12 somber analogues

I.
The old man kept creeping up the grassy hill with two loads of grain in baskets. As his black shirt flapped loosely in the wind, faintly holding on to dignity, the poor elderly worker clambered onto the zenith of the knoll. He took a moment to wipe his brow with a small white handkerchief and looked up at the pink banana-colored sky that kept changing in and out of a pale shadow. His grey hair sailed against the breeze as his minute black eyes blinked slowly and protruded from his skull like two bits of volcanic glass lodged inside a pair of sockets. The darkness of the universe was echoed within him and so was reflected the hopelessness and futility of all of man's desires for glorious paradise.
In a moment of pathetic epiphany, the withered soul realized that he did not have enough time to waste on such trivial matters, since he had a granary to fill with the precious grain of constant and laborious soil cultivation. He raised his crossbar carrying two baskets of freshly reaped grain and started down the rest of the hill. The journey across the second part of the ceremonial wave of earth went much more fluidly than did the first, and the struggling old man descended easily into a swampy area. He did not notice how quickly he had reached the bottom of the verdant mound and crossed over into slushy territory. It seemed like he made the same trip every time he went to replenish his stock of grain, but this time he doubted that he had taken the correct path. Just then the old man stepped on a root, an obstacle so small, so insignificant, and yet so easily capable of canceling the abject protagonist's intended path of travel. He stumbled forward, spilling his burdensome goods into the bog.

II.
Rancid, vile, impossible smog hung over the poisoned pond like a plague. The stench brewed out of the naturally decaying scum buried deep within the swamp drenched the remains of a misshapen clump of detritus floating in the least vegetated portion of the mud puddle. It is unfathomable how long the diseased water had been collected there in the midst of a barren, murky wood. Yet it seemed there was no hope for this system overcast with atrophy, two seedlings began to slowly push past the thick layer of film that had built up from stagnation.

III.
The sludge on the edge of the basin crept past fresh soil and left room for greener blotches to leave their marks on what used to be a pool of stinking, amorphous gelatin. Leaves floated gently on the surface of a thin stream of muck and curled upwards in an effort to rise as did the ancestors about whom the wind used to whisper to them.
So drifted the breeze of rebirth across the moist earth and dried up the veiny diffusion of ancient cancer. Spring claimed its throne once more and cast a vast expanse of grass where a cesspool had previously swallowed the heart of everlasting youth.

IV.
Sunshine rested like a soft pillow on a flowerbed of clouds. A golden hue saturated the canyons of a jagged landscape as silence resonated continually, as if the universe left its mouth open too long in exhaling its last breath of fading creativity.

V.
Stillness emerged from daylight as birds flew among a scattered canopy of what used to be only shrubbery. Certain flocks went together and left the more obscure species to deal with their inadequacy. If they were to die, it was their own fault and no one else's. Still, the fledgling aviators continued their usual course until one of the birds had the idea to spend its time freely wandering on the ground.

VI.
Modesty removed the old man's security in being at the top of the hill and his instinctive sense of purpose advanced him over and down the slippery slope into infinite sadness.

VII.
Honesty congratulated the miserable old man for following through instead of defending the delicate balance that surely would have kept his trip at a tasteless standstill.

IX.
So he screwed up his plans. So what? X.
Some time much later, after the lengthy series of events finished its turn taking up valuable space-time, a little boy walked on the same hill where the old man had faltered and fallen, carrying his two different- colored baskets of grain. Only he was going to the fields to see the grain for the first time. At that point there was no marsh, no swampy fog, no deathly aura, no scent of putrid infection. There was only him, the grassy knoll, Springtime, and an objective that lay hidden somewhere beneath the soil and above the clouds.

XI.
This was a defining moment: the capricious boy found a pair of identical hollow, cone-shaped granite tools next to a stalk of grain. He wasn't sure which to use, so he put one inside the other.

XII.

The boy was left with dust in his hands because nothing is set in stone. He had no choice but to rid his hands of the crumbled artifacts, and invent another way of collecting the grain. He grew weary thinking of what he might do and he most certainly did not want to embarrass himself on the scale that his predecessor, the old man, did. Alas, he grew weary of growing weary, and decided to settle on the crest of the hill with a bundle of grain he managed to rip from the soil with his bare hands. Looking up at the unchanging pink banana-colored sky, he fell asleep. He never did figure out what his dream meant. All he could say for certain is that he would never end up like the old man.