In this world, fairies interact with humans and go back and forth into and from the physical world to the spirit world, thereby our Orphan Hero's mother was an old magician with a long braid that she left for him to use as a trap for all edible preys in her absence.
"This I leave you, my son," she said one day as she was breathing her last breaths on this bamboo bed in their tiny thatch over the remote hills of this secluded forest, putting Orphan Hero's hand over the braid.
Animals of all kinds could not escape the grasp of the braid, once it has been set as a trap on any trail. Deer, elk, wild buffaloes, wild oxes, bears, boars, birds of all kinds--big and small--and even fish from the nearby rivers and streams--everything caught has ended up in Orphan Hero's pots, dipped with his sticky rice.
Then one morning, Orphan Hero's tending found an elephant with two golden tusks by its trunk's sides.
"Please don't kill me," the elephant begged as Orphan Hero raised up the back of his axe, about go come down onto the elephant's forehead.
"I will give you one of my tusks in exchange for my life. You can take it to live your life forever and ever as you please," it said.
The talking is no surprise to Orphan Hero, since this world is full of spirits and other beings of anything and any kind.
The exchange agreed upon, the elephant used its trunk and pulled out its right tusk and handed over to Orphan Hero.
The tusk was set inside Orphan Hero's thatch to the north side of the small building on this remote hill in the forest. It was a beautiful sight.
More settings of the trap caught more preys but an unusual-looking hairy creature just the height of Orphan Hero's knees.
"Don't kill me," the little creature begged Orphan Hero.
Introduced as Little Apparition, the creature promised it would rescue Orphan Hero from anything troublesome in the future.
Food was abundant, and Orphan Hero saw no need to slaughter this creature.
A farm boy with only manual tools, of course, Orphan Hero constantly tilled the paddies and hill sides for more rice each day. But since these two incidents, he would come home to a fresh bamboo table of warm foods waiting for him. No one would be around.
After the third time, Orphan Hero decided to stalk his own thatch to see who might be so polite as to cook and clean for him.
Topic: A solemn historical fairy tale (Read 1078 times)