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Fiction--To Give and Take
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Man is made of few things. Though history has shown that only men of complexity prove themselves worthy of posterity. Though I know history has also shown its prowess in making men seem complex. For if a man is made of few things, I assure you that a great man is made of less.

I watched him grow. Little Allen, born with no silver spoon in his mouth but adorned with a crown like a golden fleece. But, as many things are, nothing is given till something has been recieved in return. Allen had come into the world, rising from nothingness much like the sun from the hills. And as if in tune with the cosmos themselves, the once glowing eyes of his mother set below the river that flowed down her cheeks untill both were gone. Not a word of this was spoken aloud after the collective mournful sighs and hopefull coos, and indeed a word has never slipped past any lips to this day.

A letter was sent to Allen's father, who was away in the next town, working to make sure his family was provided for. His father was an honest man. He was a tailor, suppurb in his trade and secure in his policy. It was because of his success that I had grown so close with both him and his son. I tended to the home and the needs of those inside. I was a fly on the wall with all the recognition as such.

Young Allen grew quickly into the fine clothes stitched for him. His father hired fine tutors, fine enough to teach the boy things that a man such as myself could only hope to comprehend in a months time, much less in a single afternoon. Allen was also kept with his father in the shop durring the morning hours where he would be squired in the trade. Though for all of this effort and potential, I could never see a moment in Allen's eyes. It was as if he gazed into a place yet to be found. As if all the world had allready been weighed and measured in his frail hands.

The tailor was a businessman through and through. Always working on the next deal and spending the time that was left preparing his only son to take his place when the time would arrive. Allen's golden threads of hair had continued to grow with him as he quickly grew into a teenager. The boy's intelligence still showed no end as the finest tutors continued to teach him nightly while his skill with a needle and thread grew daily in the shop with his father. The look in his eyes had not changed since his childhood and showed no signs of doing so, but his father's will pushed on forward.

Allen grew older, into a young man, and his hair grew longer and brighter with him. The tutors were gone and business became his only schooling. Making a profit was a priority drilled into his skull daily by the words of his increasingly aristocratic father.

Though business was booming, the old man was growing ill and unsteady. A week after his boy's twenty-sixth birthday, the old man's moons would set.

The boy would never speak a word of it and nor would I. For weeks the boy would sit and stare at the vast wealth that had become his own and watch it slowly shrink. Till one night, when he cought the moon's ray glisten off a coin and through his ever increasing locks. It was then that I finally could look him in the eye without confusion. Young Allen sat in his father's stool and began to weave and sew his golden strands together. Years and years would pass as he worked on with little rest and little refreshment. We both grew older and his hair grew less and less by the day.

A week after his fourty-second year, the garment was complete. His golden locks now lay spread on the floor in front of him. I watched as Allen wrapped what was left of his enherited fortune into his woven blanket and set it neatly on the porch of th eback door that led into the alleyway before gently laying down his needle and thimble. He sat back to lie into his bed and set, as the sun must always do.

And as many things are, nothing can be recieved unless given in return.

I could never truly understand the look in that boy's eyes for lack of scale. The boy and his ambitions were simple, but history has only trained us to look for the complex.