![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A small thing. It is either a rambling prose poem, or an oddly formatted piece of flash prose.
Once upon a time
a little orphan boy on a little orphan farm
(that is, a farm for little orphans, farms generally not being the product of parents)
(which is to say the little orphans were working the farm, not being grown there)
(though they were indeed growing up, when they didn't die of whooping cough or wandering griffins or accidentally starting quests too early, but they were not being grown in the fields as such)
opened a door in the attic which he been told never to open
(which is an invitation for opening, if you think about it)
(and perhaps it was only interesting to open at midnight on midsummer's day when there's a full moon, because otherwise every little orphan on the little orphan farm would have encountered the same results with the door)
and found a portal to another world.
As you do.
It was a world of strange and wondrous things
because there is no point in walking through a portal to a magical other world
if it's only more of the same, except a little more dull
or exactly the same,
though we do that all the time. You've done it as often as I have.
(You wouldn't notice. It's exactly the same. Almost.)
(That little uneasy feeling you get? When you think you've forgotten something? Or misremembered? That's because you moved into a world where it's almost exactly the same as the world before. But not quite.)
Oh, what a wonderful world had our little orphan boy
(as yet unnamed)
found!
So many little children who had never even heard of the diseases
which killed his best friend and worst enemy
(depending on which day you'd asked him on)
and a half dozen other children beside, at the little orphan farm.
So many grand adventures to be had just by picking out a book
and reading about them, free for the borrowing,
without any chance at all of being eaten by griffins
or sacrificed by dark lords
or being turned into a sad, adorable orphan ghost
who is there merely to explain to the heroes the secret need to continue on their quest.
(The leading cause of death among orphans, after starvation and disease and exhaustion and wandering griffins, is to provide pathos for a slightly more important orphan.)
Oh, what an enormous world had our little orphan boy
(I believe we can skip the naming at this point)
found!
Vast and varied, a hundred thousand cultures and subcultures
hiding in one place or striding brashly through others,
elbow to elbow with people who wanted nothing to do with them
and who would nonetheless not generally turn this into a stabbing occasion.
How quickly one could travel from place to place,
how easily one could speak with people unseen and distant,
and not one wizard sat about hoarding the magic carpets and crystal balls
for his own private tower.
It is traditional for a little orphan boy in a marvelous new world
to travel the breadth of it, discover his hidden identity
(which is generally grand, because the orphans of ordinary people go on to be ordinary themselves, in proper literary tradition)
and eventually save everyone.
However
unbound by tradition
and in defiance of all precedent
he found parents unrelated to him by blood
went to a school where no one taught magic, except metaphorically
and grew up to be a fine young man, largely disease-free, grateful every day
that he never saw a dragon again.
Once upon a time
a little orphan boy on a little orphan farm
(that is, a farm for little orphans, farms generally not being the product of parents)
(which is to say the little orphans were working the farm, not being grown there)
(though they were indeed growing up, when they didn't die of whooping cough or wandering griffins or accidentally starting quests too early, but they were not being grown in the fields as such)
opened a door in the attic which he been told never to open
(which is an invitation for opening, if you think about it)
(and perhaps it was only interesting to open at midnight on midsummer's day when there's a full moon, because otherwise every little orphan on the little orphan farm would have encountered the same results with the door)
and found a portal to another world.
As you do.
It was a world of strange and wondrous things
because there is no point in walking through a portal to a magical other world
if it's only more of the same, except a little more dull
or exactly the same,
though we do that all the time. You've done it as often as I have.
(You wouldn't notice. It's exactly the same. Almost.)
(That little uneasy feeling you get? When you think you've forgotten something? Or misremembered? That's because you moved into a world where it's almost exactly the same as the world before. But not quite.)
Oh, what a wonderful world had our little orphan boy
(as yet unnamed)
found!
So many little children who had never even heard of the diseases
which killed his best friend and worst enemy
(depending on which day you'd asked him on)
and a half dozen other children beside, at the little orphan farm.
So many grand adventures to be had just by picking out a book
and reading about them, free for the borrowing,
without any chance at all of being eaten by griffins
or sacrificed by dark lords
or being turned into a sad, adorable orphan ghost
who is there merely to explain to the heroes the secret need to continue on their quest.
(The leading cause of death among orphans, after starvation and disease and exhaustion and wandering griffins, is to provide pathos for a slightly more important orphan.)
Oh, what an enormous world had our little orphan boy
(I believe we can skip the naming at this point)
found!
Vast and varied, a hundred thousand cultures and subcultures
hiding in one place or striding brashly through others,
elbow to elbow with people who wanted nothing to do with them
and who would nonetheless not generally turn this into a stabbing occasion.
How quickly one could travel from place to place,
how easily one could speak with people unseen and distant,
and not one wizard sat about hoarding the magic carpets and crystal balls
for his own private tower.
It is traditional for a little orphan boy in a marvelous new world
to travel the breadth of it, discover his hidden identity
(which is generally grand, because the orphans of ordinary people go on to be ordinary themselves, in proper literary tradition)
and eventually save everyone.
However
unbound by tradition
and in defiance of all precedent
he found parents unrelated to him by blood
went to a school where no one taught magic, except metaphorically
and grew up to be a fine young man, largely disease-free, grateful every day
that he never saw a dragon again.