Once, there was a man. He was a brute of a man, and many feared him. He
lived by himself, his father and mother had either abandoned him or were
dead. His house was full of toys, and paintings he had made of wobbly
rainbows and lopsided houses. He sat down at his desk and contemplated
his next piece. He picked up a stick of colored wax from a box marked
"sealing wax" (though he could not read it). He began to scribble out a
picture of a woman.

He did not really know this woman, who had sticks for a body, arms, and
legs, and a balloon-ish circle for a head. But she was pretty. He saw
her in the market once. He heard the butcher call her name. She had a
pretty name. He had watched her for a long time from his seat on a
bench. She had a pretty voice when she was happy. She deserved to be
happy, he thought, a woman so pretty and kind like that.

The woman had stopped to talk to a friend. She did not sound so happy
now. "I only wanted to talk to him about it. But he didn't even reply!"
she said. "He could have at least said he wasn't interested. It made me
so angry! I wish I could just kill him!"

Someone had made her upset. She did not look pretty. Her face looked
mean and she tugged at her hair. That wasn't right.

The man put down his colored wax. He knew how to make her happy again.
She should be happy. Someone who upset her so much to make her
not-pretty must be a very bad person. He picked up a piece of glass and
left his house.

The next day, he saw the woman again. She was caged in the square of the
city. The man had not been the only one to hear her remark. She was
blamed for killing the bad man! The brutish man walked to the center of
the square. Everyone gasped, even the woman in the cage. He cried out to
let her go. He looked around at the crowd. They looked mean. Not at all
pretty. The woman didn't look pretty, either. She was scared. These
people were scaring her.

They just stared at him, and shouted words at him all at once, they were
a jumble to his ears, so he didn't respond. He looked at the woman. "You
happy?" he asked. She wouldn't talk. The crowd behind his back began
making threats. He roared and told them to stop making her upset. They
jeered and taunted, "Or what, ugly?" The crowd laughed. The man began to
see red. They were all bad people.

Bad, horrible people. He shouted about them giving her what she wants,
and he blurted out his involvement in the killing of the bad man. The
people were stunned, no one moved. He got mad. They wouldn't make her
happy. He had to do more. He killed them.

No one understood he had the mind of a child. Even after they began to
see how this poor dumb creature was impassioned for the woman, the
jailors were arrogantly unable to admit that they had been wrong,
falsely accusing such a delicate woman of cold-blooded murder. Instead
of saving the lives of countless innocents, soldiers, and spectators,
the jailors flooded after the brute, determined to take him down. One by
one, the brute slashed down those who laughed at the woman. And one by
one, the jailors began to knock down his strength, until at last he was
subdued.

The brute lay dead in a puddle of blood, and the village square ran with
the blood of hundreds of innocent people. Was the pride of the jailors
so important that it was worth those lives? Or perhaps the jailors were
looking to be heroes, foolishly thinking they would not only take down
the murderer, but rid the town once and for all of the potentially
dangerous man?

Such brave heroes, all sacrificing themselves. Their names shall go down
in history, of that I am certain. They will have memorials erected,
enshrining them in bronze for their heroic efforts in saving the town
from the madman. But some will know the true story. How the true evil
was in the egoism of the glory-hounds, and how they cowardly slew a
gentle man who only wished happiness for the pretty one.

In memory of the short life of Ghurzedan, the Tragic.

Penned by my hand on the 3rd of Chakros, in the year 84 MA.