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Join Date: Aug-2001
Location: Silicon Valley
Country: USA
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The Oddity
BOOK I
"Sing, Goddess, the story of that resourceful woman who was driven to wander to the bottom of the Earth after she had stuck her fingers with many pinpricks. She saw the bonsai of many people and especially of one named Doug, and she sought to learn his ways. She suffered great anguish in her struggles to combine the forces of a hundred seedlings with a gob of wax that they might live together as one...
But she failed, in spite of all her efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for while she tarried in her planning, in their folly devoured the fruit of the Sun-god and grew enormous and unyielding, and when they suffered the wretched misfortune of each tiny lance, the seedlings she bore, tore free, and she knew they could never be held.
Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Oz, beginning at whatever point you will."
BOOK II
Now so long as the day waxed and it was still morning, Jules' tiny darts rained thick on one another so as to blot the sky dark with the very pinning, and her fingers blemished, but as the hour drew nigh when a woodman working in some mountain forest will get his midday meal- for he has felled till his hands are weary; as he, she is tired out, and must now have food, but forsook it.
BOOK III
Still she labored on, forthwith she showered her tiny arrows on the seedlings, and hit each full center. It was in the very middle of the very thickest part of the trunk, doing good service to Bonsai, but evil had now come upon her, and not one of those who were fain to do so could avert, for a wayward pin struck her on the back of the hand. She cried out, and such harsh words fell from her lips that Zeus did blush and all manner of animal and beast ran by foot or hoof as if before wildfire advancing. Jules fell from her perch and the pins scattered like fallen grainstalks beneath the blade of a harvest scythe. Yet still the trunks sought to break free.
BOOK IV
She then aimed another pin, and there would have been no more fighting had she hit it then and there, but alas she could not, so then went forth with sticky tape stretched like a bowstring to repel the intruders. Chaos, however, who kept watch, had his eyes on her, and deprived her of her triumph, by breaking her bindings just as she was drawing it and about to to close, and the roll went astray and fell from her hands.
BOOK V
When the seedlings saw that her tape roll was of no more use to her, they shouted out to one another, "Tridents, Maples, good in close fight, be trees, my friends, and show your mettle here, for I see the weapon of one of Jules made useless by the hand of Chaos. It is easy to see when Chaos is helping and means to help them still further, or again when he is bringing them down and will do nothing for them; he is now on our side, and is going against her. Therefore swarm round and fight. If any of you is struck by needle or pin, let him break free; for a tree dies with honour who dies fighting for his freedom"
BOOK VI
Nine hours long did she try to bind the wood, in vain and on the evening of the tenth hour, with many tears they took the waxen trunk forth, laid its dead body upon the summit of the pile, and set the fire thereto. Then when the child of morning rosy-fingered dawn appeared the people again assembled, round the pyre of mighty waxen trident. When they were got together, they first quenched the fire with cheap beer wherever it was burning, Thus, then, did they celebrate the failure of Juliet, tamer of trees.
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