FanStory.com - Before Time Began, An Old Storyby Ogden
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A New Fable
Before Time Began, An Old Story by Ogden
Write a Modern Fable writing prompt entry


              Before Time Began

There was only they. As always it was. 
On this day, before the beginning of time, all the ageless ones gathered. This, in every detail, they had done forever. Those present, and the few not present, were intelligent individuals, and quite sophisticated about everything to which they had been exposed. However, they had no inkling of how limited that scope was, and wouldn’t have cared if they did. Had they somehow been informed there was much more to know, it would not have been a matter of any interest, whatsoever.

Who were they? Why did they meet? What happened before? Will anything happen again? But they were not curious, and did not ask questions. They had no names; No one had thought of the concept. And so it was.

Out of the mist, for the first time ever, changes occurred.
One individual, the same as the rest, was about to be tardy for the meeting, which would have been an unheard of event. As no one had a name, for the sake of clarity, we will refer to him as Eve. Of sexual distinctions, they had no awareness. Curiosity, we have noted, was not one of their attributes. (Although it may be an attribute of the reader, we will leave Eve's love life to one's prurient imagination, which should satisfy your requiremets.) 

Eve had never before seen a horse, and, in fact, had no idea of what this strange thing was. With no hesitation, he mounted it with the ease of a lifelong equestrian, and proceeded to the meeting.

He arrived without a hitch, and took his customary place, the horse at his side. Realizing that he was not late, Eve could not help noticing the advantage of this method of traveling. In every other way, the meeting continued exactly as always. If there had been eyebrows, none would have been raised.

Although Eve didn’t wonder where the horse came from, he possessed a fact no one else did, and for the first time, he felt pride. He was different from, more informed than, and, therefore, superior to all others.

No one questioned the supremacy of their newly acquired leader, and none exhibited any awareness of his ability to move so rapidly. Eve, with virtually no more knowledge than anyone else, and only the advantage of a serendipitous horse at his bidding, had become the architect of dictatorship.

(The unquestioned appearance of the mysterious horse in our fable, for which your inquisitive mind needs an explanation, was, indeed, an unforeseeable happenstance, crucial to our tale, a windfall to our clueless protagonist, Eve, a nightmare for some hapless fable writer, missing an indispensible horse, and a pretty good deal for the horse, who had wandered away, bored, during one of that other scribe's writing blocks.)

And the moral of the story is…(and I suspect you already know)...“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”   



Writing Prompt
Write a short fable-like story where the last sentence starts with: "And the moral of the story is". This can be on any subject, true or fictional, and can be in any voice, as long as the moral is stated in the last line. A new twist on an old fable is also allowed.

     

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