Earlier this morning I began a story that I had from a waking dream. Here is the full story. Just finished and edited. Enjoy.
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Saph and the kitten
Long ago, Saph had become known as "The Emperor without words", and that was just how his subjects treated him. The subjects would come, always the mice first, due to their impertinence, and bow and grovel at his feet presenting their gifts one by one - in tears of sorrow. It was then that Saph would wake up screaming, as he always did. It was a farce, for his only reality was the Jade Dungeon and the Minotaur who kept him there.
The Minotaur's name was Jake, and it was funny that he lived in the Jade Dungeon. He had always wanted to go out and see the mountains, but no one had ever given him any heed, as he only spoke Kraken, and he never saw the Kraken anymore.
Saph had the same dream about the kitten every night. He was quite convinced that it really was a dream about kittens, but the mice were always there, ruining everything with their terrific demands. More piers into the sea, more bridges over the ant swamps, more this and more that. And they always left their disgusting gift in tiny pink vials. It was the tears of the ever-queen, long dead and forgotten.
How they had gotten those tears was beyond him and he probably shouldn't have asked, but in a dream, you never know how things will turn out, and invariably he would ask and they would always tell him: "She died in our loving embrace, and she let us eat her when she passed." Saph knew it was all lies, but they told him the same story over and over, and he became prone to believe it after a while.
And so, night after night, he would dream the ridiculous dream, and morning after morning the Minotaur would be there banging on his cage telling him to shut up, in his very loudest Kraken. Breakfast would come, usually in the form of Turtle Cake, but there would never be anything to drink. Once, there was no breakfast, and once there were waffles. The waffles only happened once, and so every time he ate a bird, he imagined delicious waffles with nice warm syrup, even if the waffles they had served him had not been warm or delicious, and probably shouldn't have even been called waffles to begin with.
The Minotaur would then begin reading poetry to him. It was long and drawn out, but it pleased the Minotaur very much and since there was nothing better to do, he let the Minotaur drone on and on in his unique and strange language of the sea, reading poetry to Saph from a large orange book.
He had tried to teach the Minotaur to speak like him, but often, for his reward, there would only be a sharp prick with a trident, so Saph decided that the best thing to do was to nod and act as if the Minotaur's poetry was very important and rhymed very well.
The cage hung from a large chain high into the sky. He would have called it a ceiling, but since he couldn't see the top of it, there was no use, so he might as well call it the sky. The cage was round, and approximately one half a meter in diameter. It was very tall, however, and Saph could stand whenever he wanted, and did so often. When sitting, he would dangle his four legs out from the sides of the cage and hum quietly to himself.
One day, as he was humming along, the Minotaur came round, making his daily checks. He stopped and listened to Saph. Saph, of course, lost in song, had his eyes closed. Saph had never hummed with the Minotaur near before, for he feared that the monster would not like the tune, so he was very stealthy about it. But this day, as I have said, his eyes were closed and there was nothing to do about it but do as you do when you don't know anyone else is watching. Hum hum hum.
What startled Saph more than anything was the fact that the Minotaur started humming along with him. And why not? The Minotaur was a huge fan of music and even had some an old Donna Summer record that he would play at night, up in his spire, when all the prisoners were either asleep or dead. He only had two records, the other one being a Donnie and Marie Osmond record, but he couldn't stand that one, and had since smashed it to pieces.
Saph, completely taken aback that the Minotaur had been listening, stopped, so the Minotaur poked him a little with his trident, and Saph began humming once more.
Moments turned into days, which promptly turned into weeks, and wouldn't you know it, before long, the Minotaur had learned all of the songs that Saph could teach him. This really got the Minotaur angry, who had quickly decided that all he really wanted to do (besides see the mountains) was to become a musician, which made him feel good inside and filled him with a sense of purpose, even more than poetry ever did. "Jake" would be in lights at the theater, and everyone would come out to see him hum his famous tunes. He even stopped writing new poetry. Maybe he would write more poetry, one day... Once he had created songs from his old existing poetry from his big orange book. He had big plans.
Saph, if he had known about the Minotaur's aspirations, would have perhaps hesitantly told him that he was a terrible student of music and could not carry a tune in a bucket... But thankfully Saph did not speak Kraken, and so little was done.
That's really all there is to tell. For all we know, Jake and Saph still hum away to this very day. There really wasn't any kittens in this story, sorry. Saph never really got over the fact that the dream always happened in the same way, and Jake kept waking him up earlier and earlier just to be hummed to, so Saph never got to the part in the dream where the kittens appear. He knew that they would eventually, it just never happened.
Which makes me sad. I really wanted to hear about kittens... And maybe I even wanted to hear how eventually Saph taught the Minotaur lyrics and through that, taught him Grelch (which is what Saph spoke), and by that, convinced the Minotaur that he had a terrible job and should release all the prisoners at once. The Minotaur would have agreed and they all would have danced away into the sunset... But sadly, that is not at all what happened and I am incredibly sorry that there is not a better ending to this story.
