Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Once, there was a man who had nothing. He was born into a world of nothing, surrounding him were were villas of stone, mortar holding together gracious villas. He could hear the laughter of the men and women above him, high in their walls of prosperity.

His gaze fell onto the trees outlining the village, strong, tall, vigilant despite the weather. He yearned to be like the others, to feel accepted, to build a great villa.

His hands found themselves tearing at the twigs of the trees, taking the bark, harvesting the sap. He worked through the blazing sun, through the blistering cold, winds that whipped his treasures against his skin, making him toughened, hard... determined.

Soon he had enough materials that he found a spot in the village unclaimed by any of the wealthy, and there he bagan the poor man's villa, a place he would dedicate to those less unfortunate. He would build the most gratifying of buildings ever. People would stand in awe of him.

Eventually his building became the talk of the city, everyone was finally realizing how great this wooden structure was becoming. Torrents, spires, even a plank bridge crossed the tallest of the would-be castle. The wealthy began to visit this commodity, to dance, to listen to their music, they brought their life into his creation and he reveled in it. After years of hard labor, these people loved him.

No one remembered the small broken man sitting in the leaves, gazing at their villas. They saw the muscle packed, grizzly man who stood with a cape of fauna, a small delicate twig crown on his head, signifying to himself where he came from.

Greed, however, leaked in with the society. Soon less and less people began to visit, his oaken halls screaming of the emptiness inside. His hands yet again set off on a journey, this time of stone. He ached for the society again, and he would conform. He would make his castle even better by bringing in the stone and mortar, the beautiful marble. He began work yet again, this time hammer and chisel, making beautiful works, cherubs and angels, stuffs of legends and gods, scriptures so finely written he couldn't believe it came from his hand, yet they did. Even so, the ache blazed inside his chest.

When he finished construction, a year after the last people exited his halls, he reopened the doors, ivory and marble lining the gilded entrances. He was standing upon the bridge which he reinforced himself, greeting each that walked slowly towards this newfound treasure.

It was at this moment that his castle cracked, the sticks of what he built upon falling apart. The stone shattered, each beautiful piece hopelessly lost as the man tumbled to the ground. Being built upon sticks, the marble and stone, the ivory, the precious metals could not stand upon his otherwise safe masterpiece.

When the dust cleared, his face powdered from the rubble, his clothes torn, his feet and hands bloodied, the first respondents finally arrived, casting their gaze on the pitiful man. All they saw was the grubby man from long ago, some saying that he was a wood worker. None of the villagers recognized the man that tried to conform to their stone, destroying his wooden palace.