Shining threads

Shining threads

Thursday 30 December 2010

The Story of Truth and Fiction

Truth was a hard lad - he exercised everyday. He emitted a cold light, and did maths and logic to pass the time. He was the ultimate conformist. Truth marched. Unrelenting. Boring. Fixed in his ways. Like rock. Like steel.

Fiction was a slippery character. She flittered around, mercurially. Everyday she practiced telling lies, just for the hell of it. Fiction skipped and shape-shifted. Chimera-like. The grand illusionist. Like water. Like clouds.

One day Truth ran into Fiction. To be more accurate, Truth ran over Fiction. But Fiction just reshaped herself into new forms. Truth was aggravated. He tried to tell Fiction how things were, but she was having none of it. He could not catch her devilish dancing nature. Like an elephant trying to snare a butterfly, it was all doomed to failure.

Fiction turned and swirled around Truth, telling him of all the other possibilities besides Reality. She tried to open his mind to fantasy and imagination and magic. Truth played with an open hand, whereas Fiction bluffed and blagged her way through. Truth laid out the exact contours of existence. Fiction hid it in a series of veils, hoaxes and embellishments. He was outraged at her irreverence and lack of gravity. Truth bought her encyclopedias. Fiction cut them up and made poetry out of them. Truth recited facts, figures and statistics. Fiction laughed and said 'picture a different world!’

Truth frowned disapprovingly. Fiction smiled indulgently.

They looked at each other for a long, long time until......

Truth saw the charm of Fiction, and Fiction realised the sincerity of Truth.

They touched and Truth melted, just a little, and Fiction became a bit more solid.

Both Truth and Fiction were changed by their encounter and learnt to dance together. Though they still bickered sometimes, neither denied the other.

Alternative ending:
Both Truth and Fiction were changed by their encounter and leant to dance together, and in their dance their identities blurred. Truth's sense of ground started to slip away, and Fiction began to engage with existence. Their dimensions mixed and multiplied, and their children burst forth as hybrid seeds to regenerate life.

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