Once upon a time, a young man lived in a forest all alone. Most young men live in cities, or towns, or at least in a forest with someone to keep them company. But not this one. There were a few occasional bears, or even a kangaroo, but nothing much more than that. A small family of mice lived only a mile away, and he went to visit them sometimes when he had run out of anything else to do. However, as a whole, it was a rather boring life. It seemed rather like this young man would move into town, so he could see people, but he didn't. Namely because where he lived, there weren't any towns.
Now that might seem odd to the average reader, namely because it is indeed odd. But since most things in life are odd to some extent or another, we'll leave it at one more oddity and move on. What might you move on to in a rather uneventful story of a man living completely alone in the woods who seems to have appeared there one day and whose only friends are a family of mice and a few stray large mammals? Well, for one thing, there is his name. We haven't mentioned that yet.
Now, you might well wonder what a man living in the middle of a forest with all those things mentioned a few times above might do with a name. First, he had it above his door (which presents another topic we can move onto later - his house) and had carefully engraved it onto all his dishes and embroidered it onto all his clothes. Now, this may indeed seem strange, since there was no one else with which he could get his laundry mixed up with. He always hoped someone would come along though, and so whenever a new article of clothing was achieved, he embroidered his name on it.
Achieved you say? Yes, in this part of the world, clothing was most certainly achieved. In fact, it was hunted down and subdued before becoming even remotely wearable. Thus, many of his clothes had holes in them before he even started wearing them, especially the tougher ones like overcoats and button down vests. They always resisted being caught. He could understand the overcoats, but it must simply have been pride that kept the vests from surrendering sooner. Very prideful types, vests. Much higher class than a mere T-shirt or some other commonplace creature.
He would usually do laundry once a month (he was an accomplished hunter, and had quite an extensive wardrobe) on whichever day he thought was probably the first of the month. Most of the time he was wrong, but since he didn't know that we'll leave him be. Laundry day was the best and worst day of the period he declared a month. It was good, because he suddenly ad a renewed wardrobe full of freshly washed and subdued clothes. It was bad, because he had to wash and subdue all the clothes.
First he had to take any he was currently wearing off. This isn't really very shocking at all, since there was no one to see him (except his clothes.) He put them all in a basket and carried them down to the river, where he flipped the basket upside down before the clothes caught sight of the water. Then, one at a time, he'd pull an article out and wash it, before tying it up securely and hanging it to mellow. After the clothes were mellowed, he could think about drying them.
So it happened that one day this young man was out washing and subduing his clothes. He had only a few measly articles left, most of the more prideful and tough ones having already been finished. (He wore a lot of prideful clothes, since he prided himself on being a good hunter.)
And we'll leave you there for now, but maybe something else will happen. You'll have to look closely though, his country has a tendency to disappear.
~Not Caroline
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