My sophomore year in high school, some of my friends and I tried a collaborative writing project to write stories for the fantasy nation of Avongard. Aside from some generic sword-and-sorcery stories about plant zombies, I didn’t contribute much. But I did write a little vignette in the group chat that I’m still pretty proud of. For background, someone had just suggested that all of our stories should have accompanying illustrations. It was a great idea for certain groups members, who were truly astounding artists, and less good for me, since my artistic oeuvre is made up entirely of stick figures and boxes (see above). This was how I picture a kingdom illustrated by me would turn out.
It gets depressing, being a stick figure. I don’t have a face or any features beyond my head, torso, and basic appendages. And one of my arms is shorter than another, which is kind of irritating, especially when I’m trying to pick up a box. I see a lot of boxes, which is similarly irritating. I’d like see something a little more complex than four lines that don’t even connect all the way.
I live in a stick-people village, which isn’t too great either. We live in box-houses, with little rectangles on them that I think are supposed to be doors, but it’s sort of unclear. I’m not sure which one is mine. They all kind of look the same.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I lived in my own stick figure universe. But, if I go to the very edge of my pencil-line village, I can see the expanse of Avongard in all its glory. The humans killing each other to appease the blood god. The elves killing humans who use lumber to appease the elf God. The streams and brooks and vast emerald forests. The little towns and cities dotting the hills, torches making pinpricks of light when the sun vanishes in the east. The mountains off in the distance, with treacherous trails leading up to snow-capped peaks. The fascinating and beautiful and endlessly detailed world.
Then I look back at my village. I see stick figures and boxes.
Even if we were left alone things might be better. But every once in a while the humans or elves or dwarves come in, seeing us as another civilization to raid. They chase us around, kill a few of our number, then realize that we don’t really have anything besides worthless boxes and sort of stare at the ground and mumble apologies. Luckily, each group usually doesn’t try to conquer us more than once, except for one dim-witted group of orcs, who keep forgetting there’s nothing they can take from us. I swear, those guys have the memory of a goldfish.
I also see shape-shifters off in the distance. Sometimes I convince myself that I am one of their kind, just slightly out of place, having accidentally turned myself into a stick-figure and unable to return to my past glory. So I spend day and night trying to transform, to become something glorious and beautiful, something other than this dismal drawn into being out of sheer boredom.
It never works.
Is there freedom in having nothing to lose? I say no. For even though my life has no worth in any way shape or form, things could have been worse.
I could have been a box.
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