mountain
Once upon a time an old man lived up a mountain. He lived on his own,becau se he wanted to be a guru and he'd heard this was what you had to do. He'd tried sitting on the very summit of the mountain for a while, but it was cold and pointy, so in the end he built himself a small wooden shack, about halfway to the top, filled it with sheep, thinking "Well, I may not be a proper guru, at the top of the mountain, but at least here I'm warm and I have my sheep and my vegetables to eat when I'm hungry. Maybe this just makes me a hermit, but then I'm not a very wise man. I wonder what people think of me."
People rarely thought of him, because he lived up the top of the mountain and their lives were concerned with the valley and the harvest and laughter and love in the golden fields, but as time ran on war came to the valley and the fields were laid waste. Many of the happy laughing people were killed, and those who weren't didn't laugh or love anymore. Nothing would grow in the fields and there were no children to bring smiles to the ruined faces of the valley-dwellers. Eventually their thoughts turned to the old man living high in the mountain.
"He must be very wise," thought some. "He chose to live up the mountain away from the war, where he could live in peace with his sheep and his vegetables. We should climb the mountain and see if he can help us with our plight."
"The old man is a coward", thought others. "He hid up the mountain to avoid the war. When the war was over, he never came down from his haunt. He never thought to offer us his sheep and vegetables when we were starving with our crops burnt in the ground. We should go up there and take his sheep from him. A coward doesn't deserve the comfort he has."
So a crowd formed and slowly they ascended the mountain, climbing up to the old man's shack, intending to both revere him and kill him. The climb was long and hard, and when they reached the shack it was cold and empty. They found the old man's remains in his vegetable garden, where he had died of old age while tending his plants. He had been dead for many years, since long before the war. All the sheep had long since run away and the vegetable garden was wild with weeds.
They buried the old man next to his shack and walked back down the mountain to the ruined fields of the valley. Some time later a child was born.
