Tales from the Forland
In the beginning, there were four animals, a gerborm, an oweilah, a blunk, and a human. Each had different characteristics. The gerborm was the smartest and had a large square head to prove it. The oweilah was the fastest and had legs that practically ran on motors. The blunk was the strongest and had large arms with muscles you could hide behind in a game of hide and seek. The human was most useless. It wasn’t fast, wasn’t large, and wasn’t very smart. The only thing the human had was the ability to know what was good and what was not.
These animals lived on the island of Forland. This was a small, relatively tranquil island, but it has two major dangers Mount Frostbite and the Triumphant Ocean. Mount Frostbite was the largest mountain in the world with its peak at 58,058 feet and avalanches would fall every hour. The Triumphant Ocean is a man eating, rigorous ocean. The Whispering River leads predators into the vast ocean where the oceans waves crash down and devours its victims. Only man knows to avoid these places.
The man believes he has nothing to offer, so he calls all the animals to the center of the island and asks them for a piece of their characteristics. None of the animals want to give up their abilities; they want them all for themselves. The man tries to fight the animals for their traits, and all the animals run away towards Mount Frostbite.
Man knew not to follow the animals up Mount Frostbite, so he waited until they came back. He knew they wouldn’t survive on the mountain. After about an hour, the man became worried of the animals.
What if they died? He thought to himself. “I will go find them.” He grabs something that will surely keep him warm and heads off to Mount Frostbite.
When he got to Mount Frostbite, the saw the oweilah shivering to death and
“Oh oweilah” the man said. “Are you okay?”
“No I’m not,” the oweilah responded. “Go on without me. Take my legs with you, but leave me here, I should have known not to run up here, my poor legs can’t make it.”
At this point, the man didn’t want the traits of the animals, he just wanted the animals to be ok, but took the oweilah’s legs anyway and headed off to catch the other animals. The human’s warm item was beginning to get freeze and spontaneously saw a nice warm cave, with the glorious smell of coffee inviting him inside the cave. The gerborm had created a coffee shop in the center of the mountain.
“Gerborm,” The man had said. “How did you create a hot beverage shop inside the coldest mountain in the world?”
“It was easy.” The gerborm said. “But you wouldn’t understand. I will survive fine here.”
Just then, the blunk came ramming through a wall. The blunk saw the gerborm and the human and ran towards them. They both moved out of the way, but the blunk rushed into the coffee maker and all the coffee spilled on him. The coffee was as hot as a volcano’s lava.
“Ahhhh, I’m melting.” The blunk said. And he melted into the ground all that remained were his arms.
The ground started to shake. The icy center of the coffee shop started to melt into burning hot lava while the ground started become rock solid and red hot liquid and rocks came spewing out as faster than the oweilah could run. The man grabbed the blunk’s arms and fled the mountain.
The man and the gerborm raced out of there but slipped on the slippery mountain path. Since the man was small, he could control himself, but the gerborm couldn’t with its colossal head and stumbled off the mountain the long way and right into the Triumphant Ocean. The ocean waves eating at the Gerborm sounded worse than what the volcano would do to the human if it caught him.
The man arrived safely and Mount Frostbite still stood tall as if no volcano had ever come across it. The man looked up to see Mount Frostbite, and he sees something flying towards him. He isn’t sure what it is. When it lands, he sees it is a brain the size of the hole the volcano made.
The man now had the three parts of the animals he wanted; the oweilah’s legs for speed, the blunk’s muscles for strength, and the gerborm’s brain for intelligence, however, the legs were permanently frozen and will only make the man slower, the muscles were singed and two hot to be used again, and the brain had lots of teeth marks and lost almost the of its original smarts. The only thing it had was the smarts to create a new being.
The man used the smarts to create a spouse, the most beautiful human that will ever be created. When he saw her, he immediately said “WO”, and that is why he called her woman.
Together they had four kids and those kids got into lots of trouble and populate the world, but that is a story for another day.