OUTCAST TRIALS
By Chase Entwistle
Down in the bottom of a grassy valley stood a peaceful cottage, in which a young man and woman lived happily. A hedgehog, too, lived off their scraps as a pet. The hedgehog was happily playing in the tallgrass when a landslide crushed both the cottage and its occupants. This caused the lonely, troubled hedgehog to run away and never look back.
A stranger to life in the wilderness, the hedgehog ventured out to find a new lifestyle. He started his travels on a dirt road, and walked until he came across a steep mountain cliff on which a ram stood.
"Why do you stay up there, ram? Wouldn't you rather be on another hill, grazing?" inquired the hog.
The ram on the cliff answered, "I came looking for grass, but instead I found a man. The fight was short but bloody, and the man took out my eye before it was over. Now I lack the perception to get down, and fear that I may starve."
New to the wilderness though cunning, the hedgehog hatched a plan. "I am a ferocious beast," he explained, "and you are to understand that I am behind you and quickly pursuing you for a meal." The ram cooperated and slowly, yet determinedly, made his way down the hill.
"Why thank you," said the half-blind ram, being close enough to see the hog's true size. "It comforts me to find that you are not a ferocious beast. But now I fear that I am not cut out for wilderness life."
"I find myself a similar situation. Shall we travel together?"
The two travelers trekked together until they reached the end of the dirt road. It ended at a downhill slope, space containing thousands of green trees.
"I am far too round to travel this slope; I would roll and tumble out of control," said the hedgehog.
"And I am far too large to get past the vines of this forest," explained the ram. "If I tried, I would surely tumble out the other side to my doom."
Just then, a green snake slithered out of a knot in one of the trees. "I believe I could help you if you would help me," said the snake to the ram and the hog. "A pack of mongooses just arrived from the south, and reaching the ground would be certain death. But I know of some food farther into the forest if I could just get past these horrible creatures."
Indeed, some mongooses were patrolling the ground by the trees. The cunning hedgehog explained, "Hoist me up into the trees, snake, and then slither onto the ram's back. He will walk you through the forest while you guide him towards the food you speak of."
Without question, the snake extended his head out of the tree far enough to reach to the small hog, who was using the ram as a stepladder. The snake pulled the hedgehog into the tree branches. He then climbed down onto the ram's back.
The ram walked forward on the steep slope until he reached a web of vines reaching between the trees. Neither the snake nor the ram knew what to do. However, the hedgehog, being on a flat enough surface for movement, used his pines to cut through the vines. He hopped down to the next tree and like this they continued their travels.
After a short amount of time, the traveling party arrived at a row of bushes.
"This was the food I spoke of," said the snake. "These bushes were supposed to have berries." All the bushes were completely empty and two fat mongooses slept at the edge of the row. "This is it, I suppose," continued the snake. "My home was overrun by hostile creatures and now is robbed of food. My life will never be the same."
"Well, perhaps you will fit in perfectly with us," said the ram. "Our lifestyles, too, were permanently ruined." They paused. "How about you slither up into the trees and retrieve the hedgehog?"
The snake did so, and the party prepared to discuss what to do about food.
"I could make do with the meat of a mongoose, if I were cut out to kill one," said the snake.
"And I could kill them," said the ram, "but I was not meant to eat meat. I can, however, eat the thick branches and leaves of those bushes."
"Unfortunately," said the hedgehog, "I have neither the teeth to eat mongoose nor the stomach to digest the branches. Perhaps, after the ram kills the mongooses, you, the snake, could open up their stomaches to reveal those juicy berries."
The snake explained that he did not have long teeth the way a venomous snake would.
"Pull out a pine from my skin. I will not feel a thing, but it will surely work."
So the ram speared the two sleeping mongooses, one on each of his already bloody horns. The snake opened up their stomaches with a pine of the hedgehog's, who ate the already chewed berries. The snake then ate the meat itself, and all the while the ram munched on the empty bushes.
The party assumed their previous position and continued to travel in search of a new life together, until they left mongoose territory. The snake then climbed off the ram.
"Snake, for how much longer do these woods run?" asked the ram.
"I would not know," said the snake. "I have never been so far before."
"I'm sure that the hill can't keep going down forever."
Sure enough, they soon arrived at a flat and peaceful grassland. The snake brought the hedgehog down from the trees. They saw a steeple showing just above the horizon, meaning one thing to all of them: home.
The snake opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the shouting of men and approaching of figures from the horizon.
"It's the hunt!" exclaimed the ram.
"Into the trees, and quick!" said the hedgehog to the ram and the snake.
They watched from the vines as a hurried fox, tail high in air, ducked into the treeline. A line of hounds, then a row of hunters arrived and came to a stop.
Gunfire rained upon those trees and bushes. When this came to a stop, the huntsman in front yelled, "Split up in both directions! We will catch that fox!"
They were some distance away, but could still hear their bustlings and mumblings as they obeyed the man in front. He went with the group moving away from the three travelers, while the rest began their march towards.
"Hiya, fellas!" Yelled an excited, female voice. It was the fox.
"Fox!" said the hedgehog. "We saw what was going on with those hunters. Are you in danger?"
"Well, of course I'm in some danger! But I get by." The fox sighed. "I've been doing nothing but try to get by ever since that goddamn steeple rose above my prairie. I'm so sick of it, I couldn't even tell you."
The fox made a very cute face. It was a sad face.
Without warning or given reasoning, the snake slithered off towards the steeple.
"Snake!" yelled the hedgehog to the departing snake. "The hounds are dangerous out there!"
The snake disregarded this and continued his travels.
"We might as well go for more cover," said the hedgehog to the fox and the ram. They all went farther into the trees so that they could not see anything but the sky straight upwards.
They waited. They waited until it seemed the hounds would reach their point along the treeline. And, ever so faintly, they heard the sniffing of bloodhounds. One started to bark, but other noise took over.
Screams, blood-curdling screams, clearly of both women and children, rose above the noises of the hunt.
Then, smoke in the sky. All the men rode off at top speed into the town.
The fox was first to speak, after a pause. "That's going to be a problem."
The ram answered, "What? Aren't they—"
"It worked!" The snake interrupted the ram as he returned. "burning that church drove those huntsmen back where they came from!"
"No!" interjected the fox. "That is not where the huntsmen came from. Those men were from another city, out in the distance, and the two are at war. Were at war, I should say. They agreed that they would settle at peace after each city gave the other a fox. You could see that they were busy on this before somebody raised conflicts again by burning down a church!"
The screams continued rather than stopped, and shots of gunfire began.
And so the outcasts starved, with a civilization's blood on their hands and nowhere to turn to other than a single city hundreds of miles away, and a hunter society anyways. The only survivor was the fox, who went on in mixed feelings of the outcasts, the several animals who died trying to help her but carelessly revoked war and destroyed the lone civilization for hundreds of miles in any direction.
The ram did not starve, but rather died of how intensely the fox f[content revoked]cked and s[content revoked]ked his brains out. Her tiny, amazed head just loved to sloppily enve[content revoked] the ram's giant, thr[content revoked]k until she was dre[content revoked]m! But she was sad when the ram died, not only because of how she enj[content revoked] to his [content revoked] on her, but also because she was lonely.
Deep down, she knew that she enjoyed the games she and the huntsmen played and she was happy to hear of how the cities had arrived at peace. She had start[content revoked]he ram because she was afraid of being alone, afraid of having nobody.
A few days later, the fox cut her own wrists with a hedgehog's pine, directly in the middle of a burnt chapel, a burnt chapel within the bloody, war-torn remains of a town. Only a few days after this did new settlers move in to the town, a crippled man and woman assisted by some lost travelers they'd met along the way.
The very nice couple was saying something about the mountains being problematic, and one problem had something to do with their pet hedgehog.