[sub][i]excerpt from:[/i][/sub]
[centre][h1]The Book of Parables[/h1]
[sub]by[/sub]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/rIWKeGY.png[/img]
[h3]Mouse the Wise[/h3][/centre]
[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/XRcyBUw.png[/img][/centre]

[indent][sub][i][h3]The Tale of the Son-in-Law[/h3][/i][/sub][/indent]

In a place beyond time and a time beyond space, in a distant realm and a faraway place, there lived a noble chieftain. He was a rich man with great stretches of land, and all the peoples of the Western Wilds attested to his nobility of mind and virtue. Though his sons were many, the chieftain had but the one daughter.

One day there came to him a poor but hardworking fellow who could find no work. He sat by the chieftain, his shoulders stooped and ears drooped, until the chieftain could not but ask what troubled him. "Ah, chieftain!" He cried, "I am a poor but hardworking man - if only I had good work to earn good bread so I can marry and bring joy to the hearts of my parents with grandsons and granddaughters! I am of strong build and all attest to my good work, but who would look on a poor man?" 

The looked to him with sympathy and raised his hand. "Say no more my good man, your matter is solved." And so he called to his daughter and she came and stood at a distance, looking shyly from the young man to her father. "Look here my daughter, this is a poor hardworking man and he wishes after a good wife to guard his home and their children, so what say you?" And it was not long before they were married, and the chieftain employed his new son-in-law on some of his land and gave him a goodly stipend. And all was peace for a time.

One day the son-in-law came to the chieftain huffing and sighing and looking about him sadly so that the chieftain had not seated him long before he asked what was troubling him. "Oh! Father!" The son-in-law said - for sons-in-law were taken to calling their fathers-in-law by that in those days -, "I work day and night and I break my back, and all I get out of it is the pittance you afford me - and I look around me at all the unworked fields and am filled with misery. Oh what I would do if I could work them! Oh what I could do if I had but a little land to call my own."

The chieftain nodded in understanding and raised his hand to stop the lad from saying more. "Say no more, my son and consider your problem solved." And so he took him and showed him a great field, "this field before you, it is yours to work." And the son-in-law was filled with joy and thanked his father and blessed the Explorer for leading him to a father-in-law like him. So for a time the son-in-law worked the land and all was peace.

One day, after the chieftain had finished inspectings his herds, his son-in-law came and sat with him and he was sighing and huffing, and his brows were knotted and his eyes downcast in woe, so that he had not been sat down long before the chieftain asked him what was troubling him. "Oh! Father!" The son-in-law exclaimed, "I work these fields every day and every week, and look they are like a paradise. And I look beyond the smidgen of land I call my own to all the unworked fields and plains beyond, and I can only strike my head in woe and bemoan the fates. All these unworked fields and here I am, young and healthy and able to do so much more. If only I had more to work - why then all these steppes can be made to bloom."

On hearing this the chieftain raised his hand for his son-in-law to say no more. "Say nothing more my son, your matter is solved." And he took him so that they stood on a hill and all about them the fields stretched as far as the eye could see. "Here is my dagger. Tomorrow at su'unerise you will set out and walk as far as you wish, and when you reach a distance that pleases you only press this dagger into the ground and all that is behind it shall be yours. But hear my condition: you must return to this very spot before su'uneset."

And so the next day the son-in-law set out walking with excitement and vigour, his father-in-law's dagger in hand. He walked a great distance, and by the time the su'une was high in the sky he paused and wondered if it was sufficient. "No," he reasoned, "I should go a little more and then I can return running." And so he continued until it was late afternoon, and he wondered then if he should return. He paused and eyed the su'une, then shook his head. "No, I will have time if even an hour before su'uneset to return." And so he continued onward.

When night had fallen, the chieftain sat waiting on the hilltop and his son-in-law had yet to return. He looked on as the moon rose and only sipped on his tea of herbs and waited. Then he looked again when the moon was high in the sky and only sipped on his tea as his daughter approached with worry etched on her face. "Oh father, where is that husband of mine?" She asked.

"My daughter, return home and grow used to solitude for your husband is not returning this night or any night," he told her. But when the su'une rose she came pleading that he send out a party to look for him, and the chieftain complied. They did not find him, but found his corpse a long way from the hill he had been sprinting back towards, and the birds of the plains had had their way with his eyes and the worms sang and danced through his flesh. "Ah," said the chieftain when they brought the corpse to him, "but do we eat anything but dust?"

Learn, you who have wisdom, from that uncontended son-in-law. And you who seek after the stone of the philosophers and arcanists and metacausalists, which turns dust into gold: know that contentment is the metacausalist's stone!

[list][*][hider=Summary]A parable from one of Mouse's books. It's about a son-in-law who asks for land to work. His father-in-law gives him the land. Then he returns and asks for more. The father-in-law tells him he can have as much as he likes, but that he just needs to come back within a given time to let him know how much he is taking. He takes so long that he ends dying of exhaustion/cardiac arrest from too much running or something. Moral of the tale is to not be a greedy bastard, nothing esoteric going on here.[/hider][/list]