In the time of dreaming the animals were thinkers. Men were like children in their true hearts, and the animals loved them and thought kindly of them. The animals taught men of the seasons and the soil, and their mother, the earth.
Many seasons passed as men learned the ways of the animals and fed himself with the gifts of the earth. He grew strong and tall. He found new ways to forage for food, and this knowledge he passed back to the animals, along with many new gifts from their mother, the earth.
But deep within the hearts of men lay a thing that the animals had not yet learnt. It simmered and grew slowly, deep within the men. So deep was it that even men did not know of it at first. And slowly it festered, this thing within them, until finally it began - separation.
One man, no different to any other, awoke one morning and listened to the magpie singing the sun from the arms of mother earth. He listened to the song, but he did not hear it. He saw the sun rise from the earth and begin its journey of the day. He watched the sun rise, but he did not see it. For he had awoken with a new seed nurturing in his belly.
"I am STRONG!", he said to himself. He looked over his land and saw that his neighbour had also watched the sun rising.
"I am stronger than my neighbour, yet he is happier than I. He lives closer to the magpie. Perhaps that is why."
Once again he looked at his neighbour, who seeing his friend, waved cheerily. "He enjoyed the sun rise more than I. He must see a better view than I.. And he hears the magpie better.." The man waved back and then squatted, scratching his chin. "I am STRONGER than my neighbour, I will take his land along with mine and then I will smile each morning at the magpie, as I watch the sun"
So this first bearer of the seed of discontent arose and calmly killed his closest companion. The hand of man held it's first bloodied weapon and poked curiously at the hole in the broken face of the other man. A pinkish, grey ooze glistened in the early morning sun. He dabbed at it with his finger, it came away covered in red stickiness, like the honey of the bees. He tasted it and revelled in the strangeness of the taste.
"I am strong.. But he had more wisdom and knowledge than I.." He scratched at his chin in thought, "If I eat from his head, then I will take his knowledge as well as his land!" And so he tasted flesh.
Soon he would forsake the gathering of his food from the belly of mother earth, for the ease of a kill by stealth. He had tasted greed and blood.
He smiled.
It had been a good day.

(C) Ron Lee 1994

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