Allegories – Now with 100% less animal analogies!
As a result, no horsies were harmed in the production of this piece.
This is the story of a princess. A poor misguided princess.
Princess hSirah (with a silent first ‘h’).
And yes, there is a good reason I didn’t name her Consuela Banana Hammock.
And no, the length of Consuela Banana Hammock had nothing to do with it.
hSirah had the perfect childhood. Well, not perfect (for what is reality but imperfection, or something insightful like that). She was a powerful king’s daughter and led a fairly protected life. She wasn’t free to roam about her land and play with the other regular kids, but she did get to be with a select few. The few nobles’ children, who all thought the same and were exposed to things similar to what she was. But she was the princess, the fairest and luckiest of them all. She had not a care in the world. Anything she would ever want was handed to her before she could feel want. Toys, expensive clothes, fine foods, the best tutors in the land… . She wasn’t allowed to roam outside her wondrous palace, and she honestly believed the world outside was just like the one she was living in.
Who can blame the poor child?
hSirah was extremely gifted and intelligent. She enjoyed learning, and got the most out of her royal tutors. She soon surpassed them in knowledge. She was talented. She had the voice of an angel and her extreme psycho-motor skills allowed her to handle any musical instrument or craft tool she was handed. She was creative, and was capable of making the most adorable little trinkets from anything and everything she found around her.
hSirah was the perfect little child. Caring, compassionate, curious, honest. Just your regular sweetheart. Yes, some might say she was a little lazy, but being almost spoiled, and having never experienced the need to work toward anything, either it being handed to her or it coming to her naturally, she can be excused.
(Hey, but the title block said “poor misguided”, hSirah doesn’t seem to be poor at all. Course not dummy, I didn’t mean poor as in monetarily. I meant poor as in hapless. Unfortunately, for all her perfection, and the “perfectness bubble” surrounding her little tower, she wasn’t exposed to a lot. Hence the “misguided” in the title. And HEY, am I telling this story or are you? Sshh, and listen.)
hSirah was one to form her own opinions on things, and rarely took anything told to her for granted. For a little while, as a young child, she wondered if extrapolating how the world is outside based on her rosy (but she didn’t know it at the time) life was the right thing to do. But she did what she could at the time given her state (couldn’t crawl yet, and was being pushed around in a (cute lavender and pink) pram); she made an intelligent assumption. “Well”, little hSirah went, “It must be nice outside too. I couldn’t be born and raised at some singularity could I? How probable would that be statistically?” So, before she learnt math and probability formally, she had started doing something that would stick with her for the rest of her life – Making assumptions about things she didn’t or couldn’t know yet.
hSirah is now a little older, and by now her beliefs about the world outside were very strong. She stopped being curious for a while. After all, there was so much to learn and experience here. Why not crawl before we fly? “Weee.. pretty flower.”
hSirah was the perfect little child. Caring, compassionate, curious, honest. Just your regular sweetheart. One evening, a long time later, she was setting up a telescope (No, not to look for flying carpets with singing genies. Do you mind? It is my story.) to study some constellation patterns to see which one’s the best choice for her to join to spell out a special message for her mom, the queen’s, birthday. She had it all planned out. She had the optics wired to shine a tiny laser on the inside that connected these dots based on coordinates she’d specified and she was beginning to plan phase two. She was beginning to fashion an idea in her head. To get her mom to look through the telescope on her own without her guessing what’s in store.
(Anywho, that diversion has little to do with the progression of our fine tale, so moving along.)
Unfortunately, for all her brilliance, she had unduly high expectations on the functioning of subsystems and had a bit of an absentmindedness problem. She hadn’t tightened the screws on the telescope stand tight enough (yes, she wasn’t as strong as the other princesses) and it slipped out of its position and was now no longer focussing on her carefully selected star set. Instead, it now gave her a brilliant view of the city outside.
(Again, did I have to make it so elaborate as to how she got to peek outside? Couldn’t she have just been curious and actually done this voluntarily at some point in the past? Sure, but hey, WHOSE STORY IS THIS?)
She was awestruck. (Yes, it was night, but a very well lit city. Good king, great civic utilities. Streetlamps included). It was so pretty, and filled with people. Bustling with activity.
And then she saw…
Continued soon…
(Yes, if big studios *cough* The Matrix guys can do it, I can too. Good night.)