Note: This is my telling of a couple Chinese stories my parents told me. I don't know very much about my heritage, but at least I have this.
Happily ever after.
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There is a man. He boasts and brags of the various weapons, as he waves them in the air. There is a small crowd of people that watch him, their gazes a spectrum of attentiveness from a lazy peek from beneath an eyelid or standing transfixed on the spot.
He rummages in the heaps and piles of metal and withdraws a sword.
He makes great claims, “This sword is the best sword there is! It will pierce any shield!”
He mimes jabbing movements.
The crowd watches with a shifting spectrum of watchfulness.
He ducks below and plucks a shield from the jumble.
Again, he shouts his praise, “This shield is the best shield there is! It will block any sword!”
There is a voice.
“Why don’t you try your sword against your shield?”
There is a man; there was a man.
All the rest is legend.
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There is a man. He is on a boat, a large, impressive boat out on the sea.
He is headed home.
This man, he has a large, impressive sword that gleams with the glow of the moon and cuts as the moonbeams do the darkness.
Passenger of a fine boat, owner of a fine sword, and headed to the finest home there is.
His future and the happiness that fills it is spread across the sky in bright shining blue.
It can not be hard to imagine this man is feeling quite proud of himself.
He walks and thinks. He might be thinking of his fortune, he might have been thinking of his family, he might have been thinking of his dinner.
He trips, and his sword, beautiful like the moon (it can not be hard to imagine he had unsheathed his weapon to admire it) clatters and gleams so brightly as it topples over the edge of the boat and into the endless darkness that is the sea.
The others approach and lament his loss, but the man, he does not grieve. His smile does not waver. This might be slightly more difficult to imagine.
He crosses to the spot that his sword fell over, takes out a knife, and marks the spot.
“When we reach the shore and the water is shallow, I will reach down and take my sword from out of the water”
His self-satisfaction does not waver.
He is headed home.
It can not be hard to imagine his arrival.
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There is a man, walking home from his work. He sees a blur spring from a bush, then it stops. The blur was a rabbit, the stop was the rabbit hitting a tree and stunning itself. He picks it up and there is dinner when he comes home.
There is a man, but he no longer works. He watches the tree, the bush, the space in between. He watches all day but there is no rabbit and his family starves.
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There is a man. He is very old and lives with his only son that he loves more than anything.
They do not have much, but they have enough.
One day, there are wild horses in the barn.
The neighbors smile and congratulate the old man, but he does not celebrate with them.
When his son tries to ride a wild horse, it bucks him off. The fall breaks his leg.
The neighbors cry and offer their sympathy to the old man, but he does not grieve with them.
One day, all the young men in the village are drafted. All but one. One of the young men of the village has a broken leg and cannot go to war.
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Once upon a time.
Once upon a time.
