The wind caused the flap of our tipi to rattle, father went and tied it more securely while mother tucked my siblings into the furs for the night. The tribe was camped along the river though we'd had to move recently due to rains that had caused the water to swell. Once father sat down, I watched as he was taking an arrow that had broken and was repairing it, shaving the wood carefully, repurposing it for a smaller training bow for my siblings. Then it occurred to me, why keep a broken one when a new one could be made? When I asked my father this, he smiled upon me softly and said gently. "Let me tell you the story of the man who lived within a very small forest, and only used new arrows." -- Anon Guest
[AN: Yeah I'm too white to look sideways at native populations' legends. Not making up new ones, not stealing extant ones. Nope. Going to take this as inspiration and take another angle at it]
The water was fresh and clean and stretched to the horizon. There was no end to it. It was perfect. The forest nearby was plentiful and full of game. The stone for tools was close to the surface and easily available. It was almost as if it was made to be inhabited. Call it... Eden.
There was absolutely no way any of this could possibly run out. It went on forever. The humans who came into the area immediately settled in and started using everything that came to hand. They could have everything they wanted. First, they found the best spot to put the storehouse, knocking down all the trees that were in the way to create it in the process. Surrounding it were huts and homes that were convenient for those who dwelt there. Of course, they had to pull out stumps and dig ditches for the crops they wanted to grow. And clear land for their animal pens.
The fish were plentiful in the nearby lake and nobody saw anything wrong with dumping their waste into the river's water. The water was always fresh and clean and it went into the lake, which went forever. They could put anything into the water without consequence. They could fish all they wanted and there would be more fish there. They could hunt all they wanted and there would still be game in the woods. There was no end to it, or so they believed. For as much as four generations, all was well. Long enough for plenty to be normal.
They prospered, and grew to a multitude, and kept doing what they had been doing for generations. Chopping down trees to build their homes. Clearing land to make their farms and pen their animals. Dumping their waste in the clean, clear water of the river that filled the lake. Hunting the wild game that lived in the endless woods. Little by little, the problems with this made themselves known.
Wolves, short of game to hunt, came out of the woods to hunt anything small enough. Piglets. Calves. Lambs. Children... Foxes came for the chickens and the rest of the poultry, but they were a far smaller nuisance. The hunters, told to prioritize wolves as their prey, had to do something with their catch. Wolf pelts became fashionable winter-wear. Wolf bones and teeth made interesting jewelry. The rest of the carcasses went to the fishermen for bait, or simply into the midden to rot.
After the wolves and foxes were gone, the forest animals prospered. There was more game to hunt... and more vermin in the granaries. The water started to smell funny. Started to taste funny. Started to cause sickness. This, too, became normal. Just don't drink from the lake. Get your water from upstream. It's not that hard. Diseases never know before started to run rampant through the streets. So naturally the Humans did the most sensible thing they knew...
They blamed witches and burned all the cats and dogs they could catch, along with any woman who protested that practice for any reason. Incredulously, they were shocked that this didn't work. Things got worse. One bad winter and there was not a great amount of game left in the forest. In fact, there wasn't a lot of forest left, either.
The lake is no longer fresh and clean and sparkling. There are no more fish in it, but it is still a fine highway for trade. The rivers are not very clean either, but the wells are still serviceable, so long as they're not too close to the middens, the river, or the privies. There's no game any more, but there are lots of farms, so there's plenty to eat. That which was once cropland became cattle land, and that which was once cattle land has become housing. There's plenty of work, and plenty to trade.
They say that in ages long past, the deities made this place for all of Humankind. A paradise on Earth. What happened next differs depending on the storyteller. Some say that the people were wicked, and the deity took the paradise away, but left the people. Some people say that the paradise was somewhere else, and they were exiled to live with the consequences of their sins.
So much time has passed that nobody knows what happened. One day it was paradise, and then it was no longer paradise. They dug out the stone for tools and dug out the metal for better tools, and filled the hole with garbage and rot, and the land that it became was too sour for growing, and no well dug there was ever good. Yet it took so long in happening that none of them noticed.
Humans. They're their own reason why they can't have nice things.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / smithore]
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