Story Teller

Dark. Horrid. Pathetic. Those are just three words that could be used to describe this place of many. There is no such thing as happiness here. The smells of rotting flesh and people’s body leftovers cover the place. You can’t have three seconds without someone weeping or moaning in the background. The only good thing is that it’s to dark to see anyone unless they are within a couple feet of you.

We are pathetic creatures, having been thrown out of the natural world we hid here. Sure once we could have easily hid ourselves as humans but we don’t often like being where we’re not wanted. Now that we have been here so long we are deformed and disgusting. I won’t go into detail about our looks because I don’t even fully know anymore.

But we are not what this story is about. Sure we do have a small part in it but not hardly enough to even be called a background character. This story starts out long ago when watching humans was a main hobby of mine. I would disguise myself as a cat or some other non noticeable animals like a bird and watch events unroll and wonder how humans could make so many mistakes over and over again.

I was being my natural noisy little self when I came across a large group of humans. Children and adults alike circled around one man. They were looking at him like he was the most important person in the world. He was telling a story, one of stupid kings, evil queens, and of course the handsome heroic boy who started as a turnip farmer, or something small and dismal like that because I wasn’t there for the beginning and he only mentioned a couple times about the boy knowing certain information about growing the best vegetables in the land, that ended up becoming the new king of the land by saving the beautiful princess and showing up the parents. These kinda of stories where nothing new to me, every human tells stories about impossible things and good winning over evil. But for some reason I was drawn into the story like all the humans watching. Charisma? Magic? It could have been anything because despite what most humans think anything is possible it just takes the right thoughts and certain creatures to help make it happen. But back to the story teller he was a stout man couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall when standing and his girth showed that he knew how to get food and drink. He was garbed in strange colors for the time I was in. For back in that time dark red and purple were colors not many could get a hold of the only thing natural about his clothing was that it looked by what future drapes would look like if you tossed them on someone and pinned pieces together to cover their skin. His amber hair was slowly falling out and you could already see a bald spot forming at the very top of his head.

As you will read this, you will probably notice that I get side tracked a lot. A lot a lot. Admittedly its part of being what I am but what I am I will leave for you to guess for I always rather being described as something different to each persons’ mind. But back to the story teller. He was telling his story with different faces as scenes change and his hands just about never stop moving if they weren’t helping him act out a scene they were swaying from side to side. Before I knew it, I was sitting at the front of the crowd my black feline tail wagging back and forth like dogs when its getting praise. Humans could never see me for what I truly was only for what I wished to be seen as and during this time I had picked a black cat. The people were just as entranced as me by the story teller that they didn’t even notice me as I crept between them and sat in the front row.

Just as the story was getting to the part of taking down the queen by exposing her evil plots, the story was interrupted by the loud neighing of horses and the sound off a large carriage plowing through the small street. Turns out the king of this area had heard of the great story teller and came to see just how good he was. Of course larger beings are never a favorite of mine so I quickly took off to some building’s roof to watch from a safe distance. It didn’t take long for the king to get the story teller into his carriage and off back towards the castle.

Being a truly selfish creature as I was, I felt resentment for the king right now. Not only had he interrupted the story but he did it right before the end, and the end was always the part of the story that mattered most, and to top it off he then took the story teller so that he would not be able to finish it! Maybe on a truly horrid day I would have turned into a venomous viper and bitten the king in his sleep but past moments had only proved that humans tend to argue about someone’s dying and especially someone that everyone knew. And if they argue they will start to search for what was the cause and if they find out it was me nothing on this planet can save me and everything I posed as from their wrath. So in hopes of him telling the same story to the king I took the form of a small black bird, common to this region, and flew after them.

By the time they had arrived at the castle the king was practically rolling with laughter as he stepped out of the carriage. The story teller on the other hand stepped out composed and simply looked around admiring his new surroundings with a content smile. As soon as they went inside the castle I lost them and wasn’t able to find them again until they were seated at the large table for dinner. It’s not that it would have been hard to find them in the castle it’s merely that there was to many eyes around the castle and changing form was taking to much of a chance for my taste.

Pretending to be a sleeping bird in one of the many windows that surrounded the grand dinning room. I listened as the king and the story teller talked about many jokes and stories that must have been told in the gap they spent during the time I was stuck admiring the scenery and looking at all the other birds wondering if they even notice I’m not one of them. Everyone else at the table sat silently some looking like they wished they were somewhere else and some that seemed to be engulfed in the talk like it was the most interesting thing in the world. And from what little was going on earlier during my time alone, it probably was the most interesting thing here.

This royal family was nothing like the one he was talking about earlier. The King didn’t look stupid just gullible and he most likely would never listen to his wife. The Queen didn’t look evil but merely bored. Instead of one daughter they had three sons and one daughter. The daughter looked more like a mule than a beautiful princess. And there was no poor handsome turnip farmer here but there were the sons which all looked very bored. No one here could be anywhere near the idea of the turnip farmer. They were as rich as rich can be, and if they weren’t rich they were attached to someone who was.

Throughout the entire dinner the story teller told one story, unfortunately not the one I was waiting for, countless jokes and overpowering amounts of so-called small talk all favoring royalty over the ‘pathetic commoners’ as he put it. I suppose I should have expected that a dirt poor turnip farmer besting a king and queen wouldn’t be the best story for this audience but I never tend to fully think that far ahead of things.

I had spent just about a week following that story teller as he walked about the castle. The king had made him the castle’s story teller so he had full rein over the castle for the time being. It didn’t take him long to befriend the king and become even higher in the king’s ear than the advisor that had been with the king for countless years.

I suppose with all the time I followed him pretending to be a rat or any of the regular animal that one would see around the castle I should have noticed that he wasn’t the cheerful person everyone took him to be. If fact when he thought he was alone he tended to brood over small things, I suppose things I would just as easily brood over, but he had an active imagination something I don’t have. He would spend his free time brooding over small things and acting out all possible results that could happen. But the fact that he acted them out in his imagination made him seem even less dangerous, most likely because if you act it out you tend to lose interest in actually doing it and knowing all the possible outcomes tends to put a major damper. The whole beheading thing seems to me a defiant act killer.

It was only natural, I suppose, that when someone came to the story teller with the idea of exchanging great amounts of money and land in turn for the families demise that the story teller would happily accept the proposal. Unfortunately it wasn’t hard for the story teller to come up with a way to off the royalty after all such things, as killing off people, he told about in some of his stories. The only problem he had was how to make it interesting and get away with it. After all he was a story teller and he took pride in his stories which this seemed to be playing out as one of them.

He had spent a whole night conjuring up many ways to play off the deaths but then a thought hit him. He would tell a story but this time the family would help play out the story. It amazingly didn’t take him long to find all the props that were needed and come up with the perfect story for them to play out.

It was like a mystery murder story except royalty style. The family would play it out and try to figure out who was playing the part of the killer. The story teller already knew that the real killer wasn’t any of the characters he came up with for them to play but him himself. Although he wasn’t one of the choices for who is killing off the family he was telling the story as they played it out. Now all he had to hope for was that the rest of the family thought the one dying was good enough of an actor to actually seem dying.

The queen was first she was simply the easiest to get for the part. She didn’t fully want to play this out like the others she was only here because the king said so. It played out that she had a sip of the wrong drink and ‘acted’ to be passed out and dead for the rest of the play.

Next it was decided to get rid of the oldest of the three sons. Mainly because he was interfering with the story line. He kept asking stupid questions about if your playing the killer you should know it and nonsense like that so it was decided that he would be shown he isn’t the killer and not have to be in this any longer. He got a good hanging with a pretend harness around his stomach to make it seem like it wasn’t real.

Next would be the youngest. It was originally going to be the daughter because the story teller obviously didn’t like her mule face looks any more than I did but she amazingly was a real good actor, or at least seemed like one, and was fully into the story playing out her character wonderfully. And in turn the youngest was being to curious about where the others go when they were deceased and interrupting the story. He met an unfortunate end by falling off a balcony. Of course this wasn’t an easy thing to seem unreal in fact the story teller had to set the other three characters off doing something else while he walked the son down the stairs. Well at least they thought he walked him down the stairs.

Next was the middle son. He seemed to be slowly coming on to what was going on and that was out of character. Simply placing him as missing in the group they all assumed that the other character got him.

Now it was down to two. Both the King and the Princess had nothing better to do than point fingers at each other and wonder why nether were right when it came to the answer. The only thing the story teller said in turn to this was “There is yet one person both of you are looking over.” Both of them assumed the story teller was talking about the missing brother. They split up searching for the brother.

Now it was time to finish the story. The daughter met her end at the end up a sword from a suit of armor. And the King, well the story was supposed to go he killed himself and the gullible, gullible, king played it out thinking the small knife was merely a prop like everything else.

The next day the story teller was imprisoned while waiting for the man he made the deal with. Sometimes I wonder if that man wasn't actually human but back then it was very hard to tell humans and beasts apart just by looking at them. The trail of the story teller was quick and boring he was merely lead to the hanging stand and dropped. He didn’t get any words in to try to come up with a witty tale to make him seem innocent mainly because a maid saw him push the prince off the balcony. Like I said in castles there are eyes everywhere even when you don’t think there are.

Now that’s the end of this tale. How you may be asking did my kind end up in the place we are now? Well that’s a different story for a different time.