Saturday 15 September 2012

And In the End...

"In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king..."  Once upon a time, I wrote a story.  Well, actually I wrote a story ending.

Read The Lady or the Tiger here before continuing to my post.




     Out sprang the tiger, and Aeneas turned to face the ravenous beast.  Clytaemnestra had made secret arrangements to discover which door held which, but someone had interfered, switching the latter.  Aeneas rushed at the tiger, grasping its head in a head-lock.  Falling to the ground, they rolled around in the dust while the tiger clawed at his back.  Though he had given the tiger a surprise, the heat of the day and the ferocity of the beast was too much for the brave man.  He had acquired numerous wounds in a matter of seconds, and he was becoming weaker.  As her lover was being tortured before her eyes, Clytaemnestra felt helpless.  She looked down from the balcony and saw Aeneas, distorted, covered in blood and the dirt from the arena.  He was almost unrecognizable: He had been slain by the monster of semi-barbaric judgment.

     The princess (like most princesses at such points in a story) could bear it no longer.  Weeping, like any stereotypical princess would, she knelt at her father's side and pleaded to have the armed guard remove Aeneas' body before the tiger completely destroyed it.  The king was shocked and taken aback by this request: After all, wasn't she his semi-barbaric daughter?  This was true; but she was young, and she had loved.

     Deeply moved, he ordered the guards to carry out her request and make the body ready for burial.  Clytaemnestra's father was troubled; had he just destroyed his relationship with his daughter?  The king pulled the dramatic princess to her feet and looked at her through anxious eyes.

          "I don't know what I have been doing..." he stated. "I must discontinue this practice at once." The last sentence came heavily, as if he had just seen a revelation, or some vision showing him how wrong he had been all these long, busy years.

     Clytaemnestra was amazed.  Revoke his system of judgement and set another in its place?!  Was it possible?  Yes - it was- and because no one wanted to throw any of his little orbs out of their orbits, the council and senate readily obeyed the order.

     Clytaemnestra was never, as one might suspect, quite the same after Aeneas' death.  She and Lavinia, her previous rival, became fast friends who aided one another in any and every way possible  The country was better off because if the new system put in place; the economy thrived, and the people were joyous once again.

     When her father died many years later, she (as most princesses do) inherited the throne.  In short, after many complications she married an elegant ambassador from a faraway country, and Lavinia married a man from the east.  No second thought for either of the couples, however, as both were content.

     The country had learned a valuable lesson, and a hard one at that.  One must never become demoralized or desensitized, or semi-barbaric for that matter; as one never knows how deeply circumstances will affect other people.

It's not the best, actually quite pathetic in its own little way, but this story has a back story to it.
I was on top of this assignment, it was all typed up two days in advance, ready to go, cleansed of errors.  (Basically, the first version was fine.)  The problem, however, was that I did not think it to have enough thought or feeling. 
So the night before the assignment was due, I wrote this version.  In twenty minutes.  While listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack.  The result was much better than the "Oh, he didn't die..." version, because the system of the country changed and was set on the right track.
In the end, I had learned to follow my writer's intuition, and to simply write what I thought.  Who cares about feelings; the thoughts were what mattered.  

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