There is an oak tree and a duck pond, and it has been this way for as long as anyone can remember. There is one duck, the color of sun ripened wheat, which nests in the mud at the tree's roots, and this place is never disputed by any other birds, but defended by a family of cats and meerkats. This, the people know to be true.

There is always one duck.

There are two swans, one black, one white, which stop by the pond after a long flight. This, the people believe, for where else do the swans that glide so gracefully across the water come from?

But this also, the people believe. That if you were to venture to the field and the pond after dark, when the moon is up and the sun is down, there would no longer be a tree.

(And this has been passed down among the people, for who would dare to look.)

Instead of the tree, it is whispered, that after dark, there would be a man, writing by the waterside, with the duck at his side. A duck whose feather shine now white as the white swan, when the moonlight bathes her feathers, washing away the wheaten gold.

Or perhaps there would be no duck at all, but a young man and a woman, a woman made of starlight on water, and they dance atop the lake. This the people believe, and who would dare argue, for the wisest man in town has said so.

Or perhaps, if you were to tread that path to the waterside on a night when the swans are present, there would be four, now a man with hair like the feathers of the white swan, and a kind golden gaze that sees your heart, and loves you despite it all, and a woman with gown and hair like the night, whose ruby eyes cut like a sharp beak this far and no more. And this they believe, for why else would the tale endure, if it were false?

And if nobody dares, if not one person understands, has the courage to come and look— (well, that's their problem, isn't it?)

But the day that so-called progressive thinkers decide to cut down the tree, fill in the pond, and build anew atop that sacred place and older graveyard, the last living descendant of a writer of tragedies whispers of this plan to the tree, and feels almost as if he is being watched and judged, as the knot-that-looks-like-a-face seems to shift. (It is just a trick of the eye. It must be. He has long given up on anything else.)

And when the crew comes with their tools, there is no sign that there was ever a tree. An empty expanse of mud that was once a pond greets them, and the utter absence of the much-disputed tree cannot be argued.

It is simply not there.

(And on that same day, a young man with hair the deep dark green of leaves in the shade, of a mallard duck's head walks out the gates, hand in hand with a lovely young woman, as the swans fly overhead.)

For there are always other stories to end.