5/16/11

Stranger,

You know, I have always been a writer. I think even as a sat through 7th grade math class years ago, willing myself to be the most Rational and Logical, I was still a writer. But who are you? I know only one thing about you. That you are Stranger. Stranger than any people I know, and Stranger than I am to myself for certain. You are Stranger than Mother or Father and you must be Stranger than at least one other of your type. But yet I am soon to be called Stranger by you, too. So I wonder, with childish fascination, which of us is left as Strangest?

Let me tell you a story.

There is a city far to the East named Izveraii. There is a woman there carrying baskets full of flowers. Roses, tulips, lilacs, and wild dandelions, stalks of field grass and grand sunflowers. It is a city of giving, where each person thrives by giving all they have to the person next to them. The woman gives her flowers to a man who heaves satchels full of compasses and he to a child who leads around a hundred fluffy rabbits, brown and white, and black and grey. But they give problems too. The man is given disease by boy and his rabbits, in return, and the woman's back becomes sore from the heavy bronze compasses she receives from and heavies for the man. Everyone is given a problem for their generosity in Izveraii, and the city of giving takes each soul at a time. The rabbits will eat the flowers someday, and the visitor to Isveraii watches and learns that it is only by sharing problems, not gifts, that people become close enough to escape it.

With love,
Your Stranger