In which a letter arrives

Once upon a time there was a young scholar who lived alone deep in the forest, surrounded by the animals and the trees. His only company was a great library and the occasional rare visitor to his home, for he lived far from others and was difficult to reach, but this gave him a great deal of time to study. One day, he happened to be browsing through his library and searching the aetherial plane for information, when all of a sudden he gave a great start.

A letter had arrived.

He took the letter from the table where it had fallen and carefully examined the seals upon it. It bore word from the great ivory towers of knowledge. He opened it slowly, and pulled out the thin sheet of parchment from within. In a flowing gothic hand it replied to his application for access to their libraries, to study with their scholars. But alas, it was not good news, for they had rejected his request. It was the time of year for the trees and the leaves to flourish, for the animals to wake from their slumbers and to seek new life beneath the warming sun, but the young scholar frowned, and the clouds of the season turned dark and black, and thunder and lightnings shook the roof of his library. The trees dropped branches that earlier had been stricken by late frosts, and bent their boughs in sympathy.

The letter drifted from his hand back to the table. The envelope fell beside it. The young scholar turned his eyes to the heavens and he swore a great oath. That by the fires that burned within his soul, that he would do without the ivory towers, and he would build his library to the very limits of the heavens, and have greater breadth of knowledge than any who resided therein.

Spring passed away in the wood. The seasons came and went more times than memory can recount, and the library of the scholar in the woods ever shone with sparkling lights as he studied and met his guests, and taught the many students who came to his door. Sometimes the elves who lived nearby heard his laughter, and sometimes they would guide a student to him who had lost the way, and they smiled to themselves as they passed by upon their secret paths.

In his old age, many, many ages of the wood later, the old scholar smiled back upon his youthful self, and rescinded that great oath. He had succeeded in his vow, and his library rivaled that of the greatest towers, and many students had stayed with him through the years and built his home into a palace that brushed the clouds, but the oath had always been worth less than the words that had made it. He had never pursued his studies out of competitiveness with others. He had always sought knowledge simply to stoke the fires that burned within him, greater now than ever they had been before.

He laughed at himself and stroked his long white beard, and watched the young leaves bloom in the wood.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:10 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.