

The Walruses had no idea who he was referring to:

“Come to think of it, someone like that does exist, don’t they?”

“Yeah, I heard it somewhere. Did it come from further up the beach?”

“Does it matter? It will end in nothing, anyway. As usual.”

“Don’t ruin a good distraction. Someone find him!”

“Yes, let’s find him…What’s his name, again?”

“What’s your name, again?”

“Why should you care?”

The dialogue proceeded aimlessly like this, so the Polar Bear set out along the shadows of scorched palm trees to find Ardus on his own, wherever he might be.

The Polar Bear’s initiative was rewarded when a thick, eager head, taller than those around him, rose from the middle of the Walrus pack. Word had reached Ardus that someone was looking for him, and the hope that it was a way out of this way of living caused him to swell up with anticipation.

“You there! Big fellow with the bright eyes!”

This time, no Walrus responded to the Polar Bear’s call but Ardus, who turned quicker than might be expected given his size. The Polar Bear smiled an affable, sweet smile, a smile full of false tenderness, and plopped down on his scraggly haunches in the shade of the palms. Ardus climbed over his neighbors to greet him.

“So. Ardus, right? I hear you’ve been wanting to climb up the cliff?”

Instinctively, Ardus’ whiskers stretched toward the monstrous land mass as if drawn to it. He laughed and shook his head.

“It’s nice to know that somebody hears me. But I can’t even consider climbing it.”

“You’re kidding. Why not?”

“Well, it’s never been done before. The rest of my friends and family seem to think it’s impossible…that, even if it could be done, it’s not worth it. I’m just not sure I could make any good come out of it – in case I reach the top and can’t come back down.”

“Come back down? Why would you want to do a thing like that? Isn’t your dream to get far away from this beach?”

Ardus gazed with selfless splendor at that dastardly Polar Bear, who licked a chapped paw and winked out of one blind eye, so that his seeing eye kept secret the designs he had for this inspiring specimen. Ardus told the Polar Bear his dream: “To reach a world where every Walrus can live his own life, with the hope that it would be a life worth living apart from empty stories.”
The Polar Bear was struck with admiration. But his hunger struck him with far more force, from dawn until dusk for decades. He seamlessly moved into the next phase of his plot.

“Then why don’t you try reaching the top of that there cliff? I heard there’s a paradise that awaits the top of its plateau. Limitless space, a new story awaiting every free soul who makes the climb. All your dreams would be proven reality; you would never despair again.”

Ardus gazed down, bashful despite his impressive attributes, and was about to make the argument that he just couldn’t, that he wasn’t strong enough. But the Polar Bear felt this coming, and countered first.

“You might not be strong enough, true. But you are still the strongest Walrus I’ve ever seen, with the most powerful tusks under that sturdy lip of yours. If you can’t make it to the top, I’d reckon no Walrus ever will. They never will.”

That was enough to convince Ardus. He was the only one who could tackle this feat and survive. His prowess must be put to its proper use or else they would all be trapped in despair forever – the idea spurred him on towards that monumental task more than any vague wondering he had done before.

After thanking the Polar Bear, who bowed his way out behind the cover of brushes and reeds, ready to watch his designs unfold, Ardus set about at once on the journey upwards. But the beach was so crowded, the blubber so thick, that there was no path from Ardus to the cliff. He would have to make his own path.

“Hey, what’s going on? Lay down!”

“Watch where you’re flopping!”

“Get those flippers out of our faces!”

“Sorry…sorry…”

Ardus had no choice but to push his way around, over, under the crowd. Wherever there was a tiny opening, he made use of it; prying with his tusks, pushing with his flippers, anything to make his way to the cliff. Even when he finally reached it, already worn out from dirty glares sent his way by beady eyes, the work was not yet done. There was so little room on the beach, that many Walruses had made their homes up the side of the cliff as well. Though, of course, they had no intention of going any further up, or even coming down.

Mounting this last hurdle before he could even begin, Ardus pushed himself over the motionless forms, much harder now that he was moving up an incline. These Walruses reacted more violently than the ones on the beach, slapping him in the face and poking him with their tusks. But still Ardus did not heed these bitter mountaineers, except for trying to disturb them as little as possible as he left them behind, slightly flattened.

Finally, Ardus reached a point where there was only the sheer face of the cliff left before him. He was already tired, but, as he turned around to look behind, he was reinvigorated. Indeed, all those Walruses were now in his past. Still they looked to him, though, not in annoyance from being trampled over, but out of curiosity for this one lone brown shape’s choice to break from the mold. They were interested: a new story was offering itself up for birth, and all they had to do was watch.

The Polar Bear, also curious to see the outcome, plodded out onto a boulder and hung himself over it like a blanket. This was definitely a gamble he wanted to see out, for he did not lie when he called Ardus the only Walrus who could conquer that cliff. The outcome could go either way.
Motivated, Ardus turned upwards. He was ready to inspire the other Walruses with his dream, to give them a name that would prove hope was not just some easily-dismissed fairytale. Such was his destiny! He would go to meet it, for better or worse. The climb began.

It would be an understatement to call the cliff an impossible climb. Makes sense, since Paradises only seem to exist above hostile surroundings. With a face made of sheer slate, the smooth shingled rock was hard to grip and even harder to pierce. A few prickly weeds sprouted between the cracks, the only source of sustenance across many miles to the plateau. All this taken into consideration, and the worst of all still remained: the angle of the slope. It sloped like an inverted hourglass; rather than pinched in the middle, the cliff was pinched midway to the middle and midway to the end, but expanded like an octahedron would round the center.

This meant that, near the halfway mark, Ardus’ climb would be entirely upside down.

Nevertheless, while we stand by, assessing and calculating levels of dread, Ardus had already begun his ascent! At first it was only tiresome, not all that difficult; it took a week for Ardus to reach a point where he could go on no longer. Every time he took a bound forward, he would slide backwards to the point of bounding.

Embarrassed and worried, Ardus glanced backwards to the Walruses below. All eyes were still on him, all eyes were craving the distraction he promised. Ardus, good-hearted as he was, mistook these blank stares as the support of his tribe, and determined he would not give up. However, no matter how far he jumped, he could not make any ground. For hours he bounced and flopped and did everything he could to stick to the incline. But failure after failure tired him out, and his head began to feel heavy from no repast.

KA-CHUNK!

Startled, Ardus opened his sleepy eyes. At first he thought he was slipping back down, but that was only his body flattened against the cool slate. His head, on the other hand, rooted his position in place; when Ardus made his last leap, his head felt so heavy that it flopped forward on impact – those magnificent tusks of his pierced the rock.

The method was painful, but it was the only way. Ardus used his tusks to climb.

The work was numbing. The more Ardus placed strain on his tusks, the less he felt the pain. Soon, he felt his body float, for he had reached the point where the cliff curved around, and the face pointed straight down to the mass of Walrus below. Ardus did not know what to do. If he removed his tusks, he would plummet like a rock off the face of the Earth.

Helpless, for a full day he hung there, wondering: How can I go on?

“Well, SQUAWK have we here?”

Two seagulls flew around Ardus’ head, chortling at his unfortunate position.

“Looks like a Walrus who decided he’d SQUAWK being a Mountain Goat for a change!”

“What a moron. Hey, tubby! Why don’t you jiggle SQUAWK home to your tribe?”

Ardus wanted desperately to answer them, to tell them of the hope he had and the destiny he would definitely fulfill. But his tusks were so imbedded in the rock for dear life, that he could not articulate.

“Sorry, SQUAWK, we can’t understand idiots who don’t know what’s good for them!”

The cackling seagulls sprayed Ardus with refuse and flapped away.

Ardus was at his breaking point. He had been unmoving for days, stuck there, and the seagulls’ insult fast dried between his wrinkles. He tried to cry, thinking it would make him feel better, but water had been scarce. All that came out was sticky mucus.

Then, in his darkest hour – a stroke of inspiration! Surely it was a sign from above. Ardus snorted, over and over, spraying the mucus all over his body. It was disgusting, it was defacing, but his very life and dream depended upon it. When he felt he had showered enough in the sticky stuff, he swung back, and forth, back, and forth, back, and splat!

For a brief few seconds, Ardus stuck his back to the face of the cliff. A few seconds were all he needed to yank out his tusks, roll forward, and slam them back again like a sledgehammer. All this, and he had moved his position a good twenty feet. Ardus lathered himself again, and prepared to keep going.

It was a long haul, but the length passed quickly. Ardus made his way to the edge, swung his head over the point, and stabbed his tusks into flat ground. He pulled himself over and looked up. How relieved he was, to see that the cliff was not an inverted hourglass as he thought, but that the second half was flat ground before going into a straight vertical summit! The top was covered by clouds, preventing Ardus from peeping into the plateau of Paradise.

“I’ll see it soon,” he panted. “It’s only a matter of time now. And…strength.”

Ardus turned back around and stared down. His Walrus brethren seemed leagues away, brown speckles across the shore. He flapped a flipper at them, to show he was all right and going on ahead. Receiving no response, Ardus decided that it was late anyway, and perhaps their strained eyes were unable to see him.

The truth is, the Walrus tribe had looked away while Ardus was dangling from the side of the cliff. They lost hope in him, felt terrible for his fate, and turned their eyes to more peaceable and less threatening distractions. The Polar Bear, however, found his hope at its highest in this moment, and was waiting for that plump, juicy dreamer to fall to his death, ensuring a feast for the white devil that would last him many a moon. His patience wore thin, as Ardus refused to budge, so he encouraged that pair of birdbrained seagulls to taunt the landlocked Walrus. While he found amusement in their cruelty, it fast turned to horror when he first witnessed Ardus’ ingenious way of overcoming that impassible problem. The Polar Bear’s eyes, the only eyes that remained fixated on Ardus during the whole exploit, strained until they became irritably bloodshot.

Ardus was granted a brief rest as he lumbered across the flat part of the cliff. He drank as much as he could, ate every scrawny weed he could find, before attempting the next half of the climb. The sunset was more crimson and rippling than he ever thought possible, more beautiful than it had seemed on the shore with the rest of his tribe, where it blinded them as it glanced off the waves. Ardus knew with all conviction, at that moment, that this was what he was meant to do. He felt energized, refreshed, ready to conquer and take control of his destiny. It was a destiny that no longer seemed immeasurably far now, only a few miles up.

When he reached the base of the vertical rock, Ardus noticed steam wafting up between a wall of pebbles and moss. He followed the direction from where the wind blew, and the steam grew thicker, warmer. Heaving his heavy self over a few hot stones, the friendly voice of animals reached him, singing a wordless song. The song stopped immediately when Ardus became visible, and when the source of the song became visible to Ardus.

Before him was a small hot springs, filled with birds and monkeys, mountain goats and jungle cats, creatures that had no problem scaling their way up the side of sheer cliffs. Their faces were obscured by the steam and bubbles, but Ardus could tell they were completely lost in relaxation.

“Where you come from, big boy?”

A Gibbon, hunched at the edge of the springs, was watching Ardus with meditative eyes.

“I came from the tribe of Walrus at the base of this cliff. I’m seeking Paradise.”

The Gibbon hooted, and stretched his lanky arms out in welcome.

“Lucky you, you’ve found it. There’s plenty of room, come join us.”

The truth was, very little room was left, and the complacency of the bathing animals blinded them from the fact that Ardus’ entering might cause most of the water to spill out. But Ardus did not come to linger, and shook his head.

“No? Oh, I gotchya…your idea of Paradise is up there?”

A long, baggy finger pointed straight up, to the clouded plateau. Ardus nodded.

All of the animals sighed as one; a sigh of pity they wheezed.

“Big boy, some of us came from up there. It’s nice ‘n’ all, but…And some of us came from below, like you. Not worth the bother. Better to settle with these hot springs, and let your anxiety just float away. What have any of us got to prove?”

Ardus was not convinced, much as he wanted to take just a small break. He began to speak of inspiration, and hope, and destiny – all those things he was certain he could make a reality that were worth making reality. But evidently it takes too much energy to speak in a hot springs, for the Gibbon sunk into a pleasured snooze before the idealistic speech had even begun. Ardus reluctantly left the hot springs behind, feeling he did not quite get his points across to them.

Ardus began his next part of the climb, the last stretch. Luckily, there were ledges and cracks along the cliff to make movement easier, and the weary Walrus was glad to have a rest once in a while. It took longer, yes, but better to find momentary security than lose all progress with one false move.

Suddenly, as if the final trial in his journey, a thunderstorm rolled in to pelt him with sleet. Ardus pressed on, his passion and excitement only growing as he drew closer to the clouds concealing Paradise. What was icy rain to him, when compared to the icy grip of despair? His toil was almost at an end. All the hardship he had endured this past year would bear fruit, and he would make his name known. “Ardus,” the adoring crowd of Walrus would say, “has led us to a place we never thought possible! But he believed in it, and it has come true. He made it true for us.”

As he imagined his reception upon succeeding, a distant peal of thunder clattered in the distance. Soon, the entire sky was dark, except at certain points where white fire broke across the canopy and threatened to burn Ardus with its tendrils. But Ardus was not afraid. He laughed! He bellowed with confidence, even; he had come too far and braved too much, that a little lightning would do little to him. And it wouldn’t. The brighter the lightning flashed and the harder the sleet fell, the stronger Ardus’ spirit became – that much is clear. But there was something terrible at work within the courageous Walrus’ heart. Worse than the danger of nature bearing its hostilities down on his head. The dreadful, empty echo of thunder, the vast cover of dark clouds, the fact that it was him versus the storm, that the world itself was the only thing that lay between him and his goal, made Ardus painfully conscious of something.

He was so very, very alone.

So focused was Ardus on overcoming the trials that were apparent to him – trials that were easy to spot and face head on – that he was not prepared for a trial born from within. The loneliness bore down on his spirit, made every step seem heavier, robbed the prize destiny had promised him of its lustre. Why, really, did Ardus care so much about reaching Paradise? What did it prove, why did it matter? Was it really all he had heard it would be, and would he be able to bring it down to the others if he got there, anyway? Would they appreciate the conquering hero, and what he had conquered for them? These questions sunk into his heart and waterlogged it, bloating the organ with doubt and fear. The fear that no one would be able to follow him where he was going, or would even want to. The fear that he had left the comfort of his tribe for no good reason, and would never relinquish his mind to their warm, smothering acceptance ever again.

Ardus’ body began to feel heavy, and the sleet, which was only a mere bother before, seemed now precariously slippery. His conviction evaporated like steam off his flank, obscuring his dream. He craved now more than ever in his life for one thing, and one thing alone: what he had left behind. Even though he knew there was nothing worth going back to, it was the comfort of familiar complacency, of empty dreaming, that he began to miss. To share, no matter where he might turn, that aimlessness with countless brethren who refused to acknowledge mutual misery as anything other than natural.

There was no destiny. There was only fate.

It is difficult to say what happened next, because no one but Ardus had reached that height before. Some say Ardus was struck by lightning, or slipped on a bad patch of ice. Some wonder if he was overcome with despair, and let the inevitable take its course. It is difficult to say…but only because it is a sad thing to discuss, not an impossible thing.

Ardus, mired in his conflictions, happened to look out towards his Walrus tribe with longing. He could not see them, but he could feel them, somewhere down there in the darkness. His heart wanted so badly to connect with them again. As he pined, a bolt of lightning pealed across the sky. In that flash, Ardus saw not a single eye was turned towards him. They were, of all things, sleeping.

Ardus was dismayed. Not only was he physically alone, but he had been forgotten in
spirit, as well.

“I…I’m still here!”

He bellowed – words lost in the rattling of sleet.

“I’ll make it! I’m almost there! Watch me!”

He cried – only the guffaws of thunder replied.

It is doubtful that the storm made it difficult to see anything at all. Rather, the storm made difficult to affirm that what Ardus chose to see in his moment of doubt was not true. In the delirium of loneliness, he was convinced that the tribe was not that far behind at all. They were right there, close enough to touch! All he had to do was lean over the edge, reach out a flipper, and everyone would know that he still existed, and that his hard work was paying off. To touch them, he would be comforted, and continue to meet his destiny when he felt he could.

To reach out, to touch what isn’t worth touching, was an illusion created by the desire for comfort in existence alone – the very opposite of destiny. Ardus realized this, only after the wind blew past his whiskers, after a sinking feeling absorbed his gut and then his entire body, after the slate ground rushed fast upon him. He met the ground with enormous impact, sending a crack louder than any lightning echoing across the beach.

The fall did not stop there. Sleet had made the cliff so slick – melting into a stream that trickled off like a waterfall – that the broken Walrus continued to slide across the land he had already conquered. He had no strength to grab on to anything, and was only vaguely conscious of the familiar land that had once seemed the easiest part of his climb as it rushed past him.
Approaching the end of the precipice, where he had heaved himself over the hardest part of the climb, Ardus called upon the last of his spirit. Using all his power, all his desire, he drove his tusks into the ground like stakes, holding on desperately as his body swung over the rocky shore, hundreds of feet below. Suddenly, in the final burst of lightning, Ardus spotted something gleaming white, spinning towards him. It passed by him, dropped into darkness below.

One of his tusks.

Ardus was certain it snapped during his first fall from the vertical cliff; it was about the only thing he could be certain of anymore. But it did not matter where he lost it. What mattered was that the destruction of a single tusk was also the destruction of his last ray of hope. There was no possibility of scaling the vertical cliff without both of his tusks. He could cling here, he could attempt to heave himself up, but his final destiny would never be to see what was beyond those clouds. So died his dream.

The entire tribe of Walrus on the beach woke from the crack of Ardus’ first fall. They did not know what it was, having forgotten about him weeks ago, until a tusk fell from the sky and crumbled on impact with the ground. All eyes turned skyward to that once impressive figure, holding on to his last hope. Though they had forgotten about him, it became clear in their concentrated silence, that his fate, his struggle, would determine theirs.

The storm began to roll away. As sleet was sucked back into the sky, Ardus spotted the animals from the hot springs. They stared at him with absentminded looks. Worst of all was the Gibbon, his gangly figure was sitting limply in the corner. Those blank, black eyes accosted him, “Why bother?”

Ardus, in that moment, knew: the only thing he did wrong was to reach out for something lesser than what he needed. Staying where he was among the tribe, ending his journey at the hot springs…though of varying natures, these were both forms of death. He had followed his destiny until he stopped following it, and his fall would have occurred whenever he gave that destiny up.

His destiny gone, Ardus resigned himself.

The sun broke through the clouds, shining upon the great Walrus as his last tusk gave way. It was sickening to watch, yet the Walrus tribe could not tear their eyes off this mythical figure as it plunged through empty space. Once. Twice. Three times Ardus hit the ground before even gravity gave up on raising his body, and it went into a roll along the slope of the cliff. The other Walruses moved aside, to not hinder the last leg of the journey, until finally Ardus tumbled into a motionless heap at the edge of the waves.

So much potential, so much hope, dashed to ruin by an illusion. Once a sight to behold –
now tuskless, mangled, lifeless.

All were silent. The Walrus tribe stared at Ardus’ body, shocked at what had happened, and confused by what it meant. Questions arose in them that had not been considered before, and fear of the cliff quickly became the dominating mindset. While they were quietly discussing this tragedy, there was a disturbance in the crowd. It broke, and onto the beach shambled the ragged Polar Bear. He had almost given up himself, content with grubs and worms until he had built up enough strength to steal the weaker Walruses again, when his heart was thrilled and his hope rekindled by Ardus’ long-anticipated fall. Without a word, and without protest from the rest of the beasts, the terrible Polar Bear dragged his long-awaited meal into the forest, under the concealment of palms.

This, I would say, is the end of Ardus’ tale. And for a while – three years to be precise – that seemed to be the case. The Walrus tribe, unaware of the name Ardus was wanting to take for himself, dubbed him “Fallrus.” They were a stressless bunch, and desired only the easiest methods of retaining their stories.

One young Walrus, however, was discontent with how that story ended. He had listened to Fallrus, watched him every day make his climb, and was nearly broken as he watched his hero fall into oblivion. So that young Walrus resolved to rewrite it, both for himself and other Walruses who dared to dream. For three years he trained himself, spurred on by disappointment with Fallrus’ weakness and his own desire to reach Paradise. His tusks grew just as long, his body just as muscular, and, though burning with just as much passion as his predecessor, it was all encased in willpower. Fallrus, being gifted from the start, did not think of cultivating a steel will; this young Walrus, having to work for it, naturally found one through training and wanting.

At the end of those three years, this new Walrus, without telling anyone else, followed Fallrus’ footsteps. He had watched how it was done very carefully, and applied the same methods in his approach. The struggle was the same, but this newcomer was far better at ignoring the struggle. Or, at least, accepting it as part of the journey.

The tribe of Walrus first became aware of another climber when pebbles began to rain down from above. They looked up in time to see the ambitious youngster pulling himself successfully over the edge of the precipice from which Fallrus fell. This sight confused them for weeks.

“Why did that Walrus climb up there? Didn’t he see what happened to Fallrus?”

“He deserves it! Why would anyone want what’s up there?”

“Just forget about it, he wasn’t that big of a part of our tribe, anyway.”

“Who was he again?”

“Excuse me? And just who are you, again?”

Suddenly, as irritation boiled to the point of violence, there was a climactic rumbling all along the beach. Cracks formed up the side of the cliff, and rocks – not pebbles – rolled down in a heap. The whole precipice swung down, flattening itself against the slope, spilling the creatures of the hot springs into the ocean, too dazed to comprehend what was happening.

Then…all was still.

The Walrus tribe gazed at the cracked cliff in wonder, though it was still obscured in dust. The event itself was more than enough to hold their attention for good this time. When all was clear, they could not believe their eyes; a ramp formed by easy-to-grip rocks and stones, a straight shot all the way to the plateau of Paradise. Lumbering down to them was the young Walrus who followed in Fallrus’ footsteps. Strapped to his back was Fallrus’ fractured tusk, the one that had clung to the precipice. The young Walrus snorted, evidently tired, but content.

“Anyone who has ever wanted to reach Paradise, you have a way. I’ve made it easier for you, to find if what you dreamt of is true. Whoever is fine with where they are, I will not stop you from staying. Satisfy yourself with illusions.”

The Walrus turned to climb his way up the ramp he had formed.

“Wait!”

The Walrus turned around to see one of the elders, old, slow and blind, peering up at him with grateful appeal.

“What do you call yourself?”

The elder received no answer at first. The young Walrus had recommenced his climb, effortlessly leaping over the rocks and pulling his massive form along with impressive tusks.
“When I reach the plateau,” he said with a joyful smile, one that no Walrus had seen before in their tribe, “I shall plant this tusk into its center. It is the root from which a passionate hope burned, a hope to fulfill a dream belonging to all of us. We must keep our eyes focused on what we know we need, what we know is worthwhile, what we know is lasting. Keep that dream fulfilled, and keep those who come after our contentment from causing us to forget the importance of our hope. Without that tusk, I never would have reached the plateau. I name myself Ardus, to keep his hope alive.”

When Ardus left for the plateau, the elder was quick to follow him. Then some of the adults, with many, many children. Each in their own time, with their own reasons, rose and climbed the cliff.

Even so, very few of Ardus’ own age followed him, as they were satisfied with aimless wishes, fine with low living. These Walruses were inconsequential to the migration, which took a long while, but was obviously happening. Instead, they scoffed at the dream and looked for happiness in each other’s company. They didn’t really know their neighbor from their enemy, though, and so the connection was as close as their fat brushing up against each other. They became malnourished, for such was the fate of those less inclined to hunt for fish. Wasting away on their rocky beach, these Walruses were blissfully unaware, or denying, of their mortal situation.

The Polar Bear had feasted well on Ardus those past three years. Satisfied with his victory, he was unaware of a successor until it was too late, and success had become a reality. As the Polar Bear watched the best of the Walruses gradually disappear into the clouds, he was slightly concerned. Surely they would find the plateau unappealing, or give up on the journey halfway?

No such thing occurred, for no Walrus who climbed up ever came back down. The only thing left for the Polar Bear to chew were his own regrets; he had been so focused on Fallrus, once known as Ardus, that he had never considered someone might be so daring as to follow in his footsteps and actually succeed in convincing others of his dream. The dreadful scavenger was so distracted by picking apart the bones that lasted him these past three years that he failed to hinder the potential of Fallrus’ successor. These leftover carcasses of living blubber, refusing to rise to the occasion, were hardly worth his time; they were already withering to skin and bone on their own. Terribly sore at losing, partially sore at being left behind, the Polar Bear trotted back into the forest. Leaving the remainder of the tribe to its pathetic ruin, he pulled himself up for the move to faraway hunting grounds. But there would be no new hunting grounds, a thought he tried to hide in the back of his mind, because he had existed on the misery of his fellow mammal for so long. He was not a hunter. He could not survive on his own.

The Polar Bear resigned himself to the fate of a slow starvation. That much had been determined long before Ardus. But he would still make the most of consumption while he could.

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The forest of Hatuga is a place out of time, lost to civilization. You never know what you might find, should you take the plunge beneath a dense and dangerous canopy. Chances are high that you will find whatever it is you are looking for…but higher the chances that you find nothing at all. Higher still, the chances that you find all reduced to nothing. But that is the adventure, no? Civilizations of Hatuga overlap each other, one after the other, buried beneath the soil of past and progress. Digging through that dying earth – dying as much as the adventurers themselves – one is at one with the being of the world. But never the mind of the world, mind you, never that; those always seem to be at odds. So it is sometimes best, when searching for value left behind by empires before, to have nothing particular in mind that you search for. Under this practice, all is treasure, all is useful, all is worthwhile, and all promises good chances.

I say this, yet – over the sound of approaching thwacks and thwings brought on by a common adventurer in the Hatugan forest – I am reminded that most believe they know exactly what would be found. No matter where they search, here, there or elsewhere – their certainty remains unswayed. Indeed, you will find that the case for this common adventurer now arriving onto the scene. We shall call her “Seeker” (both because she is always seeking something and because, if she had a real name, she couldn’t be bothered to tell it), and she was nearing the end of an arduously long journey.

Oh, what a journey Seeker had been subjected to! Filled with pitfalls and pratfalls of all pains. Balanced by victories, summits, claims! Seeker had worked hard to discover much, and was quite content to deal with whatever she did not expect, so long as what she expected all along was waiting at the end. And now, finally, the trek’s final leg. A fairly straightforward path, leading through this unmapped region of Hatuga, to the supposed treasure waiting at its centre: the Jiti-Wuzhi.

The Jiti-Wuzhi was a massive Pagoda beyond all physical description in its magnanimence. Rumors say that it holds the sky itself in its ceiling. Stories whisper about how it contains evidence of all cultures across the globe having built it simultaneously. Almost like a standing Tower of Babel, if chances were that varying language brought people to build rather than break. I will not lie, such chances sound like a sucker’s bet. But Seeker could not resist the temptation of finding such a global prize, which would document her perilous search for an intrigue to capture the interest of intellectuals and culturists all around the globe.

A week of stumbling around Hatuga’s dark floor, running out of nourishment and supplies and energy, had tempted Seeker in a different way: she just wanted to lie down and die. To expend all your energy searching for something so concealed and undefined is hardly motivating, especially when the goal of simply finding it is not worth the trouble required. Her sabre went swickety-swack nonetheless, swinging indiscriminately as the steadfast young woman sought forward with nothing left in neither heart nor muscle.

But humans are frail, regardless of their determination or their status as adventurers, so Seeker inevitably passed out from exhaustion at the edge of a creek, a trickle no wider than her forearm. She dipped that forearm into the creek, in the hopes that her vine-lashed limb at least might escape the blanket of moisture trapped in by those trees. Focusing her mind into the cool relief flowing against her arm, Seeker drifted off into a deep sleep, not caring if it would be her last.

It would not be. A faint clanking woke her from the darkness. Her eyes opened to the last light of day, dimmed by the Summer canopy. Seeker traced the noise to every leaf, until she spotted something wooden dangling from a branch. Of course, branches are wood, but something more polished stood out. It was an arrow pointing Eastward, inscribed with the Hatugan phrase for “This way to the Jiti-Wuzhi.”

A sign! Nothing short of a miracle! Seeker sprung up immediately with newfound excitement in her spirit, setting off in the suggested direction.

After an hour’s walk, the forest dons a shade much darker, despite time clinging fast to the heat of midday. Seeker’s pace began to slow, not so much from her dog-tiredness, but because she sensed something…something hidden among the undergrowth, old and sinister, looking to leap out from the black, tangled trees at its first inclination. As she peered around, on guard, something peculiar began to rise in the back of her mind. The forest of Hatuga is known as a habitat of all types of trees, whether they be deciduous, tropical, or conifer. Her peculiar observation was that the trees of this area were neither one nor the other: they were hybrids of all three types, crisscrossed with characteristics of each climate. After a while, these strange trees began to make way for even stranger rocks. Mossy, grey stones mixed with natural lime, man-made marble, cut and uncut gems, tumbled one over the other as though they had fallen from their original design. Seeker found herself surrounded by those carved stones, and imagined she was in the middle of some sort of ruined building.

“Is it rest you seek, pilgrim? Or marvels?”

Startled by the voice from above, Seeker tumbled backwards and onto her rear. Her head snapped back from the happenstance fall, aligning her face directly with a pair of dulled, eager eyes, hovering in the space above her. Scrambling back to her feet, Seeker was struck by the artificiality of their owner. It was a stone creature with stumpy wings attached to a slender body, ending in a devilish tail on one end and a head stuck somewhere between human and bulldog on the other. It perched on clawed toes at the top of a rotting pillar, hunched over, a regular living Gargouille. She could hardly believe her eyes – the chatty creature gave her no time to do so.

“Your awe tells me that it is the marvels you wish for. You are lucky. Oh, so very lucky! For you have found yourself in a place unsurpassed in the sheer amount and quality of marvels that it holds!”

The Gargouille gestured around itself. But there was nothing marvelous there, except perhaps the fungi growing atop the stones that crumbled further with each passing day.

“I don’t see anything,” replied Seeker, “except rubble.”

“Rubble? Rubble! You pilgrims always make such lively jests. Risk being offensive. This is not rubble, blind child, but the most sacred and beautiful of all temples.”

Seeker looked around again, in case she was in fact blind from dehydration or some other stress-induced affliction. But there was no evidence of a temple being there. A few of the rocks looked as though symbols or murals had been etched into their surfaces, but any indication of art had been reduced to the appearance of rust-streaks.

The Gargouille, seeing her unmoved face, plunged off its perch and slammed into the ground before her. It daintily hopped over like a bird and took her hand, brimming with intense desire to expose her to “marvels.”

After ten minutes’ walk, they came upon a dead olive tree, withered over a dry patch of land that hadn’t seen rain in eras. The Gargouille lovingly brushed its cracked hand along the cracked earth.

“You see before you a private garden, where our highest philosophers were able to find inner peace in nature. Every kind of flower is grown here, some of which you might even witness grow from seed to blossom in a single full moon. As their colors fade, they are ground into miraculous powders, to treat every known ailment. Even the cancerous kind.”

“I’m sorry… sir,” Seeker replied with embarrassed hesitance. “I see nothing but dust.”

The Gargouille flinched. It had not expected such flat denial of so obvious a marvel! But there was still more to see, so it took her hand again to witness more of its beloved temple.

After ten hours’ walk, they reached a deep hole in the ground, one that stretched for miles, partitioned into chambers. The Gargouille held Seeker back, for fear she might tumble into it.

“Well, what do you think of this? A tomb for kings and queens, the spiritual and material, whose coffins are adorned by their very likenesses. There is enough gold buried here to buy the richest of countries, and enough gems to convince the greediest of conquerors to lay down his flag. Not only that, but take a look at your feet! The frescoed floor is itself a timeline, composed of tiles that tell whole histories, from conceptions to falls, reigns to revolutions. Both victory and suffering is a legacy never to be broken by anything.”

“Again, sorry,” sighed Seeker, more frustrated this time, “but all I see is a bunch of empty holes.”

The Gargouille immediately snatched Seeker’s hand and yanked her onwards, certain she could not deny the most marvelous of all. After ten days’ walk, at the end of which the poor adventurer was ready to collapse, the relic puffed out his chest and pointed to the large disc of a bronze sundial. Or, at least, it might have been a sundial at some point in time. But not this time. Now, it was no more than a tilted curve of green copper sticking out of the ground. Seeker was fed up with it all, with what seemed to be her guide’s pointless infatuation with fantasy over history. She denied, what was the clearest proof that this so-called marvel of a temple had existed, as being anything to fuss over.

“Just scrap metal! Can I go now? I’ve got someplace to be.”

The Gargouille froze, as though he really had become stone. He spluttered, he stuttered. He searched diligently for a reason that would explain the pilgrim’s blindness. Instead, he reverted to describing his own perspective once more. Surely, that was the best means.

“Scrap metal? But – but don’t you see? Beneath the clock, binding all universes to the same curse of decay? Don’t you see the marble altar, the sacrificial place of all the world’s worries? Don’t you see the sculptures of martyrs and prophets, so full of the quality of life that you could be certain they do not merely possess the quality, but life itself? What of the domed frame, from which angels hang? Or the choir pulpits, from which mankind all across the globe gathers to praise? Or there, a backdrop to it all, our iridescent stained glass window, standing hundreds of feet high, across which painted doves take flight when the light strikes just right? I’m trying my best, really, to show you a marvel you’ve not seen before!”

“I don’t see any of that. Really! And you don’t, either.”

The Gargouille was struck dumb. It clutched its head, eyes sharpened by fear and confusion. Raising those wild eyes to Seeker, who had nervously begun to back away, it bared its teeth and lunged. Seeker shrieked, fell back, but did not fall to the ground; the Gargouille had sunk, not its teeth, but its claws into her arm – to hold her up, and keep her there. Its teeth were still bared, a crazed smile torn between pity and doubt. The smile meant to assure Seeker, who was now anything but assured, as the little dragon spread its creaking wings and began to flap in desperation, dragging his companion into the air. It knew that all it had seen was in fact laid out before them, and would not rest until that vision was shared.

“I know! I will show you the dome! Oh, the paintings on the dome, unlike anything you’ve ever seen. A testament to the might of man and the strength of spirits, working together in artistic harmony. Then you will know your search has been worth something. Only then will you be certain of the marvel you’ve missed!”

As her feet where gradually lifted off the ground, Seeker began to panic. In desperation equal to the Gargouille’s, she grasped for something, anything, with which she might regain her footing. A long piece of stone was felt in her hand; she broke it off and swung it, cracking the creature across its horned head.

The Gargouille hovered there, dazed more by the action than its effect. But as it slowly glanced down to the ground, its flapping ceased. Both fell and landed hard, Seeker rising quickly to escape. But she hesitated, feelings of sadness creeping over her better judgment. She watched the Gargouille crawling, slowly, pitifully, to the broken stone she had wielded as a club. Staring closer at the fragments, Seeker recognized carved hair, carved clothes, carved face, all clearly done by an expert craftsman who loved his work and what it stood for – the last standing effigy left in that lonely place.

The Gargouille trembled, muttering to itself unsure reassurances, and tried in vain to piece the statue back together with tears and spit. Seeker was afraid to know what would happen when he realized nothing could be done, so she finally pulled up the last reserve of energy left in her legs and ran. She only looked back once upon that sad Gargouille, pining over the ruin of marvels no longer seen. She left his hunched figure behind in that place lost in time, disappearing under thick brush and memory, not to be understood or cared for by those who needed to experience his marvels.

Eventually, out of breath and out of energy, Seeker found her way into the lighter part of the forest again, with familiar plants and no rocks. A day later, she made it to the entrance of the Jiti-Wuzhi, without hardly realizing she had arrived.

My goodness, was it a disappointment! Hardly worth the trouble to get there. The Jiti-Wuzhi barely resembled a pagoda except that the word was part of its name, and the one-room tower could only be said to hold the sky in its ceiling because it had no ceiling to speak of. What’s more, Seeker had to wait another three hours to get inside; fellow adventurers were holding a convention in there on the authenticity and licensing of certain rope brands.

Seeker puzzled and puzzled over why “Spelunkr,” the official social media tabloid for adventurers, had declared the Jiti-Wuzhi one of its “Top 10 Hidden Marvels to Discover,” especially when so many had already discovered it. It dawned on her that the fad for the Jiti-Wuzhi had passed, and an entirely new list of unremarkable marvels had taken the place of art and history. These unremarkable marvels were cafes, shops, petting zoos (remarkable only to those who had never visited a rainforest), and vacation planners. The Jiti-Wuzhi, if it was ever as historically significant as the rumors rang, had been fully cowed to the nature of a bazaar.

After thinking it over, mostly during physical therapy trying to recover from the end of her endless journey, Seeker decided there was no point any longer in being an adventurer. Instead, she became more obsessed with the foliage of Hatuga. Surely there must be hallucinatory properties in some of the species there, to explain her encounter with a talking Gargouille. But, no matter how hard she wanted to know, there was just no way to tell, and no adventurer in the region had ever seen the ruined temple, much less its ancient ward. She returned once with a larger party of adventurers, to at least confirm the existence of the hybridized trees she saw. As she searched and searched, it became clearer and clearer that there was no temple to rediscover. There was no garden to revitalize, no clock to rewind, no tombs to unearth, no Faded Civilization to summon back from history. There were only mosquitoes and vines, under that dense and unforgiving canopy.

So Seeker turned back with a heart ready to move on and seek what lies beyond adventures. She was ready to return to the city, find something new, so lost in thoughts for the future that she didn’t notice when she stepped on and over the broken effigy of a stone woman. It looked like the image Seeker had broken against the head of the Gargouille in her dream. But…upon closer inspection…its tormented face looks eerily similar to…

Well, now we’ll never be sure, thanks to Seeker’s muddy footprint.

This woman, the one we called Seeker, had no idea that what she sought as marvel is just normalcy – as normal a part as any to be found in Hatuga. Ask anyone who lives there. But to spend one’s whole life seeking, is just asking to never find anything. To convince one’s self that Gargouilles cannot talk, is to turn to stone when they do.

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When Heaven’s powdered sugar lightly frosts the puffy forest floor of Hatuga, every reasonable animal – particularly those of the mammalian persuasion – will have long stocked full a burrow of necessary provisions. They are not like the birds, who fly above the weather itself, the fish, protected by chill the deeper they dive, or the reptiles, who dig a hole and sleep through it all undisturbed. No, the mammals remain conscious of winter all season long, drifting in and out of sleep and bouts of hunger. Consequently, they must prepare very early, so as to plan around discomfort – Or, worse, death. The winters are fierce, no matter where you live, and unforgiving to the unprepared.

The amount of provisions accumulated must last until spring, at the very least. Those that slack off or find themselves in error of foraging calculations will usually perish before they even hear the approaching gallop of Spring’s green steed. Mice are of no exception; in fact, at their rate of metabolism and fragile construction, they must arguably be more prepared than any other animal. And there is no arguing that they mostly are – if the only thing to worry about in the world was cold and starvation. But those aren’t the only things, are they?

Beneath a stump in the small field of a secluded clearing lived a small animal and his secluded wife, both of which happened to be mice. The season also happened to be nearly-winter, and the mice and his wife had been preparing all fall for the transition. This involved acquiring food and warmth, naturally, but it also involved setting traps for their enemy: the Asp. The Asp was a cunning Viper, who, instead of building his own burrow, would sneak into someone else’s, paralyze the inhabitants with his posion, and feast on their supplies. Just as the poison would begin to wear off, and the creatures within the burrow saw hope in Spring’s light, the Asp would reach his cruel climax: to poison them once more, and swallow them whole.

The Mouse and his wife had a fear of this viper, which only existed to them so far in rumors. But they were certain they had seen a pitch-black tail here, an emerald eye there – stalking them, softly, in the night. Who would take a chance, risking such a horrendous end despite all efforts to survive? Not the mice; they gathered branches and brambles to hide from sight, peat and flowers to hide from smell, and thorns and mud to hide from touch. Before they even began to gather winter provisions, they fortified their burrow against the threat of this unseen enemy. There was no way the Asp, or any Viper, would find the Mouse and his wife.

Soon, the first frost arrived. The Mouse sat by the fire that evening, engaged in the last newspaper of the year. Suddenly, he felt an unexplained twinge of worry for their stock. He called for his wife, that they might go through the list of supplies they had stored together for good measure. Due to the time expended keeping serpents at bay, they had to take a few shortcuts when it came to meeting their own quotas, but, surely, these shortcuts were harmless – they were just mice, after all. They could do little harm to anyone, and were mostly the ones in danger of being harmed.

The shadow of the Mouse’s wife announced her appearance into the room, dancing off the roots of the burrow by the light of the fire. The Mouse hardly noticed, absorbed in an article on evidence of decay in the forest, wrought by an unchecked slug population. She wriggled into her rocking chair from behind, and the creaking alerted him to her presence. The Mouse folded up the newspaper, and, without more than a brief glance and smile at his wife, got straight to work. He pulled out a checklist written on a trimmed fern (he was very strict when it came to order). Receiving no prompting or agreement from his wife, the Mouse softened the gravity of the chore:

“Now then, my dear, we shall begin the final annual confirmation of our difficult
preparations for winter. I am sure we covered all grounds, but it never hurts to be absolutely sure. If anything, it will ease any worries or unexpected unpleasantries we might expect in the future. Are you ready?”

“Who?”

“Why, who else could I be talking to, my dear? Are you ready?”

“Naturally. Proceed with the precedes, my sweet.”

The Mouse’s whiskers trembled with delight, for his wife had not called him her sweet in a while. But twitterpating can wait for the security of spring. He calmed his fluttering heart and addressed the first item.

“Item 1: Food. Nuts and berries, grasshoppers and grubs, spinach and seeds, Lemon Pie
and Apple Strudel – all preserved in ice to keep them fresh. We were far behind in our projections, thanks to a late harvest, but Mister Rabbit lent quite the helping hand. I presume he is missing a bit from his stores, but not enough to cause him trouble.”

“Who?”

“Mister Rabbit, my dear. Surely you remember our cherished, fleet-of-foot next-door
neighbor, gifted far more than us in the art of acquiring produce? Much of what we have is thanks to him.”

“Is that right?”

“Of course it is right! We need the nourishment more than him. Besides, he steals all of it anyways from that stingy farmer over the grassy knoll. But he did do well to accumulate these things for us, so we must set aside a portion of the seeds to grow a bit of produce for him on the side – once we have the capability.”

“Naturally. In fact, one would say that he and his kind keep us full all year, my sweet.”

The Mouse thought his wife might be a bit lavishing of her praises to Mister Rabbit, but his tail twitched with joy to be called her sweet again, instead.

“Item 2: Bedding. Fine, soft hay, roots and hair warmed by the massive body of Chaplain
Badger, who gathers the vegetation and foliage delicately and precisely in order that each hibernator might be ensured a proper winter’s rest.”

“Who?”

“Chaplain Badger, my dear. Surely our loyal, gentle, burly leader of the Church, who
burrows deep underground in search of the best thermal bedding, has not slipped your mind? And thank goodness he gathers so much, or we might freeze to death.”

“Is that right?”

“Of course it is right! We need the warmth more than him. Not only are our bodies frail and small – suggesting that we require more bedding to stay warm – but we were so very far behind in our estimates. Besides, he was giving it out freely, so why not take as much as we could carry? I mean…in seven or eight trips, at least.”

“Naturally, my sweet, I would never forget such an esteemed gentleman, who brings courage to roam through the woods into young critters’ hearts.”

Though the Mouse thought his wife’s words peculiar, he thought nothing further of it. His toes simply tippy-tapped at being called her sweet again.

“Item 3: Branches. Sturdy, firm branches to board up the entrance into the burrow, lined
with thorns and flowers to deter investigation. Important for keeping out snow and snakes alike, lest we catch our death from the sting of either the cold or the fang.”

“Who?”

“What is the matter with your memory today, my dear wife? I speak of the villainous
Asp. Have you forgotten the dangers of his tempting tongue and luring coils? These dangers are the precise reason for our being in such short supply of food and warmth!”

“Unnaturally, my sweet husband.”

The Mouse paused, as if he did not hear her right the first time. His wife had always been the first to squeak at the mere mention of that viper. Now, she hardly seemed fazed, the flames reflecting off her glazed, glassy eyes.

“Unnaturally? What do you mean by that? We have always survived the winter in fear of the Asp!”

“Who-who?”

“See here, I am exasperated enough today by the change in weather. The last thing I need is your willful ignorance.”

“…Are you sure it is not your ignorance?”

The Mouse looked up from the fern for the first time, to study the expressionless defiance of his wife.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Asp does not lurk in this part of the wood. Too damp and mucky – a disagreeable climate for a chest-crawler.”

“I see! And how is it you come by such necessary information?”

“Naturally, I must always on guard against such dangers, possessing such an ignorant husband.”

At first, such bitter words caught the Mouse off guard and wounded him. When he got over himself, a realization finally dawned, slowly by the light of the fire: the voice of his wife did not sound not like his wife in the slightest. Peering harder, gradually able to catch the glint of a hooked beak and vacant eyes in the flame, the Mouse discovered that his entire burrow was crowded with the ruffled feathers of Barn Owl. The young bird looked without sympathy down at him; she had disguised himself as the Mouse’s wife the whole time. On the tip of her claw was a puppet, dressed like his wife to a T, but clearly not her when one noticed the button eyes and patchwork skin.

How did Barn Owl fit in his burrow? How did she manage to fashion such a likeness as Mouse’s wife? How was the Mouse so blind to realize the puppet was, in fact, not his wife? Where was the Mouse’s wife, exactly? How would this affect winter preparations? These questions and many more passed through the Mouse’s head. They paralyzed him – worry for the future in general kept him rooted to his chair. He really should have focused only on escaping instead of what could have prevented this intrusion as Barn Owl pounced.

But since the Mouse was so worried about so many different things, he failed to see the danger most near. So focused on surviving the Mouse was, that his mind, once a safe-haven, became a trap just as his burrow had.

Barn Owl, on the other hand, had a very relaxed and well-supplied winter’s reprieve. She would always appreciate the organized resourcefulness and narrow-minded selfishness of vermin.

You now have witnessed the paradox of a Mouse and his wife, and why, guarding their natural state, they were left so unguarded. Remember that preparing for the vipers of tomorrow leaves you vulnerable to the owls of today, and your burrow shall surely last the winters.

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