Desolation once consumed the land, and a great tree birthed all that there is; the Ellipses Tree. From it, all plants and trees came to be.
This was not known to Ode son of Now. Ode had no education, so all knowledge of the past was a mystery to him. What little he did know was rarely used; the majority of his time was spent walking from the shore to the National Forest of Kaporu; where he kept his only possessions. Out of desperation he often wondered if he would discover the name of his mother and father, and his own identity; for Ode was a name he had given himself while attending church one day, that delightful hymn.
It would seem odd to most for a person with no home, to build anything for a hen; yet Ode had no home to call his own, and had fashioned a coop for thirty hens. He kept them at the shores of Elsinore for the belief that no harm would come to them. Needless to say he did not eat much; he sold the eggs for canned foods he planted in his garden within the Kaporu National Forest along the banks of the Tidlemore River. And even more, he had no crops to feed his Hens and one Rooster; so Ode would go and sell his A positive blood and exchange the reward for chicken feed in the town that was over two days hike away.
Ode was a sad man, no family, no records of his existence, not even a birth certificate; his mother had received sperm from a donor and died at his birth in Kaporu National Forest on Tidlemore Mountain; a place to the north and in solitude. And in solitude, Ode for the most part lived.
No one knows how Ode survived to his fifth birthday, the soothsayers claimed it was a silver earth worm that had fed him, but no one ever believed that; the ordained priests of the time said it was only a miracle to their Gods, because none of the Goddesses favored children.
Ode had no friends, only his thirty hens and one rooster, to which they never showed their respect. The occasional peck at his leg let him to bleed out and eventually leave his legs scabbed and dark red. Ode had only a silk robe, so rare for such a find, but it was his mothers.
The water sieved over the sand and formed bubbles, and the scraping sound filled the air. Ode sat alone facing away from his hens.
“Oh how I love this sea, its emerald might glistens in the noon sun. You bring comfort from the dangers of the forest, where the fox dwells. May you last for a hundred thousand billion millennia? Or will you be undone by the folly of the beach?” said Ode to the Sea.
An Eagle soared over the Hens, and they began to return to the protection of the coupe; except for one. Its name was Din.
The Eagle made one final pass before it began to dive head first towards Din, and with one movement picked Din up and carried it off towards the forest.
Ode only heard the sound of the large Eagle’s wings beat against sand, and immediately stood up and turned around. His wild tangled hair caste into the will of the wind.
“Din! What evil has overcome you?” He shouted without moving.
As the Eagle and Din vanished into the sky and horizon, the sun glistened off Ode’s exposed bronze skin. Ode’s frail body was clung tightly by the silk robe in the winds coming from the ocean.
Ode fainted.
As he lay unconscious, a fox came into sight of the chicken coop and cock-yard. It smelled the air and caught on to the scent of the thirty hens and one rooster.
Somehow the fox made it through the fencing and into the coop. Hens and rooster screamed as one by one they were eaten.
Ode awoke in a daze. The sun was just over the Horizon. All was silent, save the scraping sieves of the ocean waves against the beach. No sign of the thirty hens or one rooster.
So Ode immediately began to look into the coop. nothing. He looked in the cock-yard, and found a very fat fox.
Anger grew throughout Ode’s body and blood and spirit. The twilight of the sky darkened and the sun turned blood red.
“You cursed beast! You have eaten my fowl! I shall murder thee in thy own shame!” Ode echoed.
Ode came to the fat fox and stretching out his arms, reached for the fox’s neck and began to tighten his grip around the fat neck of the fox. The fox made strange noises while gasping for air. And with a wind from the north that knocked Ode to his rear, the fox was dead.
Ode thought he had lost it all; then he had realized the Hens had already laid their eggs, and with patients he could have a new roost. So he immediately collected the eggs from the chicken coop and brought them into the cock-yard. He laid them on the ground; Ode then uncovered the sand to make a hole. He placed the eggs in the sand and buried them, in hope that they would hatch with the heat of the sand and sun.
Ode stayed up the whole night, for fear of another calamity. He had dragged the dead fat fox corpse into the ocean to be carried away with the waves.
In the morning, when the sun had not yet risen, Ode collapsed from starvation, as he had not eaten in a year and a half. For see, in order to build the chicken coop and cock-yard ode sold his blood for the building supplies and chickens, and had no resources for food. True the occasional stranger gave him the last of their sandwich, but that is hardly a meal to sustain for longevity.
From the edge of the Kaporu National Forrest emerged four hikers, among them was a famed warrior, Kasdum. They eventually found Ode’s corpse.
“What do you think his name is?” asked the youngest male.
“Look at his robe, its silk.” mentioned the eldest male.
In irony, Kasdum said, “He shall be known as Rags.”
Out of fear of bad luck, they did not burry Rags, and instead, left him in the cock-yard.
Many months later, the chicken eggs hatched, and also died of starvation, only after having eaten Rags’ body. Yet along the Tidlemore River where Ode had planted canned corn, beets, pineapple and beans, sprouts were above their plotted loations.
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