Once Upon a Time-Piece (an allegory)

In international circles, a panorama of cross nationality relationships spring up with a confusing mixture of circumstances of this sort; e.g. Fred is from A, living in B, wants to go to C next,needs a visa for D, studying in E and Jane is from D, living in B, doesn't like A, wants to go to F or G, has friends in H.


This fairy-tale began as a comment on the sense and sensibility  of starting fleeting relationships  when moving frequently from country to country.  To entertain an emotional risk and savour a beautiful slice of time and learning all more delicious because of it has a  sell by date super-imposed over all interaction; or to reject the sorrow and inevitability of a certain separation in favour of the bland?

Once upon a time, and by that I really mean upon a Time Piece, ruled the justified  King Great Hand and the punctually most beloved Queen Second Hand . The kingdom  of Otott (On Top of the Time Piece in full) wasn’t much smaller than Canada and every-where the ground shone with a magnificent burnished wood polish. Even the rivers and oceans glinted like glass. A multitude of beautiful rainbow-polish trees and decoupage flowers grew between the  rivers following the rings of the wood and people danced and loved and slept to the soothing tick-tick-tock of the Time-piece. In the palace, all was order and Tragedies were not even a literary form. If it wasn’t for the particular merit of strawberry cheesecake things may have stayed that way.

One day  Queen Second Hand went riding on her clockwork steed, watching the circular sunset, and letting her velveteen chestnut hair flow up and down on the tick-tock of her wind. In every slice of sunset she invented a verse, comparing it to her favourite flowers or to the different coiffures of  King Great Hand. Then she saw a patched red and white slice of sunset which looked so richly like her favourite cheesecake it seemed she could bite into it. She reached down to wind the horse very fast and galloped towards it joyfully.  Then the tragedy happened.

That morning the ground  around the perimeters of Otott had been highly polished and indeed if she’d taken the time to look Queen Second would have seen the sign, ‘Tread Carefully; Polishing in progress.’

Her clockwork horse skidded on the floor and together they went spinning over the edge of Ottot with an unpleasant scream. A man polishing the floor far away , listening to the cheesecake song, looked up just in time to see her disappear over the edge.

When the king heard the news he  began spinning around and around erratically, like a slightly chipped spinning top, and the whole world felt dizzy and confused. Ottotians, like whirling dervishes, tend to spin when upset. The hours that day were badly measured. When the King stopped spinning he called his court to him, ‘Queen Second Hand was the most beautiful thing in Ottot. I imagined she would stay here till the end of the tick-tock and now I see she was only passing and ephemeral. Now I see that anything temporary is delicate and cruel. Henceforth, anything temporary, passing, ephemeral, inconstant, fleeting is prohibited in my Kingdom.' The court whispered that this was ridiculous and impractical but the king was firm. The  flowers and trees were culled  so the land became monotone with only the deep green perenials and a touch of gorse; fashion was banned so soon all clothes looked more or less the same, durable and practical, so the streets were no longer full of crowds like glossy rainbows but became sober and gloomy; daydreams were severely punished so ditzy milkmaids lamented in prison; all forms of poetry became very long and monotonous; scientific theories always stayed the same so in the laboratories the same ideas were proved again and again; fireworks and wine and even candles were particularly prohibited as mere fleeting flashes. No Strawberries or lettuce or blackberries or cream. No smiles or ballet or elation.

The land tick-tick-tocked with the perfect regularity of the clock and everything was good. Soon  it seemed something inexpicable was setting in. No-one smiles or laughs any-more, thought  King Great-Hand.  He asked his court, ‘Why don’t you smile any-more? Aren’t you content in my court?’

 ‘Every-thing is good my lord but smiling and mirth is outlawed in section 12.12 of The Decree of Unfleetability.’

The king remembered this and said, ‘Very  good'. He sat down to his dinner of pickles and beef jerky which was becoming slightly bland and went to his good bed which was very solid but never fresh. All the time he felt that there was something here before which was good - or even more than good - didn't there used to some other words like that but more lovely? Was it just the way the freshly polished floors once glinted in the Sun? Now, of course polish and sun-shine (not sun, only sun-shine which is quite a different matter) were prohibited. He felt  the deep ache of his loss of Queen Second Hand. He thought of how the whole tragedy was due to her impulsive and vivacious character and the beauty of the sun and the brilliance of the polished ground and said , 'Very good, it's all very well that nothing is fleeting any-more.’

He slept and when he looked out  the window at the now matt grey palace garden with only a few stone flowers he saw  the most magnificent vermillion blossoms with a different coloured silk ribbon hanging from the centre of each. They were the most exquisite(a word that had become obscure) flowers he’d ever seen.

He called his botanist to him , ‘What on Ottot are those flowers in my garden?’

The botanist looked in open mouth, ‘Jejunia! They are very rare and precious flowers which bloom only at a certain coalition of the moon and the second-hand  and infinite stellar variants. It can never be said how long they will bloom for.’

Even as the king was watching, the flowers began to change to the deepest dark, the dark of beautiful polished  hair.

The king wanted to leap with delight. He wanted to admire  the flowers all day, to smell them, to order a hundred official paintings of Jejuinia, to write a poem  to a Jejunia. There was something welling up inside him which he couldn't quite put his finger on.

The flowers were not only in the palace gardens, but were blooming in all the drab gardens and parks across Ottot.  All over the land  people were gasping in joy at the beauty of the Jejunia.

Then the king saw that people were smiling,  laughing, singing and in many ways breaking his Decree of Unfleetability. The king wanted to smile too and was angry.

‘Isn't there a way to make them stay forever and be permanent instead of fleeting?’ He shouted.

'Perhaps we could pickle them.'

'Or dry them.'

'Or stuff them.'

The botanist said, 'You're scientists have become stupid! Jejunia aren't cucumbers. There's no way at all!'

‘Then they must go!’ said the king furiously.

The people pulled up the roots of the Jejunia although their hands seemed to express the heaviness of their hearts. The king watched feeling  that something he couldn't quite put his finger on was being stripped away from his kingdom. Although everything was being returned to its' normal monochrome and monotone and that was  very  good and nice.

As the last Jejunia  was lifted  something pirouetted into the edge of the clock. It was the Queen Second Handed on her steed who hadn’t fallen straight at all but had been wafting and drafting asnd buffeted through space for a very long time. She was finally blown back with a great force and knocked against the side of the Time-Piece. The clock was in fact not round as the geographers of Otott generally postulated, but cyclindrucal and held by two carved Jejune flowers. The  base was even more unstable because it was  top-heavy with the heavy hearts(everything light had evaporated a long time ago) of the Ottotians above. It toppled over and smashed into twelve and sixty pieces which proved that Ottot was a fleeting kingdom after all.