Old Stories: One Day

I've always been fascinated with the ways that people are connected. That's why I love genealogies. I once went through the index in the Return of the King and drew out a whole family tree showing how Aragorn and Arwen were related. I still have it, somewhere.

This story was a product of that fascination. It's more of a connected list, actually, than a story, although it has multiple stories in its layers. It was inspired by one of the lines in a story I'd written previously, Happily Ever After, and probably, in a small way, inspired by the rhyme "This is the house that Jack built."

One Day

One day a horse stood eating grass while his master, a brave knight, plunged fearlessly into a forest of thorns to get to a tower to wake a sleeping princess,

 who had escaped already and was riding off with a prince on the horse of a knight who was trying to figure out how to get up a glass hill to rescue a lady,

who was actually a peasant in disguise pretending to be the lady, while the real lady was wandering around the countryside looking for the cave of a dragon,

who lived in a different country and was at that moment burning a clay-maker's hut while the clay-maker was off trading goods and leaping out of the way of a huge wagon loaded with fruit to sell to the king,

who hated fruit and was slinking out of the castle disguised as a jester, when he got pushed out of the way by a man in a striped hat,

who had a sword that was made by a blacksmith who was boarding passage on a ship bound for a country where a sleeping princess lay,

while in that country the blacksmith's cousin was making porridge in a little pot made by a girl who was waiting at the edge of a green pasture for a boy

who was talking to a man who was writing on some paper which he had bought from a man in yellow boots who was calling for a woman who was having tea with her friend

who was pouring tea from a teapot that was made by a man who was the father of the boy who was staring at a horse eating grass while his master plunged fearlessly into a forest of thorns.

The End